THEORIES

OF PERSONALITY
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Definition of Personality
■ Personality refers to the relatively enduring
characteristics that differentiate one person from
another and that lead people to act in a consistent
and predictable manner, both in different situations
and over extended periods of time.
■ Personality is defined as: the enduring or lasting
patterns of behavior and thought (across time and
situation).
+ Personality
Four Major Perspectives on Personality

Psychoanalytic - unconscious motivations

Trait - specific dimensions of personality
Humanistic - inner capacity for growth
Social-Cognitive - influence of
environment
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Sigmund Freud

University of Vienna 1873

Voracious Reader Medical
School Graduate

Specialized in Nervous Disorders :

Some patients’ disorders had no physical
cause.

(1856-1939)
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Sigmund Freud
■ Whatis the structure and development of
personality, according to Sigmund Freud and his
successors (i.e.,psychoanalysts)?
■ Accordingto psychoanalysts, much of behavior is
caused by parts of personality which are found in
the unconscious and of which we are unaware.
■ Freud’s 3 levels of awareness/consciousness:
■ the conscious mind;
■ the preconscious mind; and
■ the unconscious mind.
+ Psychoanalysis: The Unconscious

Conscious Awareness Unconscious

small part above surface below the surface
(Preconscious) (thoughts, feelings,
wishes, memories)

Repression
Banishing unacceptable
thoughts and passions to
unconscious:
Dreams and Slips
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Psychoanalysis: Freud’s Theory
of Personality
■ Freud’s theory suggest that personality is composed of
the id, the ego, and the superego.
■ id:the unorganized, inborn part of personality whose
purpose is to immediately reduce tensions relating to
hunger, sex, aggression, and other primitive impulses.
■ ego: restrains instinctual energy in order to maintain
the safety of the individual and to help the person to be
a member of society.
■ superego: the rights and wrongs of society and
consists of the conscience and the ego-ideal.
+Freud and Personality Structure
Id - energy constantly striving to satisfy basic
drives Pleasure Principle

Ego - seeks to gratify the Id in realistic

ways Reality Principle

Super Ego
- voice of conscience
that focuses on how
Id we ought to behave
+ Freud’s Theory:
“the ID”
■ The id uses the most primitive of thinking process.
■ Basic biological urges (e.g., hunger, self-protection).
■ The id operates on the Pleasure Principle.
■ Seeks pleasure and avoids pain:“I want what I want NOW!”
■ The id operates completely at an unconscious level.
■ No direct contact with reality.
■ The id has 2 major instincts:
■ Eros: life instinct = motivates people to focus on
pleasure-tendencies (e.g., sexual urges).
seeking
■ Thanatos: death instinct = motivates people to use
aggressive
urges to destroy.
■ The energy for the id’s instincts comes from the libido, (the
energy storehouse).
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Freud’s Theory:
“the Ego”

■ The ego consists of a conscious faculty for

perceiving and dealing intelligently with
reality.
■ The ego acts as a mediator between the id and
the superego.
■ The ego is partly conscious.
■ Deals with the demands of reality.
■ Makes rational decisions.
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Freud’s Theory:
“the Ego”
■ The ego serves the ID:

■ The rational part of personality that

maintains contact with reality.
■ Governed by ‘Reality Principle’
■ “What consequences are there to my behavior?”

■ The ego is the Executive of the personality

■ The ego controls higher mental processes.
■ Reasoning, problem solving.
■ The ego uses these higher mental processes to help satisfy the urges of the ID.
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Freud’s Theory:
“the Superego”
■ Superego: the moral part of personality.
■ Internalized rules of parents and society.

■ Superego consists of two parts:

■ Conscience: “notions of right/wrong.”
■ Ego Ideal: “how we ideally like to be.”
■ Superego: constrains us from gratifying every impulse (e.g.,
murder) because they are immoral, and not because we might
get caught.
■ Superego: partly conscious, partly unconscious.
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Freud: superego, id, and ego

■ According to Freud, an individual’s feelings,

thoughts, and behaviors are the result of the
interaction of the id, the superego, and the
ego.
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Freud’s Theory of Personality:
■ The id, the ego, and the superego are continually in conflict
with one another.
■ This conflict generates anxiety.
■ If the ego did not effectively handle the resulting anxiety,
people would be so overwhelmed with anxiety that they
would not be able to carry on with the tasks of everyday
living.
■ The ego tries to control anxiety (i.e., to reduce
anxiety) through the use of ego defense mechanisms.
+ Ego Defense Mechanisms:
Defense Mechanisms
Ego Id
When the inner war
gets out of hand, the
result is Anxiety

Ego protects itself via

Defense Mechanisms
Super
Ego
Defense Mechanisms reduce/redirect
anxiety by distorting reality
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Ego Defense Mechanisms
■ Definition: An defense mechanism is a psychology
tendency that the ego uses to help prevent people from
becoming overwhelmed by any conflict (and resulting
anxiety) among the id, the ego, and the superego.
■ Defense mechanisms operate at an unconscious
level:
■ We are not aware of them during the time that we are
actually using them.
■ However, we may later become aware of their
previous operation and use.
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Freud’s Theory: Defense
Mechanisms
■ Repression: pushing unacceptable and anxiety-
producing thoughts into the unconscious; involves
intentional forgetting but not consciously done; repressed
material can be memories or unacceptable impulses.
■ A rape victim cannot recall the details of the attack.

■ Regression: acting in ways characteristic of earlier

life stages/earlier stage of personality.
■ A young adult, anxious on a trip to his parents/ home,
sits in the corner reading comic books, as he often did
in grade school.
+ Freud’s Theory:
Defense Mechanisms
■ Reactionformation: replacing an anxiety-
producing feeling with its exact opposite, typically
going overboard; repressed thoughts appear as
mirror opposites.
■ A man who is anxious about his interest in gay
men begins dating women several times a week.
■ Rationalization: creating false but believable
excuses to justify inappropriate behavior; real motive
for behavior is not accepted by ego.
■ A student cheats on an exam, explaining that cheating
is legitimate on an unfair examination.
+ Freud’s Theory:
Defense Mechanisms
■ Denial: claiming and believing that something which is
actually true is false.
■ A person disbelieves that she is age, asserting that “I am
not getting older.”
■ Displacement: redirecting emotional feelings (e.g.,
anger) to a substitute target; involves directing
unacceptable impulses onto a less threatening
object/person.
■ A husband, angry at the way his boss treated him,
screams at his children.
■ Instead of telling your professor what you really think of
her, you tailgate and harass a slow driver on your way
home from school.
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Freud’s Theory: Defense
Mechanisms
■ Projection: attributing one’s own unacceptable
feelings or beliefs to others; perceiving the external
world in terms of one’s own personal conflicts.
■ An employee at a store, tempted to steal some
merchandise, suspects that other employees are
stealing.
■ Sublimation: substitute socially acceptable behavior
for unacceptable impulses.
■ Playing video games instead of getting in a fight.
+ Freud:

Stages of Personality Development

■ Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality

suggests that personality develops through a series
of stages, each of which is associated with a major
biological function.
■ More specifically, Freud theorized that as people
age, they pass through several systematic stages of
psychosexual development in their personality.
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Psychosexual Stages of Development
are Source of Unconscious Conflicts.
■ Thestages of personality development involve critical
events that occur in every child’s life.
■ Ateach level, there is a conflict between pleasure and
reality.
■ The resolution of this conflict determines personality.

■ At any stage, “a fixation” can occur:

■ If needs are either under-gratified or over-gratified, we
become fixated at a particular stage.
■ Each stage also involves an erogenous zone.
■ Parts of the body that involve sexual pleasure.
Freud and Personality Development
“personality
“personality forms
forms during
during the
the first
first few
few years
years of
of life,
life,
rooted
rooted in
in unresolved
unresolved conflicts
conflicts of of early
early childhood”
childhood”

Psychosexual Stages
Oral (0-18 mos) - centered on the mouth
Anal (18-36 mos) - focus on bowel/bladder elim.
Phallic (3-6 yrs) - focus on genitals/“Oedipus
Complex”
(Identification & Gender Identity)
Latency (6-puberty) - sexuality is dormant
Genital (puberty on) - sexual feelings toward others
Strong conflict can fixate an individual at Stages 1,2 or 3
+ Freud’s Stages
of Personality Development:
■ Oral
stage: the oral state is the first period,
occurring during the first year of life.
■ Analstage: next comes the anal stage, lasting
from approximately age 1 to age 3.
■ Phallicstage: the phallic stages follows, with
interest focusing on the genitals.
■ Latency period: then follows the latency period
lasting until puberty.
■ Genitalstage: after puberty, people move into
the genital stage, a period of mature sexuality.
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(1) Oral stage of development:
■ Time period: Birth to 18 months:
■ Erogenous zone is mouth.
■ Gratification through sucking and swallowing.

■ Oral fixation has two possible outcomes.

■ Oral receptive personality:
■ Preoccupied with eating/drinking.
■ Reduce tension through oral activity.
■ eating, drinking, smoking, biting nails
■ Passive and needy; sensitive to rejection.
■ Oral aggressive personality:
■ Hostile and verbally abusive to others.
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(2) Anal stage of development:
■ Time period: 1 1/2 to 3 years of age.
■ Erogenous zone is the anus.
■ Conflict surrounds toilet training.
■ Anal fixation has two possible outcomes.
■ Anal retentive personality.
■ Stingy, compulsive orderliness, stubborn,
perfectionistic.
■ Anal expulsive personality.
■ Lack of self control, messy, careless.
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(3) Phallic stage of development:
■ Time period: 3 to 6 years.
■ Erogenous zone is the genitals: self-stimulation of
the genitals produces pleasure.
■ At age 5 or 6, near the end of the phallic stage, children
experience the Oedipal conflict (boys)/the Electra conflict
(girls)--a process through which they learn to identify with
the same gender parent by acting as much like that parent
as possible.
■ Oedipus complex (boys) vs Electra complex (girls)
■ Child is sexually attracted to the other sex parent and
wishes to replace the same sex parent.
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(3) Phallic stage of development:

■ Oedipus complex (little boys):

■ Castration anxiety:
■ Son believes father knows about his desire for mom.
■ Fears dad will castrate him.
■ Represses his desire and defensively identifies with
dad.
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(3) Phallic stage (continued):
■ Electra complex (little girls):
■ Penis envy:
■ Daughter is initially attached to mom.
■ Shift of attachment occurs when she realizes she lacks a
penis.
■ She desires dad whom she sees as a means to obtain a
penis substitute (a child).
■ Represses her desire for dad.
■ incorporates the values of her mother
■ accepts her inherent “inferiority” in society
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(4) Latency Period:
■ During the latency period, little girls and little boys try
to socialize only with members of their own gender.
■ Freud posits that children do this so as to help
minimize the awareness of “sexuality.”
■ Thus, they continue the process of sexual repression
that began in the previous stage (for those who
successfully made it through the Oedipal
Complex/Electra Complex).
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(5) Genital Stage:

■ When adolescence begin puberty, they enter the 5th

stage of psychosexual development.
■ They develop secondary sexual characteristics
(e.g., pubic hair).
■ The onset of the physical sexual characteristics “re-
awakens” people sexual urges, and thus they are no
longer able to successfully repress their sexual
desires, impulses, and urges.
■ They begin searching for a marital mate, with whom
they can share sex and intimacy.
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Summary of Freud (on personality):
■ Freud’s psychoanalytic theory has provoked a number of
criticisms.
• a lack of supportive scientific data;
• the theory’s inadequacy in making predictions; and
• its limitations owing to the restricted population on which
it is based.
■ Still, the theory remains popular.
• For instance, the neo-Freudian psychoanalytic theorists
built upon Freud’s work, although they placed greater
emphasis on the role of the ego and paid greater
attention to social factors in determining behavior.
+ Psychoanalysis:
Freud and Personality
Evaluating the Psychoanalytic
Perspective
Were Freud’s Current research
theories the “best of contradicts
his time” or were they many of
simply incorrect? Freud’s
specific ideas
Development does not
stop in childhood

Slips of the tongue Dreams may not

are likely competing be unconscious
“nodes” in memory drives and wishes
network
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Summary:
Freud and Personality
Freud’s Ideas as Scientific Theory
Theories must explain
observations and offer testable
hypotheses
Few Objective Observations Few Hypotheses

(Freud’s theories based on his recollections &

interpretations of patients’ free
associations, dreams & slips o’ the tongue)

Does Not PREDICT Behavior or Traits

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Reference:

Elizabeth T Santosa, M.Psi, psi