The Advantages And Disadvantages Of The Psychodynamic Theory

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The psychodynamic theory encompasses both Freud and Erikson. Freud believed the three components of personality were the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is responsible for all needs and urges, while the superego for ideals and moral. The ego moderates between the demands of the id, the superego, and reality. However, Erikson believed that personality progressed through a series of stages, with certain conflicts arising at each stage. Success in any stage depended upon successfully overcoming these conflicts. The advantage to psychodynamic is that it encompasses the individual, meaning that the theory looks at personality from childhood all the way into adulthood. The disadvantages of this theory are that it cannot be tested validly. Therefore, …show more content…

The five-factor model includes five broad domains or dimensions of personality that are used to describe human personality. The five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. While these five traits should be sufficient on their own to describe all facets of a personality, there also should be no correlation between the main factors. The Five Factor Model is now perhaps the most widely use trait theory of personality and has achieved the closest thing to a consensus in personality research. The advantage of this theory is that there have been multiple research studies conducted on this theory. Results suggest that this theory is effective in describing and determining personality. However, this theory is very categorical and does not allow for much flexibility. It also looks at the person personality at that time and now how it developed. The humanist approach to personality has been developed by …show more content…

He argued that reinforcement does not simply work as a mechanism, but it is the provider of information of the next reinforcement to be given once the behavior is repeated. Bandura pointed out that for the individual to repeat an agreeable behavior, he must include his intellectual processes. In this sense, Bandura agreed that environment causes behavior, but behavior can also cause environment. This theory believes that personality does not exist and that our traits are merely cognitive strategies or things that we do for us to obtain the kind of reward we want. The advantage is that behavior or "personality" can be manipulated by differing reinforcement schedules. The disadvantage is that the theory does not believe in personality but rather that we just cognitive react to situations. It's almost like creating a cognitive dissonance between body and

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