PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT
	The idea that one can understand and comprehend the development of an individual is profound and abstruse, but very few people have actually had success dealing with such a topic. From obstacles such as proper test subjects to the whole stigma of taboo attached in trying to understand the human mind, researchers and psychologists have had success. One of the most notable successes is that of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, as we know it. Freud’s in depth pioneering journey into the minds of people, and how the mind itself develops with the passing of time and events. Other modern psychologists have elaborated on Freud, including the psychologists Erik Erikson and Karen Horney. Their thoughts on the personality development of people relate directly to Kate Chopin’s book, The Awakening. In this book, the theories discussed by Freud and his successors are shown explicitly and implicitly.
	Obviously, Sigmund Freud’s work in the field of personality development was by far the most prolific and controversial. The father of modern psychology, Freud broke all barriers to expose what he thought to be the real reasons for human behavior. His theories of personality development can best start with the discussion of the conscious and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind—along with the lesser preconscious mind—is that part of the mind that one has control, or knowledge of. Ironically, this is the least part of the mind that one has control over. The so called "subconscious" mind is the part of the mind that lurks beneath the surface, filled with instincts, emotions, and unfulfilled desires (Shaffer 26). The total human mind is divided into the famous three parts of the Id, the ego, and the superego. The Id can be correlated directly to the subconscious, since it contains one’s innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires, or as Freud would call them, "wishes". The Id represents one’s innermost and primitive desires, such as food and reproduction, and it constantly drives one’s actions. The total antithesis of the Id is the superego. The superego in the case of personality development, comes directly from parents. This superego is consisted of the conscience (punishments and warnings) and the ego ideal (positive rewards and role models). Thus the superego can be defined as what keeps the Id in check, which leads to the ego. The ego is the rationalizing factor, it is the result of the superego and the Id, canceling each other out.
The thought of Freud has a total focus on an individual’s mind and how this internal struggle effects how humans interact within society. Freud argues that every human has three functional parts of their personality that exist within the mind itself: the id, super-ego and the ego. Thurschwell describes these three layers as how they relate to each other. The id is the deepest level of the unconscious, which is dominated by the pleasure principle and has no concept of time except for the present, demanding instant gratification of sexual and aggressive (Eros and Thanatos) urges. The superego originates through identification with the individuals parents, functioning as an internal censor witch represses the dangerous urges of the id. The ego starts as part of the id but is more sensible as it has knowledge of the outside world. Unlike the id, the ego is dominated by the instinct to protect oneself. Although these three layers cannot be physically mapped out in the mind they do show how Freud constantly focused on the internal mind...
In all the psychology of the personality is difficult to understand, because trying to read what someone is thinking about you and your personality is a tough process. This was roughly and explanation into the view of Freud’s view of the id, ego, and superego and some of the psychoanalysis stages that come in the crazy world and studies of Sigmund Freud. Even though his views are not popular today some people still research them and think to themselves he might not be as weird as people told me he was.
Dr. Sigmund Freud came up with a lot of controversial notions, but also set standards in psychology that are still used today. Looking at what is known as the psychoanalytic approach to personality will reveal how these theories are still relevant, and continue to define personality traits (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Exploring Freud’s theories of the conscious/unconscious by looking at one’s own id, ego, and superego will help explain the human personality and why one does the things they do. Freud’s ideas were mainly based on how the mind works with a special emphasis on how it is all set up in childhood (Psychoanalytic theory, n.d.). This brings to mind that adults are just children with a lot of practice being adults. Everything one does
People tend to analyze the personality of someone while meeting new people. This way, they are often unconsciously evaluating how that person reacts of behaves. Out of all the personality theories I chose Freud’s theory, because it was the theory that I could identify myself the most. Sigmund Freud developed the psychoanalytical theory of personality development. He described that personality is the outcome of the interaction between three mental structure levels: ego, superego and id.
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, was the principle proponent of the psychoanalytic personality theory. Psychoanalytic personality theory is tells us that the majority of human behavior is motivated by the unconscious, a part of the personality that contains the memories, knowledge, beliefs, feelings urges, drives, and instincts that the individual is unaware, and that only a small part of our psychological makeup is actually derived from the conscious experience. The problem is our unconscious mind disguises the meaning of the material it contains. As such, the psychoanalytic personality theory is ver...
He believed everyone is born with the id. All humans when they are babies, according to Freud, are pleasure seeking and concerned with having their needs met. This is the original or unconscious personality. The ego is where decision-making occurs, judgments are made and memory is stored. Lastly, the superego contains the individual’s values, beliefs, and morals, which they get from their parents. According to Freud, women get their morals and beliefs from their mothers and men get it from their fathers. He also believes that...
Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 to Jewish Galician parents in the Moravian town of Pribor in the Austrian Empire (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his education in the medical field, Freud decided to mix the career fields of medicine and philosophy to become a psychologist (“Sigmund Freud” n. pag). During his research as a psychologist, he conceived the Structural Model Theory, which he discussed in his essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The theory states that the human psyche is divided into three main parts: the id, ego, and super-ego (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. pag). He concluded that the id was the desire for destruction, violence and sex; the ego was responsible for intellect and dealing with reality; and the super-ego was a person’s sense of right and wrong and moral standards (Hamilton, n. pag). Freud argued that a healthy individual will have developed the strongest ego to keep the id and super-ego in check (“Id, Ego, and Super-ego” n. p...
“There are so many different walks of life, so many different personalities in the world.” Hope Solo describes that there are many different ways to walk the paths of life, and that these paths are filled with people of dissimilar personalities. Similarly to Hope Solo’s idea of incompatible personalities, Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, developed the concepts of the id, ego and superego. As Freud described them, these concepts are the three parts of the human psyche. The id part of the brain operates on the “pleasure principle”, the superego is the moral component of the human psyche, and the ego is the balance between both the id and the superego. Freud, along with many other Americans, began to realize that people, especially characters
Sigmund Freud is best known for his development and use of psychoanalysis. The theory of psychoanalysis focuses on the concept of how our unconscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions play an active role in our daily lives. The id, ego, and superego are the three mental zones that encompass our psyche. Each zone has a specific function: The id functions on the pleasure principle; the ego on the protection of the individual; and the superego on protection of society. The degree of which each zone has been developed can be broken down and then analyzed. These three zones can be visualized by imagining a pie cut into three slices.
Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson are two theorists that “believed the major determinants of personality are not conscious…[and] are the result of conflict through the various stages of development” (Cloninger 2013). Both theorists described different stages a person goes through during development. Erikson’s psychosocial stages of development were greatly influenced by Freud’s psychosexual stages of development. “Erikson’s theory builds on that of Freud, presuming hat biology provides the motivation of personality through the psychosexual stages that Freud outlined. However biological sexual energy is not the only consideration.” (Cloninger 2013). Rather than focusing on a person’s libido, also known as the person’s sexual-psychic energy, as the driving force behind personality, Erikson described how social influences could have an affect on a person’s personality.
Sigmund Freud was a very prominent neurologist and is known as the father of psychoanalysis and being a prominent thinker of his time in the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century. His theory of human personality is a well-known theory of the nineteen hundreds. His theory, describes prominence of what is known as the id, ego, and superego. His theory largely differs from another well know thinker known as George Herbert Mead. Mead is well known for his theory of self. Mead’s theory is more accepted than Freud’s theory in today’s society due to the increase of knowledge of the human persona. I will analyze the differences in theories based on which theory allows for more free will in human beings.
The methods he used to obtain his information and data raised questions by other scientists. His research on children was lacking, as was his use of empirical studies, his research was male-dominated and also lacked universality. The theory of the id, ego and superego develops from birth into childhood therefore the use of case studies on adults and the lack of empirical study does not seem feasible enough to have developed this theory. First of all there is no guarantee that the memories of these adults on their childhood would be accurate, there was not any factual, re-testable data so it lacked reliability and validity secondly each case and person’s experience is different and therefore cannot be use to determine the development of an entire population. Freud’s theory was further biased due to him overlooking social and environmental aspects, which prevent universality; he was a European man who researched other upper middle class Europeans whose everyday living and circumstances differed greatly from others in
Developmental psychology is an area of research dedicated to the understanding of child-development. Throughout history many theories have been used to attempt to explain the complex process. Two of those theorists, Freud and Erikson, were instrumental in creating a foundation for child-psychology to build on. From a Freudian perspective, human development is centered on psychosexual theory. Psychosexual theory indicates that maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development. Alternatively, Erikson is considered a neo-freudian scholar who developed psychosocial theory. In Erikson models there are eight major conflicts that occur during the course of an individual’s life.
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 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.