2. • Personality is the unique way in which each
individual thinks, acts, and feels throughout life.
Personality should not be confused with
character, which refers to value judgments made
about a person’s morals or ethical behavior; nor
should it be confused with temperament, the
enduring characteristics with which each person
is born, such as irritability or adaptability.
3. • Temperament is based in one’s biology, either
through genetic influences, prenatal influences,
or a combination of those influences, and forms
the basis upon which one’s larger personality is
built. Both character and temperament are vital
parts of personality, however. Every adult
personality is a combination of temperaments
and personal history of family, culture, and the
time during which they grew up
4. Definition of personality
• “Personality is the dynamic organization
within the individual of those psychophysical
systems that determine his unique adjustments
to the environment.” GORDON ALLPORT
(1937)
• The term personality is derived from the Latin
word persona meaning mask, this was adopted
by Romans. For Romans, the word persona
refers to as one appears and not as one actually
is.
5. • But psychologists neither concern with the common
use of the terms nor with its heritage. For them, the
term personality refers to such characteristics of
individuals that distinguishes each individual with
other.
• WITTING & WILLIAMS-III (1984); personality is a
set of characteristics – unique for each individuals –
that determine a person’s identity and behavior
pattern.
• Personality is in fact, an organized pattern of
tendencies specific to a person.
6. • WHITE (1948); Personality is the organization
of individual’s personal patterns of tendencies.
7. Four traditional perspectives in
personality theory:
• The psychodynamic perspective had its
beginnings in the work of Sigmund Freud and
still exists today. It focuses on the role of the
unconscious mind in the development of
personality. This perspective is also heavily
focused on biological causes of personality
differences.
• The behaviorist perspective is based on the
theories of learning. This approach focuses on
the effect of the environment on behavior.
8. • The humanistic perspective first arose as a reaction
against the psychoanalytic and behaviorist perspectives
and focuses on the role of each person’s conscious life
experiences and choices in personality development.
• The trait perspective differs from the other three in its
basic goals: The psychoanalytic, behaviorist, and
humanistic perspectives all seek to explain the process
that causes personality to form into its unique
characteristics, whereas trait theorists are more
concerned with the end result—the characteristics
themselves. Although some trait theorists assume that
traits are biologically determined, others make no such
assumption.
9. Sigmund Freud and the
Psychodynamic Perspective
• Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1856,
• Freud believed that the mind was divided into
three parts: the preconscious, conscious, and
unconscious minds
• Freud believed, based on observations of his
patients, that personality itself could be divided
into three parts, each existing at one or more
levels of conscious awareness; id, ego, and
superego.
10. ID: IF IT FEELS GOOD, DO IT
• The first and most primitive part of the personality,
present in the infant, is the id. Id is a Latin word
that means “it.” The id is a completely
unconscious, pleasure-seeking, amoral part of the
personality that exists at birth, containing all of the
basic biological drives: hunger, thirst, self-
preservation, and sex, for example.
• Thinking about what infants are like when they are
just born provides a good picture of the id. Infants
are demanding, irrational, illogical, and impulsive.
They want their needs satisfied immediately, and
they don’t care about anyone else’s needs or desires.
11. • Freud called this need for satisfaction the
pleasure principle, which can be defined as
the desire for immediate gratification of needs
with no regard for the consequences.
• The pleasure principle can be summed up simply
as “if it feels good, do it.”
12. EGO: THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
• People normally try to satisfy an infant’s needs
as quickly as possible. Infants are fed when
hungry, changed when wet, and tended to
whenever they cry. But as infants begin to grow,
adults start denying them their every wish.
According to Freud, to deal with reality, a second
part of the personality develops called the ego.
13. • The ego, from the Latin word for “I,” is mostly
conscious and is far more rational, logical, and
cunning than the id.
• The ego works on the reality principle, which is
the need to satisfy the demands of the id only in
ways that will not lead to negative consequences.
• This means that sometimes the ego decides to
deny the id its desires because the consequences
would be painful or too unpleasant.
14. SUPEREGO: THE MORAL WATCHDOG
• Freud called the third and final part of the
personality, the moral center of personality, the
superego.
• The superego (also Latin, meaning “over the self ”)
develops as a preschool-aged child learns the rules,
customs, and expectations of society.
• The super ego contains the conscience, the part of
the personality that makes people feel guilt, or
moral anxiety, when they do the wrong thing.
• It is not until the conscience develops that children
have a sense of right and wrong.
15. Psychological defense mechanisms
• ways of dealing with stress through unconsciously
distorting one’s perception of reality.
• These defense mechanisms were mainly outlined
and studied by Freud’s daughter, Anna Freud, who
was a psychoanalyst.
• In order for the three parts of the personality to
function, the constant conflict among them must be
managed, and Freud assumed that the defense
mechanisms were one of the most important tools
for dealing with the anxiety caused by this conflict.
16. • psychological defense mechanisms; unconscious
distortions of a person’s perception of reality
that reduce stress and anxiety.
• Denial; psychological defense mechanism in
which the person refuses to acknowledge or
recognize a threatening situation eg: Ben is an
alcoholic who denies being an alcoholic.
17. • Repression: psychological defense mechanism
in which the person refuses to consciously
remember a threatening or unacceptable event,
instead pushing those events into the
unconscious mind. For eg; Elise, who was
sexually abused as a child, cannot remember the
abuse at all.
• Rationalization; psychological defense
mechanism in which a person invents acceptable
excuses for unacceptable behavior. For eg; “If I
don’t have breakfast, I can have that piece of
cake later on without hurting my diet.”
18. • projection psychological defense mechanism in
which unacceptable or threatening impulses or
feelings are seen as originating with someone
else, usually the target of the impulses or
feelings. For eg; Keisha is attracted to her sister’s
husband but denies this and believes the
husband is attracted to her.
19. • Reaction formation; psychological defense
mechanism in which a person forms an opposite
emotional or behavioral reaction to the way he or
she really feels to keep those true feelings hidden
from self and others. For eg; Matt is unconsciously
attracted to Ben but outwardly voices an extreme
hatred of homosexuals.
• Displacement: redirecting feelings from a
threatening target to a less threatening one. For eg:
Priyanka gets reprimanded by her boss and goes
home to angrily pick a fight with her husband.
20. • Regression; psychological defense mechanism
in which a person falls back on childlike patterns
of responding in reaction to stressful situations.
For eg; Four-year-old Jeff starts wetting his bed
after his parents bring home a new baby.
• Identification defense mechanism in which a
person tries to become like someone else to deal
with anxiety. Example: Marie really admires
Suzy, the most popular girl in school, and tries to
copy her behavior and dress.
21. • Compensation (Substitution); defense mechanism
in which a person makes up for inferiorities in one
area by becoming superior in another area.
Example; Reggie is not good at athletics, so he puts
all of his energies into becoming an academic
scholar.
• Sublimation; channeling socially unacceptable
impulses and urges into socially acceptable
behavior. Example; Alain, who is very aggressive,
becomes a professional hockey player.
22. STAGES OF PERSONALITY
DEVELOPMENT
• For Freud, the three parts of the personality develop
in a series of stages. Because he focused heavily on
the sex drive, he believed that the stages were
determined by the developing sexuality of the child.
At each stage, a different erogenous zone, or area of
the body that produces pleasurable feelings,
becomes important and can become the source of
conflicts. Conflicts that are not fully resolved can
result in fixation, or getting “stuck” to some degree
in a stage of development. The child may grow into
an adult but will still carry emotional and
psychological “baggage” from that earlier fixated
stage.
23. • Because the personality, or psyche, develops as
a result of sexual development, Freud called
these the psychosexual stages of personality
development.
• Oral Stage (0 – 1 ½ years): first stage in which the
mouth is the erogenous zone and weaning is the primary
conflict and is dominated by the id.
• Weaning that occurs too soon or too late can result in too
little or too much satisfaction of the child’s oral needs.
24. • resulting in fixated adult personality:
overeating, drinking too much, chain smoking,
talking too much, nail biting, gum chewing, and
a tendency to be either too dependent and
optimistic (when the oral needs are
overindulged) or too aggressive and pessimistic
(when the oral needs are denied).
25. • Anal Stage: Toilet Training And Anal Fixation;
second stage occurring from 1 ½ years to 3 years
of age, in which the anus is the erogenous zone
and toilet training is the source of conflict.
• Freud believed that the erogenous zone moves
from the mouth to the anus, because he also
believed that children got a great deal of
pleasure from both withholding and releasing
their feces at will. This stage is, therefore, called
the anal stage.
26. • Fixation: issues with cleanliness.
• Phallic Stage: (3 to 6 years), (3 to 6 years), the
erogenous zone shifts to the genitals. Children have
discovered the differences between the sexes by
now. (The word phallic comes from the Greek word
phallos and means “penis.”)
• Freud believed that when boys realized that the little
girl down the street had no penis they developed a
fear of losing the penis called castration anxiety,
while girls developed penis envy because they were
missing a penis.
27. • Fortunately, nearly all psychoanalysts have long
since abandoned the concept of penis envy.
• Freud essentially believed that boys develop
both sexual attraction to their mothers and
jealousy of their fathers during this stage, a
phenomenon called the Oedipus complex
(Oedipus was a king in a Greek tragedy who
unknowingly killed his father and married his
mother.)
28. • The sexual attraction is not that of an adult male
for a female but more of a sexual curiosity that
becomes mixed up with the boy’s feelings of love
and affection for his mother.
• Girls go through a similar process called the
Electra complex with their father as the target
of their affections and their mother as the rival.
The result of identification is the development of
the superego, the internalized moral values of
the same-sex parent.
29. • Fixation in the phallic stage usually involves
immature sexual attitudes as an adult.
• Now the child is about 6 years old and, if passage
through the first three stages was successfully
accomplished, has all three parts of the
personality in place.
30. • LATENCY STAGE: latency fourth stage
occurring during the school years, in which the
sexual feelings of the child are repressed while
the child develops in other ways.
• In this stage, children grow and develop
intellectually, physically, and socially but not
sexually. This is the age at which boys play with
other boys, girls play only with girls, and each
thinks the opposite sex is pretty awful.
31. • GENITAL STAGE; When puberty does begin,
the sexual feelings that were once repressed can
no longer be ignored. Bodies are changing and
sexual urges are once more allowed into
consciousness, but these urges will no longer
have the parents as their targets.
• The focus of sexual curiosity and attraction will
become other adolescents or music stars, movie
stars, and other objects of adoration.
32. • Since Freud tied personality development into
sexual development, the genital stage
represented the final process in Freud’s
personality theory, as well as the entry into adult
social and sexual behavior.
