Psychology Miss Sihera 19/10/05 Personality Development Half term Homework – Essay Question Describe and evaluate one or more psychodynamic explanations of personality development (e.g. Freud) Personality has been defined by Child (1968) as “more or less stable, internal factors that make one’s behaviour consistent from one time to another and different from the behaviour of other people would manifest in comparable situations”. Hampson (1988) then picked out four key words, “stable”, “internal”, “consistent”, and “different” and went on to develop the definition. But how do we develop our personality? Freud established a way in which he thought our personality was developed. Firstly, he suggests that the mind is divided into three parts (tripartite personality); the ID, the Ego and the Superego. The ID is also known at the pleasure principle, as it our innate drives (main instinctual drives being sex and aggression) that we are born with i.e. instant gratification e.g. “I want it now!” The Superego is also known at the morality principle, as it is your conscience and is the part of the mind which enables feelings of guilt, shame, etc. The Ego, also known as the reality principle, is the part of the mind that is aware of you external surroundings and reality. It compromises the conflict which happens between the ID and the Superego. In order or the Ego to cope with these conflicts, it uses defence mechanisms which reduce the anxiety caused by the conflict. These defence mechanisms are Intellectualisation (e.g. if you’re scared of flying, you tell yourself that it is more likely that you will be hit by a bus. You try to rationalise the situation), Denial (e.g. if someone tells you that your partner is having an affair, you tell yourself it’s not true), Projection (e.g. if someone tells you that you have a drinking problem, you turn if back on them and they say they’re the one with the problem), Displacement (e.g. if you come home from a bad day at