Personality, although lacking a universal definition by psychology, is generally described as the characteristic patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that an individual has. Some argue that personality can be affected by environmental factors, the majority agrees that personality is from within. Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung all offered various, monumental theories of personality development that have continued to influence the modern world’s perspective. The foundation of Nietzschean psychology of personality development is the concept of two opposing forces, that of Apollonian and Dionysian. The Apollonian force represents the individuality in a person, making them strong and whole. In opposition, the Dionysian force is working against …show more content…
When an individual reaches this conclusion, they are able to encompass a new form of human nature called “Übermensch”, “an ideal aim of spiritual development more than a biological goal” (Solomon, 103). This is the person who has continued to strive to overcome himself and, in doing so, has been set free from the chains of all convictions. Freud constructed his own theory of personality development, known as the psychoanalytic theory, the concept of the mind and body working together. This theory remained consistent in the use of three ongoing themes: sexuality, memory, and interpretation. Freud proposed that the basic biological drive experienced in early life is sexuality, also called libido, the need to reproduce. We are born into the world polymorphously perverse, experiencing the pleasure of sexuality in many forms, not just the genitalia. At this time, a child cannot distinguish themselves as their own person and the outer world, this awareness is “a process of learning to detach an understanding of an interior self from the outer circumstances the world provides” (Thurshwell, …show more content…
Throughout life, individuals should be striving for complete, self-mastery, the ability “To love and work”. In doing so, they have the ability to know and control oneself, relatively freeing themselves from unconscious conflicts. Jung’s theory of personality development opposed Freud’s, disagreeing “that human motivation is exclusively sexual and that the unconscious mind is entirely personal and peculiar to the individual” (Stevens, 18). Jung composed multiple theories, which, in summation, created his theory of personality development. The Complex Theory was done by a word association test; a patient is given a word in which that are to respond back with one of their own as quickly as possible. From these tests, Jung proposed that below the conscious is the personal unconscious, which is structured according to clusters of emotions, images, and ideas organized around a core theme. His image of the human psyche was explained in relation to the structure of a house: “the room on the upper floor represented his conscious personality”, “the ground floor stood for the first level of the personal unconscious”, and “in the deepest level of all he reached the collective unconscious”, an area that holds deeper memories transmitted biologically, left from our ancestors
Primarily, one of the dominant and fundamental theoretical variances concerning Freud and Jung’s personality theories was that relating to their opposing notions regarding the unconscious human mind. Firstly, Freud understood that the centre of ones inhibited beliefs and distressing recollections was found in the unconscious mind. Freud stated that the human mind focuses on three constructs: namely the id, the ego and the super ego. He claimed that the id shaped ones unconscious energy. Freud said that it is not limited by ethics and morals, but as an alternative simply aims to fulfil ones desires. The id strives to keep with the “pleasure principle, which can be understood as a demand to take care of needs immediately.” (Boere) The next unconscious
Similar to Freud, Jung’s understanding on personality are arranged as three components: the ego, the personal conscious and the collective unconscious. The ego represents the mental processing, the personal conscious comprises of our memories, as well as the ones we subdue, while the collective unconscious encloses all of our understanding and incidents that we encounter. It looks as if they are in agreement of the unconscious so far, but then Jung developed his Arche...
I believe our personalities make up who we are and how others perceive us at times. Personalities are our own unique qualities, that we possess as individuals. In writing this short paper, I have found that psychologists use assessments to define an individual’s personality to determine their qualities and what makes them different from other individuals. Through the Big Five Personality test, I found it difficult to define and understand an individual personality
After reviewing all of theories of personalities throughout this course, I have found Freud’s Psychoanalytic Theory to be my favorite theory of personality because it focuses on the three component parts of the mind: the id, ego and superego. This “structural theory” of personality places great importance on how conflicts among the parts of the mind shape behavior and personality. These conflicts are mostly unconscious. Romans 12:2 new living translation version states, “Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” This scripture is relevant because the mind needs to be renewed.
Friedrich Nietzsche was a critic and a German Philosopher from the 18th century. Nietzsche was the father of psychoanalysis and he formulated several philosophical concepts that have greatly contributed to the understanding of human nature. Nietzsche ideas had been misinterpreted by many people over time specifically, due to his style of writing. Nietzsche style of writing was adopted to strengthen his arguments on various controversial topics. In this paper, I will discuss Nietzsche’s idea of naturalistic morality, master morality, self-mastery morality, and how they connect with the affirmation of nature and strength.
The book Memories, Dreams, and Reflections features Jung's childhood, his personal life, and exploration into the psyche in association with religion as well. Jung reveals much of life experiences and acquaintances that were forged throughout his life. Aside from self-reflections, thoughts, and ideas, Jung also offers recall of early memories—childhood dreams, visions, in connection with his adulthood. Although Jung was not without his faults, he ponders on his weaknesses, some that he accepted and worked with—dipping into the unconsciousness (darkness) to find meaning. Similar to prior readings, Jung also attempts to find meaning in his own life, "meaninglessness inhibits fullness of life and is therefore the equivalent to illness.” Furthermore, Jung states that people are childish and they have to be guided through religion in order to adapt to reality. Therefore, religious enlightenment is necessary to promote healthy well-being of humankind. “How are they ever to emerge if analysis does not make them aware of something different or better?” questions Jung.
Freud believed that we are dominated by biological needs, especially sexual, that must be controlled if we are to become civilized human beings. In his view, our perpetual struggle to tame these impulses leads to the emotional conflicts that shape our personality. According to his Psychoanalytic Theory, personality is shaped by an ongoing conflict between peoples primary drives, particularly sex and aggression and the social pressures of civilized society. Also early childhood experience plays a major role in molding personality.
Jung’s theories of personality are closely related to the Freudian theories. He divided the human psyche into three categories; the ego, or the conscious mind, the personal unconscious which holds memories and such, and the collective unconscious which is the connection that all humans share. According to Jung, the collective unconscious is made up of archetypes. An archetype is the “unlearned tendency to experience things in a certain way”#. There are an innumerable amount of archetypes, which all organize experiences or materialize thoughts in their own way.
Personality is a branch of scientific discipline that studies temperament and its variation among people. It is a dynamic and a set of characteristics possessed by their atmosphere, cognitions, emotions, motivations and behaviours in various things. Personality conjointly refers to the pattern of thoughts, feelings, social adjustments and behaviour consistently exhibited over time that powerfully influences one’s exceptions, self-perceptions, values and attitudes. It also predicts human reactions to different folks, problems and stress.
Individuals have long debated what it means to be human and what defines the human existence. Being both academics whom attempt to understand and explain either the meaning and purpose of life or the ways in which the brain operates, Nietzsche and Freud allow us to safely accept that given the opportunity, both Nietzsche and Freud would open up to greater understanding and be willing to pursue these opportunities no matter the effort required. That is important because through their intention of discovering truth, they show what it means to be human. Through Nietzsche we understand the creation of art due to Apollonian influence and the easing of suffering of the Dionysian reality; however it is the Dionysian state that is to be achieved in
From a Freudian perspective, human development is based on psychosexual theory (Wedding & Corsini, 2014). Psychosexual theory indicates that maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). It was Freud’s perspective that there are three components of personality (the id, ego, and superego) that become integrated into his five stage theoretical model. The id was the biological or drive component that is innate from birth. The sole purpose of the Id is satiate an individual’s internal drives (Wedding & Corsini, 2014). The ego is the conscious portion of our personality that mediates between our id and superego. Throughout development the ego reflects the child’s emerging ability to...
Psychologists have strived to define and explain personality for years and in their endeavors, many of them have arrived at differing, sometimes conflicting conclusions. For example, radical behavioral theorists believe that personality is nothing more than reinforced responses to stimuli while humanistic psychologists theorize that the human personality is exemplified through our enduring need to achieve self-actualization. For some, personality is a dynamic process, unfolding over the course of a lifespan. For others, it is an entity that is unwavering beyond childhood development. These are only a few of the ways personality has been defined over the years. Still, there are further nuances in these already vastly different approaches, creating
Freud believed that humans develop through stages based on particular erogenous zones. Freud theorized that to gain a healthy personality as an adult, a person would have to successfully complete a certain sequence of five stages. Within the five stages of Freud’s psychosexual development theory, Freud assumed there would be major consequences if any stage was not completed successfully. The stages, in order, were the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. In general, Freud believed that an unsuccessful completion of any stage would make a person become fixated on that particular stage. The outcome would lead the person to either over indulge or under indulge the failed stage during adulthood. Freud truly believed that the outcomes of the psychosexual stages played a major part in the development of the human personality. Eventually, these outcomes would become different driving forces in every human being’s personality. The driving forces would determine how a person would interact with the world around them. The results from Freud’s theory about the stages of psychosexual development led Freud to create the concept of the human psyche; Freud’s biggest contribution to
Personality takes many shapes and forms and is affected by many factors. My understanding of personality is simply a genetic and environmentally determined set of psychological traits that influence our reactions in the world around us. Genetic because our parents possess a certain set of psychological personality traits that we tend to have in common with them so therefore in my opinion there are heritable personality traits. Personality is environmental because we each have our own separate experiences in the world and these experiences help form our unique personality. Neo-Freudians such as Jung have given us a wide array of ideas of how they believe personality is developed and formatted. Jung in particular has a very interesting
Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of feeling, thinking and acting. Psychodynamic theories of personality view human behavior as a dynamic interaction between the conscious mind and unconscious mind, including associated motives and conflicts (Myers & Dewall, pg# 572, 2015). These theories focus on the unconscious and the importance of childhood experiences. Psychodynamic theories are descended from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, which is his ideology of personality and the associated treatment techniques. Psychoanalysis attributes thoughts and actions to unconscious motives and conflicts. This theory also includes the techniques used in treating psychological disorders by seeking to expose and interpret unconscious tensions. He proposed that childhood sexuality and unconscious motivations influence personality. Freud’s historically significant psychoanalytic theory became part of the human cultural legacy.