Theories of Personality

Hamid Bilal
• Everybody Has One
• Everybody has one—a personality, that is—
and yours will help determine the boundaries
of your success and life fulfillment. It is no
exaggeration to say that your personality is
one of your most important assets.
 The Place of Personality in the History of Psychology

• For more than half of psychology’s history as a science, however, psychologists paid relatively little
attention to personality.
• Psychology emerged as an independent and primarily experimental science from an amalgam of ideas
borrowed from philosophy and physiology. The birth of psychology took place in the late 19th century
in Germany and was largely the work of Wilhelm Wundt, who established psychology’s first
laboratory in 1879 at the University of Leipzig.

1. The Study of Consciousness: - The new science of psychology focused on the analysis of conscious
experience into its elemental parts. The methods of psychology were modeled on the approach
used in the natural sciences. Physics and chemistry appeared to be unlocking the secrets of the
physical universe by reducing all matter to its basic elements and analyzing them.
• If the physical world could be understood by breaking it down into elements, why couldn’t the mind
or the mental world be studied in the same way?
• Wundt and other psychologists of his day who were concerned with studying human nature were
greatly influenced by the natural science approach, and they proceeded to apply it to the study of the
mind.
• These researchers limited themselves to the experimental method, they studied only those mental
processes that might be affected by some external stimulus that could be manipulated and controlled
by the experimenter. There was no room in this experimental psychology approach for such a complex,
multidimensional topic as personality. It was not compatible with either the subject matter or the
methods of the new psychology.
2. The Study of Behavior
• In the early decades of the 20th century, the American psychologist John B. Watson, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore,
Maryland, sparked a revolution against the work of Wilhelm Wundt. Watson’s movement, called behaviorism, opposed Wundt’s focus
on conscious experience. More devoted than Wundt to a natural science approach, Watson argued that if psychology was to be a
science, it had to focus only on the tangible aspects of human nature—that which could be seen, heard, recorded, and measured.
Only overt behavior—not consciousness—could be the legitimate topic of psychology.

• Consciousness, Watson said, cannot be seen or experimented upon. Therefore, like the philosophers’ concept of the soul,
consciousness is meaningless for science. Psychologists must deal only with what they can see, manipulate, and measure—that is,
external stimuli and the subject’s behavioral responses to them. According to Watson, whatever happens inside the person after the
stimulus is presented and before the response is made cannot be seen. Because we can only speculate about it, it is of no interest or
value to science.

• Behaviorism presents a mechanistic picture of human beings as well-ordered machines that respond automatically to external stimuli.
It has been said that behaviorists see people as a kind of vending machine. Stimuli are put in, and appropriate responses, learned from
past experience, spill out. In this view, personality is nothing more than the accumulation of learned responses or habit systems, a
definition later offered by B. F. Skinner.

• Behaviorists reduced personality to what could be seen and observed objectively, and there was no place in their conception for
consciousness or for unconscious forces.

• Behaviorism: - It can be defined as the school of psychology, founded by John B. Watson, that focused on psychology as the study of
overt behavior rather than of mental processes.

• If Watson and the early behavioral psychologists dismissed all those notions, feelings, and complexities that come to mind when we use
the word personality, then where were they? What happened to the consciousness you know you experience every moment you are
awake? Where were those unconscious forces that sometimes seem to compel us to act in ways over which we feel we have no
control?
3. The Study of the Unconscious

• Those aspects of human nature were dealt with by a third line of inquiry, one that arose
independently of Wundt and Watson. They were investigated by Sigmund Freud, beginning in the
1890s. Freud, a physician in Vienna, Austria, called his system psychoanalysis.

• Psychoanalysis and psychology are not synonymous or interchangeable terms. Freud was not a
psychologist but a physician in private practice, working with persons who suffered from emotional
disturbances. Although trained as a scientist, Freud did not use the experimental method. Rather, he
developed his theory of personality based on clinical observation of his patients.

• Psychoanalysis: - It can be defined as Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality and system of therapy
for treating mental disorders.

• Through a lengthy series of psychoanalytic sessions, Freud applied his creative interpretation to what
patients told him about their feelings and past experiences, both actual and fantasized. His approach
was thus quite different from the rigorous experimental laboratory investigation of the elements of
conscious experience or of behavior.

• Inspired by Freud’s psychoanalytic approach, a group of personality theorists developed unique

conceptions of human nature outside the mainstream of experimental psychology. These theorists,
the neo-psychoanalysts, focused on the whole person as he or she functions in the real world, not on
elements of behavior or stimulus-response units as studied in the psychology laboratory.
4. The Scientific Study of Personality
• Experimental psychology in its formative years did not totally ignore personality—some limited
aspects of personality were studied—but there did not exist within psychology a distinct specialty
area known as personality as there was child psychology or social psychology.

• It was not until the late 1930s that the study of personality became formalized and systematized in
American psychology, primarily through the work of Gordon Allport at Harvard University.

• Allport’s landmark book, Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, is generally considered to

mark the formal beginning of the study of personality. Following his initial efforts, other
professional books appeared, journals were founded, universities offered courses, and research
was undertaken. These activities signaled a growing recognition that some areas of concern to the
psychoanalysts and neo-psychoanalysts could be incorporated into psychology.

• Academic psychologists came to believe that it was possible to develop a scientific study of
personality. From the 1930s to the present day, a variety of approaches to the study of personality
have emerged. These include the life-span approach, which argues that personality continues to
develop throughout the course of our life; the trait approach, which contends that much of our
personality is inherited; the humanistic approach, which emphasizes human strengths, virtues,
aspirations, and the fulfillment of our potential; and the cognitive approach, which deals with
conscious mental activities.
 Personality According to APA
• Personality refers to individual differences in
characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and
behaving. The study of personality focuses on
two broad areas: One is understanding
individual differences in particular personality
characteristics, such as sociability or
irritability. The other is understanding how the
various parts of a person come together as a
whole.
Definitions of Personality
• We often use the word personality when we are describing
other people and ourselves.

• Personality derives from the Latin word persona, which refers

to a mask used by actors in a play. It is easy to see how
persona came to refer to outward appearance, the public
face we display to the people around us. Based on its
derivation, then, we might conclude that personality refers to
our external and visible characteristics, those aspects of us
that other people can see. Our personality would then be
defined in terms of the impression we make on others—that
is, what we appear to be.
• Personality, refer to enduring characteristics. We assume
that personality is relatively stable and predictable.
Although we recognize, for example, that a friend may be
calm much of the time, we know that he or she can become
excitable, nervous, or panicky at other times. Thus, our
personality can vary with the situation. Yet although it is
not rigid, it is generally resistant to sudden changes.
• Definition of personality may also include the idea of human
uniqueness. We see similarities among people, yet we sense
that each of us possesses special properties that distinguish
us from all others. Thus, it can be stated that personality is an
enduring and unique cluster of characteristics that may
change in response to different situations.
• Comprehensive Definition of Personality: -
The unique, relatively enduring internal and
external aspects of a person’s character that
influence behavior in different situations.
• Personality is the dynamic organization within
the individual of those psychophysical systems
that determine his characteristics behavior
and thought"
Sigmund Freud
 Early Life
• Personality theory has been influenced more by Sigmund Freud
than by any other individual. His system of psychoanalysis was
the first formal theory of personality and is still the best known.
• Freud was born on May 6, 1856, in Freiberg, Moravia (now Pribor,
Czech Republic).
• In 1990, the town changed the name of its Stalin Square to Freud
Square, and in 2006 the house in which Freud was born was
restored and opened as a museum.
• Freud’s father was a relatively unsuccessful wool merchant. When
his business failed in Moravia, the family moved to Leipzig,
Germany, and later, when Freud was 4 years old, to Vienna,
Austria. Freud remained in Vienna for nearly 80 years.
• The father was strict and authoritarian. As an adult, Freud
recalled his childhood hostility, hatred, and rage toward his father.
He wrote that he felt superior to his father as early as the age of
• Freud’s mother was slender and attractive. Her behavior toward her first-
born son was protective and loving. Freud felt a passionate, sexual
attachment to her, a situation that set the stage for his later concept of
the Oedipus complex.
• Among Freud’s lifelong personality characteristics were a high degree of
self-confidence, an intense ambition to succeed, and dreams of glory and
fame. Re- flecting the impact of his mother’s continuing attention and
support, Freud wrote: “A man who has been the indisputable favorite of
his mother keeps for life the feeling of a conqueror, that confidence of
success that often induces real success”
• There were eight children in the Freud family, two of them Freud’s adult
half-brothers with children of their own. Freud resented them all and
became jealous and angry when competitors for his mother’s affection
were born.
• From an early age, Freud exhibited a high level of intelligence, which his
parents helped to foster. For example, his sisters were not allowed to practice
the piano lest the noise disturb Freud’s studies. He was given a room of his
own, where he spent most of his time; he even took his meals there so as not
to lose time from his studies. The room was the only one in the apartment to
contain a prized oil lamp while the rest of the family used candles.
• Freud entered high school a year earlier than was usual and was frequently
at the head of his class. Fluent in German and Hebrew, he mastered Latin,
Greek, French, and English in school and taught himself Italian and Spanish.
From the age of 8, he enjoyed reading Shakespeare in English.
• Freud had many interests, including military history, but when it came time
to choose a career from among the few professions open to a Jew in Vienna,
he settled on medicine. It was not that he wanted to be a physician, but
rather that he believed that medical studies would lead to a career in
scientific research, which might bring the fame he fervently desired. While
completing work for his medical degree at the University of Vienna, Freud
conducted physiological research on the spinal cord of fish and the testes of
the eel, making respectable contributions to the field.
 The Cocaine Episode
• While in medical school, Freud also began to experiment with cocaine. (At
that time, cocaine was not an illegal drug, and it was not yet known that
cocaine could have an addictive effect on some, but not all, users.) He used
the drug himself and insisted that his fiancée, sisters, and friends try it. He
became highly enthusiastic about the substance, calling it a miracle drug and
a magical substance that would cure many ills and be the means of securing
the recognition he craved.
• In 1884, he published an article about cocaine’s beneficial effects. This article
was later judged to be a contributor to the epidemic of cocaine use in Europe
and the United States, which lasted into the 1920s. Freud was strongly
criticized for his part in unleashing the cocaine plague. The matter brought
him infamy rather than fame, and for the rest of his life he tried to eradicate
his earlier endorsement of the drug, deleting all references to the substance
from his own bibliography. However, according to letters published long after
his death, he continued to use cocaine well into middle age (Freud, 1985).
 The Sexual Basis of Neurosis
• A professor discouraged Freud from pursuing his intended
career in scientific research, pointing out that it would be
many years before Freud could obtain a professorship and
support himself financially in the university system of the
day. Because Freud lacked an independent income, he
believed he had no choice but to enter private practice. A
further impetus toward private practice was his
engagement to Martha Bernays, which lasted 4 years before
they could afford to marry. Freud established practice as a
clinical neurologist in 1881 and began to explore the
personalities of those suffering from emotional
disturbances.
• He studied for several months in Paris with the psychiatrist Jean Martin Charcot, a
pioneer in the use of hypnosis. Charcot also alerted Freud to the possible sexual
basis of neurosis. Freud overheard Charcot comment that a particular patient’s
problem was sexual in origin. “In this sort of case,” Charcot said, “it’s always a
question of the genitals—always, always, always” (Charcot quoted in Freud, 1914, p.
14). Freud noted that while Charcot was discussing this issue he “crossed his hands
in his lap and jumped up and down several times. . . . for a moment I was almost
paralyzed with astonishment”
• When Freud returned to Vienna, he was again reminded of the possible sexual origin
of emotional problems. A colleague described a woman patient’s anxiety, which the
therapist believed stemmed from her husband’s impotence. The husband had never
had sexual relations with his wife in 18 years of marriage. “The sole prescription for
such a malady,” Freud’s colleague said, “is familiar enough to us, but we cannot
order it. It runs: Penis normalis dosim repetatur!” (quoted in Freud, 1914, p. 14). As a
result of these incidents, and his own sexual conflicts, it can be suggested that Freud
was certainly open to the possibility of a sexual basis for emotional disturbance.
The Structure of Personality
Reality Principle
Moral Guardian
Pleasure Principle
•
.
The basic dilemma of all human existence is that each element
our psyche makes demands upon us that are incompatible with
the other two. Inner conflict is inevitable.

• For example, the superego can make a person feel guilty if rules
are not followed. When there is conflict between the goals of the
id and superego, the ego must act as a referee and mediate this
conflict.
Psychoanalysis is often known as the talking cure. Typically Freud would encourage his
patients to talk freely (on his famous couch) regarding their symptoms, and to describe
exactly what was on their mind.
• Several personality theorists, who initially were
loyal to Freud and committed to his system of
psychoanalysis, broke away because of their
opposition to certain aspects of his approach.
• Carl Jung and Alfred Adler were associates of
Freud’s before they rebelled and offered their
own views of personality. Karen Horney did not
have a personal relationship with Freud but was
an orthodox Freudian before seeking a different
path.
• These neo-psychoanalytic theorists differ from one
another on a number of points but are grouped
together here because of their shared opposition to
two major points:
• Freud’s emphasis on instincts as the primary motivators
of human behavior and his deterministic view of
personality. The neo-psychoanalytic theorists present a
more optimistic and flattering picture of human nature.
Their work shows how quickly the field of personality
diversified within a decade after it formally began.
• Jung fashioned a new and elaborate explanation of human nature quite
unlike any other, which he called analytical psychology.
– The first point on which Jung came to disagree with Freud was the role of
sexuality.
– Jung broadened Freud’s definition of libido by redefining it as a more
generalized psychic energy that includes sex but is not restricted to it.
• The second major area of disagreement concerns the direction of the
forces that influence personality. Whereas Freud viewed human beings as
prisoners or victims of past events, Jung argued that we are shaped by
our future as well as our past.
• The third significant point of difference revolves around the unconscious.
– Although Freud had recognized this phylogenetic aspect of personality (the
influence of inherited primal experiences), Jung made it the core of his system
of personality.
– He combined ideas from history, mythology, anthropology, and religion to form
his image of human nature.
 The Life of Jung
• An Unhappy Childhood
• Free association
– A technique in which the patient says whatever comes to mind. In other
words, it is a kind of daydreaming out loud.
• Freud’s development of the technique of free association owes much to Josef
Breuer, a Viennese physician who befriended Freud during Freud’s early years in
private practice.
• In treating a young woman who showed symptoms of hysteria, Breuer found that
hypnotizing her enabled her to remember repressed events. Recalling the events—
in a sense, reliving the experiences—brought relief of the disturbing symptoms.
• Freud used the technique with some success and called the process
catharsis, from the Greek word for purification. After a while,
however, Freud abandoned hypnosis, partly because he had difficulty
hypnotizing some of his patients. Also, some patients revealed
disturbing events during hypnosis but were unable to recall those
events when questioned later.
• Catharsis
– The expression of emotions that is expected to lead to the reduction of
disturbing symptoms.
• Seeking a technique other than hypnosis for helping a patient recall
repressed material, Freud asked the person to lie on a couch while
he sat behind it, out of sight. (Freud may have chosen this
arrangement because he disliked being stared at.) He encouraged
the patient to relax and to concentrate on events in the past. The
patient was to engage in a kind of daydreaming out loud, saying
whatever came to mind.
– He or she was instructed to express spontaneously every idea and image
exactly as it occurred, no matter how trivial, embarrassing, or painful the
thought or memory might seem. The memories were not to be omitted,
rearranged, or restructured.
• Resistances
– In free association, a blockage or refusal to disclose painful memories.
• He also found that sometimes the technique did not operate freely. Some
experiences or memories were evidently too painful to talk about, and the
patient would be reluctant to disclose them. Freud called these moments
resistances. He believed they were significant because they indicate proximity
to the source of the patient’s problems. Resistance is a sign that the treatment is
proceeding in the right direction and that the analyst should continue to probe
in that area. Part of the psychoanalyst’s task is to break down or overcome
resistances so the patient can confront the repressed experience.
• Dream Analysis
– A technique involving the interpretation of dreams to uncover
unconscious conflicts. Dreams have a manifest content (the actual
events in the dream)
and a latent content (the symbolic meaning of the dream events).
Dream symbols or events and their latent psychoanalytic meaning.