It is our common and general perception that physical appearance of a person is called personality. We think that a good personality is one who is well-suited whose appearance is impressive.We view good personality to one who is wearing ironed clothes and polished shoes,whose face looks made up.But this is only ten percent of total personality.In actual fact Personality is totality of man ,both his inner and outer qualities interacting with each other.
Term Personality is derived from Latin word Persona which means theatrical mask which is worn by actors to perform their role in theater.
Many Psychologists have defined Personality,their definitions are as follows:
- Personality is behavior of man or it is picture of organised behavior.
- It is total behavior of man.
- It is the combination of structure and behavior,personality determines spontaneous response of individual that how one will behave in a given situation.
- It is internal and external representation.
- Personality is the organization of one's character,temperament,intellect,and physique which determines unique adjustment to environment.
- According to G.W.Allport,Personality is the Dynamic organization with in the individual of the psycho-physical systems that determines his characteristics behavior and thaught.
- Accordinfg to Bootzin Personality is an individual's characteristic and distinctive patterns of thinking ,feeling and behaving.
- According to Cattel Personality is that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation.
- According to Mortin Prince, "Personality is the sum ,total of all biological ,innate,dispositions,impulses,tendencies,appetite and instincts of the individual and dispositions and tendencies acquired by experience".
Human Personality may have following characteristics:
- Dynamic
- Stable
- Persistent
- Integrated
- Pervasive
- Organized
- Psycho-physical system
- Determine
- Unique
- Easily adjustable to environment
- Collection of traits and attributes
- Capable of change and modification
- Self-conscious
- Cognitive
- Effective
- Con-native
Character
Character is Individual's code of behavior .It is refereed as good or bad behavior .It is shaped by behavior.
Temperament
Temperament is refereed to those dispositions which are biological or Physiological and those can not easily be modified.Role of heredity is greater he as compared to other dispositions.We can say that Personality is by three things.Intelligence,Physique and Temperament.
- Personality Determinants
- Biological determinants
- Socio-cultural Determinants
- Personality Determinants
Individual is by product of heredity and environment.Behavior of man is shaped by heredity and society. Personality can be divided into two classes biological and social.Biological and are two factors being discussed below.
- Biological determinants
1. Glandular developmentGlandular development and activity effect personality in number of ways.Glands,Ductless and Endocrine discharge their secretions or hormones directly or with out ducts into blood. Their balance and imbalance can effect personality.Growth, health and mental and emotional health is effected by them. Insufficient secretions from the thyroid gland can make a person lethargic and sluggish.
2.Height
Height has frequent effect on personality it is observed that short people are pugnacious,argumentative,confrontational and boastful.Research Indicates that leaders tend to become taller and heavier than average.
3.Heredity
"Heredity" means the biological transmission of genetic characteristics from the parent to off-spring or child.Many Psychologists maintain that different in human personality is due to zygote or cellfrom which one is originated. Some characteristics like intelligence,interest ,talent,emotional expressions and stress tolerance are believed to be inherited.
4.Nervous system
Nervous system is one of the important system of human personality.The automatic nervous system plays an important role.Several research studies have proved the role of nervous system in extroversion,introversion,neuritic ism as the important traits of personality.
5.Physique or Physical Structure
Physique is and important biological determinant. Physique is structure and anatomical organization of human body.Physique includes size of the body,complexion of the skin general health,physical deformations.A balanced combination of all these is eye-catching.But poor physique people are subject to Prejudice,bias,humiliation,and it arouses inferiority complex in them.
6.Pigmentation of the Skin
Skin pigmentation has implications for personality.Particularly if it differs from the skin of dominant group of the society.However it depends on the culture but people with dark skin are considered as unattractive.
7. Temperament Temperament is refereed to those dispositions which are biological or Physiological and those can not easily be modified.Role of heredity is greater he as compared to other dispositions.We can say that Personality is by three things.Intelligence,Physique and Temperament.
Temperament has implications for personality.First personality is temperamental in nature then it is modified by society and culture. Temperament not only effects the personality budding and growth but it has direct effects and conditions the emotional of his family.
8.Body Type
Body type is considered to be an important biological determinant but there are questions on its validity.It may be that if a person develops in certain kind of temperament and environment may develop a certain kind of body type.
Drugs deficiencies of certain vitamins in body,long illness also causes some changes in the body.
- Socio-cultural Determinants
1.Home
Home environment play an important role in shaping the personality pattern of individual.The first environment the child moves in is his home.Home is the place where the foundations of personality are laid.Family is the major socializing avenue during the early years of life.The relations of parents and child is most intimate.Presence of paternal love is essential for the development of healthy personality.At home the child learns the various social skills like manners,habits,beliefs,attitudes, way of adjusting to environment and value in the family.He learns through reward and punishments in the family environment.If a family is social and participatory it equips the child with all types of requisite social skills disturbed family had implications for personality.
2. Neighborhood
People who live in the environment, influence the development of personality.Neighborhood is like second home where child interacts with other children. the interaction helps the children to learn traits,skills and responses.A stable neighborhood permits the child to develop sense of cooperation,sympathy,affection and caring attitude.
3.School
School, a primary social group is another socio-cultural determinant of the personality.It is the most effective determinant of personality. Here the child interacts with teachers,classmates,and school administrators.The suitability and type of curriculum and examinations,attitude of teachers,relationship of child with his classmates and teachers have influential effect on the personality.
The companions,classmates,fellows,friends and teachers influence the thoughts, ideas,attitude,intellect,moral,and personality.The attitude of teacher is an important in this regard,teacher should have a friendly, he should create and healthy and warm environment.Must have positive attitude toward teaching and life.He must have sympathetic attitude toward slow learners.Teaching should be tailored and geared according to the needs of children.
4.Economic factor
Economic factor greatly determine the some of
Psycho-Analytical Perspective of Personality
This perspective contains following things;
1.Levels of Consciousness
2.Structure of Personality
3.Psych-sexual stages of development
4.Defense Mechanism
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) is probably the most controversial and misunderstood psychological theorist. When reading Freud’s theories, it is important to remember that he was a medical doctor, not a psychologist. There was no such thing as a degree in psychology at the time that he received his education, which can help us understand some of the controversy over his theories today. However, Freud was the first to systematically study and theorize the workings of the unconscious mind in the manner that we associate with modern psychology.
According to him personality contains the following four things;
1.Levels of Conciousness
To explain the concept of conscious versus unconscious experience, Freud compared the mind to an iceberg .
Conscious:
He said that only about one-tenth of our mind is conscious, and the rest of our mind is unconscious. Our unconscious refers to that mental activity of which we are unaware and are unable to access .
Unconscious:
According to Freud, unacceptable urges and desires are kept in our unconscious through a process called repression. For example, we sometimes say things that we don’t intend to say by unintentionally substituting another word for the one we meant. You’ve probably heard of a Freudian slip, the term used to describe this. Freud suggested that slips of the tongue are actually sexual or aggressive urges, accidentally slipping out of our unconscious. Speech errors such as this are quite common. Seeing them as a reflection of unconscious desires, linguists today have found that slips of the tongue tend to occur when we are tired, nervous, or not at our optimal level of cognitive functioning.
2.Structure of Personality:
According to Freud, our personality develops from a conflict between two forces: our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives versus our internal control over these drives. Our personality is the result of our efforts to balance these two competing forces. Freud suggested that we can understand this by imagining three interacting systems within our minds. He called them the id, ego, and superego .
Id:
The unconscious id contains our most primitive drives or urges, and is present from birth. It directs impulses for hunger, thirst, and sex. Freud believed that the id operates on what he called the “pleasure principle,” in which the id seeks immediate gratification.
Super-ego:
The superego develops as a child interacts with others, learning the social rules for right and wrong. The superego acts as our conscience; it is our moral compass that tells us how we should behave. It strives for perfection and judges our behavior, leading to feelings of pride or—when we fall short of the ideal—feelings of guilt.
Ego:
Through social interactions with parents and others in a child’s environment, the ego and superego develop to help control the id. In contrast to the instinctual id and the rule-based superego, the ego is the rational part of our personality. It’s what Freud considered to be the self, and it is the part of our personality that is seen by others. Its job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the context of reality; thus, it operates on what Freud called the “reality principle.” The ego helps the id satisfy its desires in a realistic way. The id and superego are in constant conflict, because the id wants instant gratification regardless of the consequences, but the superego tells us that we must behave in socially acceptable ways. Thus, the ego’s job is to find the middle ground. It helps satisfy the id’s desires in a rational way that will not lead us to feelings of guilt. According to Freud, a person who has a strong ego, which can balance the demands of the id and the superego, has a healthy personality. Freud maintained that imbalances in the system can lead to neurosis (a tendency to experience negative emotions), anxiety disorders, or unhealthy behaviors. For example, a person who is dominated by their id might be narcissistic and impulsive. A person with a dominant superego might be controlled by feelings of guilt and deny themselves even socially acceptable pleasures; conversely, if the superego is weak or absent, a person might become a psychopath. An overly dominant superego might be seen in an over-controlled individual whose rational grasp on reality is so strong that they are unaware of their emotional needs, or, in a neurotic who is overly defensive.
3.Defense Mechanism
Freud believed that feelings of anxiety result from the ego’s inability to mediate the conflict between the id and superego. When this happens, Freud believed that the ego seeks to restore balance through various protective measures known as defense mechanisms. When certain events, feelings, or yearnings cause an individual anxiety, the individual wishes to reduce that anxiety. To do that, the individual’s unconscious mind uses ego defense mechanisms, unconscious protective behaviors that aim to reduce anxiety. The ego, usually conscious, resorts to unconscious strivings to protect the ego from being overwhelmed by anxiety. When we use defense mechanisms, we are unaware that we are using them. Further, they operate in various ways that distort reality. According to Freud, we all use ego defense mechanisms.
There are several different types of defense mechanisms.
Repression
In repression, anxiety-causing memories from consciousness are blocked. As an analogy, let’s say your car is making a strange noise, but because you do not have the money to get it fixed, you just turn up the radio so that you no longer hear the strange noise. Eventually you forget about it. Similarly, in the human psyche, if a memory is too overwhelming to deal with, it might be repressed and thus removed from conscious awareness . This repressed memory might cause symptoms in other areas.
Reaction
Another defense mechanism is reaction formation, in which someone expresses feelings, thoughts, and behaviors opposite to their inclinations.In regression, an individual acts much younger than their age. For example, a four-year-old child who resents the arrival of a newborn sibling may act like a baby and revert to drinking out of a bottle. In projection, a person refuses to acknowledge her own unconscious feelings and instead sees those feelings in someone else.
Rationalization
Rationalization is a process to conceal the true motives for one’s actions,thoughts and feelings.
Displacement
Displacement is the transference of affect or wishes and desires from their original object or person to another object or person
Sublimation
Sublimation is a process is a process where primitive impulses are redirected and refined into new,learnt and non-instinctive behavior.
4.Stages of Psycho-sexual Development
Freud believed that personality develops during early childhood: Childhood experiences shape our personalities as well as our behavior as adults. He asserted that we develop via a series of stages during childhood. Each of us must pass through these childhood stages, and if we do not have the proper nurturing and parenting during a stage, we will be stuck, or fixated, in that stage, even as adults. In each psychosexual stage of development, the child’s pleasure-seeking urges, coming from the id, are focused on a different area of the body, called an erogenous zone. The stages are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital .
Freud’s psychosexual development theory is quite controversial. To understand the origins of the theory, it is helpful to be familiar with the political, social, and cultural influences of Freud’s day in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century. During this era, a climate of sexual repression, combined with limited understanding and education surrounding human sexuality, heavily influenced Freud’s perspective. Given that sex was a taboo topic, Freud assumed that negative emotional states (neuroses) stemmed from suppression of unconscious sexual and aggressive urges. For Freud, his own recollections and interpretations of patients’ experiences and dreams were sufficient proof that psychosexual stages were universal events in early childhood.
Oral Stage
Oral Stage In the oral stage (birth to 1 year), pleasure is focused on the mouth. Eating and the pleasure derived from sucking (nipples, pacifiers, and thumbs) play a large part in a baby’s first year of life. At around 1 year of age, babies are weaned from the bottle or breast, and this process can create conflict if not handled properly by caregivers. According to Freud, an adult who smokes, drinks, overeats, or bites her nails is fixated in the oral stage of her psychosexual development; she may have been weaned too early or too late, resulting in these fixation tendencies, all of which seek to ease anxiety.
Anal Stage
Anal Stage After passing through the oral stage, children enter what Freud termed the anal stage (1–3 years). In this stage, children experience pleasure in their bowel and bladder movements, so it makes sense that the conflict in this stage is over toilet training. Freud suggested that success at the anal stage depended on how parents handled toilet training. Parents who offer praise and rewards encourage positive results and can help children feel competent. Parents who are harsh in toilet training can cause a child to become fixated at the anal stage, leading to the development of an anal-retentive personality. The anal-retentive personality is stingy and stubborn, has a compulsive need for order and neatness, and might be considered a perfectionist. If parents are too lenient in toilet training, the child might also become fixated and display an anal-expulsive personality. The anal-expulsive personality is messy, careless, disorganized, and prone to emotional outbursts.
Phallic Stage
Phallic Stage Freud’s third stage of psychosexual development is the phallic stage (3–6 years), corresponding to the age when children become aware of their bodies and recognize the differences between boys and girls. The erogenous zone in this stage is the genitals. Conflict arises when the child feels a desire for the oppositesex parent, and jealousy and hatred toward the same-sex parent. For boys, this is called the Oedipus complex, involving a boy's desire for his mother and his urge to replace his father who is seen as a rival for the mother’s attention. At the same time, the boy is afraid his father will punish him for his feelings, so he experiences castration anxiety.
Latency
Latency Period Following the phallic stage of psychosexual development is a period known as the latency period (6 years to puberty). This period is not considered a stage, because sexual feelings are dormant as children focus on other pursuits, such as school, friendships, hobbies, and sports. Children generally engage in activities with peers of the same sex, which serves to consolidate a child’s gender-role identity.
Genital Stage
Genital Stage The final stage is the genital stage (from puberty on). In this stage, there is a sexual reawakening as the incestuous urges resurface. The young person redirects these urges to other, more socially acceptable partners (who often resemble the other-sex parent). People in this stage have mature sexual interests, which for Freud meant a strong desire for the opposite sex.
References:
Psychology,Hardeep Kaur Shergill,PH Learning Private Limited New Dehli-110001,2010,p-403-444.
General Psychology,Consultant editor Naima Khatoon,Saeed Book Bank,F-7 Jannah Super Market,Islamabad, Pakistan,p-263-289.
Psychology,
