Describe Personality

Personality and What Defines You

“Psychologists regard personality as a person’s unique long-term pattern of thinking, emotions, and behavior. In other words, personality refers to the consistency in who you are, have been, and will become.” (Coon & Mitterer, 2016) I find personality to be a fascinating theory. As an adult, you constantly encounter people that act a certain way and wonder what they’ve gone through in their life to make them think or act the way they do. I remember being in high school and wondering if some of the people I was there with would still have the same outlook on life in ten years. Your personality affects you from infancy to death. Friendships, relationships, and job opportunities are just some of the things that your personality will have

“Freud theorized that the core of personality is formed before age six in a series of psychosexual stages.” (Coon & Mitterer, pg. 399, 2016) One of the stages that stuck out to me personally was the oral stage. From birth, most babies have pacifiers as a soother. Some are so attached they may even have it until they’re three or four. They also have a tendency to put everything in their mouths from clothing, to toys, and even shoes they find laying around. Freud suggests that oral traits may follow us into adulthood in the form of kissing, nail biting, overeating, and smoking. (Coon & Mitterer, 2016) It is actually common to see someone that is trying to quit smoking start to eat lollipops or overeat in general, trying to compensate for the cigarette they would normally be putting into their mouth. It’s also pretty normal to see teenagers and some adults biting their nails or the skin around them, whether it’s a nervous habit or just out of boredom. It seems to be an unconscious action, and most of the time we’re unaware of doing it until our hands are full of broken nails and sore cuticles. I’m not entirely sure where kissing fits into this, as I’ve never