Psychoanalysis, Humanism, And Trait Personality?

1107 Words3 Pages

What makes you unique? Is it your special shoes you just bought? Is it your ability to excel in school? Everyone is different based on their personality. Our personalities make us who we are. Psychoanalysis, Humanism, and Trait Personality are theories in psychology that help explain our behaviors. We can use these theories to explain why Alfonso is so mean at school. Even though each of these theories are different, we can put them together by using defense mechanisms, psychosexual stages, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-concept, surface and source traits, and the Big Five to understand Alfonso’s behavior. Psychoanalysis explains Alfonso’s behavior using the defense mechanisms, and psychosexual stages. According to Freud, defense mechanisms …show more content…

Maslow 's hierarchy of needs is a theory of motivation where he believes people move through different stages of five needs that motivate our behavior. In this, each stage of needs has to be met before progression to the next stage of need can occur. In Alfonso’s situation, his love and belonging needs are not being met. When his father beats up his mother it can easily be understood that he doesn’t have the support at his home. Due to the lack of support he receives he is disrespectful to his classmates because he is angry. This makes sense because since he is stuck in the love and belonging stage he cannot move up to the esteem stage. So, Alfonso is struggling with his esteem and this explains his actions. Humanism also deals with an individual’s self-concept. Someone’s self-concept is based on how they feel and involves their unconsciousness. Alfonso’s self concept in his situation would lead his to feeling anxious or fearful in some situations because of his unconsciousness. Our unconsciousness will hide feelings we don’t know exist and in Alfonso’s case his feelings would relate back to his alcoholic dad who beats his mother. For example, he may see someone about to be beat up at school and then cause a fight trying to protect the victim. Or, someone may tease Alfonso about his dad beating up his mom and it triggers his aggression. Self-concept is knowing a person’s …show more content…

Cattell defined that surface traits represent the personality characteristics easily seen by others and source traits are basic traits that underline the surface traits. In this situation, I can look at the surface and source traits of Alfonso and be able to understand his behaviors. Due to the trauma that Alfonso has experienced from his home life, I can confidently say that one of his source traits would include not being emotionally stable. This would then lead me to see that a surface trait of Alfonso’s in combative. This explains Alfonso’s behavior because it is showing how he has become combative; it all started with his home life. It is similar to a cause and effect situation. Because Alfonso gets hurt seeing his mother beat up he becomes combative with other people. Another part of the Trait Personality is the Big Five. This five-factor model represents the core descriptions of someone’s personality. It involves the factors of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. We can use this to understand Alfonso’s behaviors by estimating how he would rank in each category. In this model the factor agreeableness refers to the basic emotional style of a person. Alfonso would score very low on this because he does not get along with his classmates. A person with a low score in this area is rude, irritable, and aggressive. This describes Alfonso’s

Open Document