PERSONALITY
INTRODUCTION
Just
as the term intelligence, the term personality is also freely used by layman
with different meanings. Some refer to physical appearance like height, weight,
well built, powerful voice, as strong or weak personality some refer to
handsome or beautiful appearance of an
individual some other refer to dress. Manner of talking or behaving, some
others refer to intellectual qualities,
moral qualities and spiritual strength of an individual. Some use personality
to imply personal attractiveness or the ability to withstand hardships. Though
each individual refers personality to different aspect of the individual we
cannot say who is right and who is wrong. It is something which emerges as a
result of various qualities like learning, memory, thinking, reasoning, driver,
emotions, intelligence, perception etc., combined together. In sort it is a
combined product of cognitive, conative, and affective qualities of an
individual. As a result of the synthesis of the above three qualities, certain
new qualities emerge, which describe one’s personality more adequately.
MEANING
AND DEFINITION
The
term personality is derived from the latin term persona. The meaning of the
term persona is the actors mask. The
mask was chosen and worn to indicate character that was to be played by the
individual. In olden days the actors used to put on the mask while coming on to
the stage so that their identity will not be made known to the audience and at
the same time the role they play will be nearer to the reality. So in a broad
sense everyone is an actor in this world and he must play his role, whether he
is successful or not. It is in this sense, a great devote and a saint
Purandharadasa has stated that the world by the Lord is a stage and all are
actors and we have to play our roles as guided 6^ him. In the same way
Shakespeare has stated they all the world is a stage and all the men and women
are actors where in we play in. from this point of view the term the
personality refers to the role one plays in the life’s drama. Every individual
in this world has to control his emotions and tries to fit in to the pattern of
the society, so that his actions are approved and appreciated to achieve this
objective he puts on a mask and plays his role. The role maybe of a bachelor, a
married man or an old man a parent, a teacher, a student, an officer or a
subordinate. To play the role chosen he has to put on a mask suited to it. Thus
every individual in the society retaining his individuality and at the same
time without affecting the interest of the society has to play his role. The
one that facilitates to play the role assigned by the society. this is what we
call it as personality.
As
the term personality is very much complex, intricate and integrated. It is
difficult to define it in a precise way. So different psychologists have
defined personality in their own ways of which only a few definitions are
quoted here u8nder. May’s (1929) definition, is that the personality is the
individual social stimulus value. According to this, how an individual impress
upon others may be writing but it is based on the outward appearance of the
individual. As the behavior of an individual towards others vary from person to
person and from time to time it is wrong to judge the personality of an
individual in terms of social stimulus value.
Gordon
Alport defines that personality is the dynamic organization, within the
individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment
to his environment. According to this definition, the various psychological traits which determine the
peculiar or personal adjustment of the individual, or organized into dynamic
unit so there is always a flexible adjustment to the environment. Munn states
that personality may be defined as the most characteristic of an individual’s
structures. Modes of behavior, interests, attitudes, abilities and aptitudes
especially from the stand point of adjustment in social situations. Eysenck
defines that personality is the more or less stable and enduring organization
of a person’s character. temperament, intellect and physique, which determines
his unique adjustment to the environment.
According
to this author personality is the dynamic organization and integration of the
various innate and acquired Psychological traits into a harmonious unit which
facilitates the individual. To protect or to restore the physiological and
psychological homeostasis by interaction
with the physical and socio cultural environment. Man in order to protect or to
restore the homeostasis, employs the innate abilities like intelligence, and in
the course of interaction acquires certain values, morals and other qualities,
which give him satisfaction and thereby become part and parcel of the self due
to frequent use. The self armed with these qualities, values, morals and
various behavior constitute the personality, which inturn determines his unique
adjustment to his internal and external environment.
“Personality
is the “dynamic” “organization” of the
individuals “characteristics” ways of “responding” to himself and to his experiences”.
SIGNMUND
FREUD
BORN
: Sigis Mund Schlomo Freud, 6 May
1856, Frieberg in Mohren, Moravia (now
part of the Czech Republic), Austrian Empire.
DIED
: 23 September 1939 (aged 83), London, England.
NATIONALITY:
Austrian
FIELDS
: Neurology, Bychotherapy, Bychoanalysis
INSTITUTIONS
: University of Vienna
ALMA
MATER : University of Vienna (MD, 1881)
KNOWN
FOR : Psychoanalysis
INFLUENCES
: Borne, Brentano, Breuer, Charcot,
Darwin, Dostoyevsky, Fliess, Goethe, Hartman, Nietzche, Plato, Schopenhauer,
Shakespere, Sophocles.
INFLUENCED:
Althusser, Bass, Bloom, Brown, Chodorow, Deleuze, Derrida, Firestone, Anna
Freud, Fromm, Gallop, Gilligan, Grosz, Guattari, Habermas, Horney, bigaray,
Janov, Jones Jung, Kandel, Khnna, Klein, Kovel, Kristeva, Lacan, Lyotard,
Marcuse, Mitchell Poylia, Perls, Rank, Reich, Ricocur, Rieff, Sartre, Solms,
Sullivan, Trilling.
NOTABLE
AWARDS : Goethe Prize, Foreign Member of the Royal Society (London)
SIGMUND
FREUD BIOGRAPHY:
Sigmund
Freud was born in Moravia on May 6, 1856 and died in London on September 23,
1939. For nearly eighty years. However, he resided in Vienna and he left that
city only when the Nazis ovethan Austria. As a young man he decided that he
wanted to be a scientist with this goal in Mind he entered the medical school
of the university of Vienna in 1873. Graduating eight years later, Freud never
intended to practice medicine. But the scanty rewards of scientific work the
limited opportunities for academic advancement for a Jew. And the needs of a
growing family force him to enter private practice. In spite of is practice he
found time for research and writing and his accomplishments as a medical
investigator earner him a solid reputation.
Freud
interest in neurology caused him to
specialize in the treatment of nervous disorders a branch of medicine that had
lagged behind in the forward March at the healing arts during the nineteenth
century. In order to improve his technical skills Freud studied for a year with
the famous French Psychiatrist Jean Charcot, who was using hypnosis in the
treatment of hysteria. Although Freud tried hypnosis with his patients. He was
not impressed by its efficacy consequently, when he heard about a new method
that had been devised by a Viennese physician. Joseph Breuer, a method by which
the patient was cured of symptoms by talking about them. He tried it out and
found it effective. Orever and Freud collaborated in waiting up some of their
cases of hysteria that had been treated by the talking out technique (1895).
However,
the two men soon parted company over the importance of the sexual factor in
hysteria. Freud felt that sexual conflicts were the cause of hysteria while
Breuer held a more conservative view (see Ellenberger, 1970, for a discussion of historical antecedents of
Freud’s position). Thereafter Freud worked Pretty much alone. Developing the ideas that were to form
the foundation of Psychoanalytic theory and culminated in the publication of
his first great work. The interpretation of dreams (1900). Other books and
articles soon brought his views to the attention of physicians and scientists
throughout the world. And it was not long before Freud was surrounded by a
group of disciples from various countries among then Ernest Jones of England,
Garl, Jung to Zurich. A.A. Brill of New York, Sandor Ferenczi of Budape St.
Karl Abraham of Berlin, and Alfred Adler of Vienna. Jung and Adler later
withdrew from the circle and developed rival viewpoints.
It
is impossible within the belief space permitted us to cover even the highlights
of Freud’s intellectual and personal life : the early years as a medical
student and investigator: the decisive influence of the great Geoman
Physiologist Ernst Brucke. Who was one of the leaders in the Helmholtz school
of medicine and from whom Freud learned to regard the individual as a dynamic
system subject to the laws of nature (Amacher, 1965) : his Marriage to Martha Bernays and his lifelong
devotion to her and to his six children, one of whom, Anna, followed her
father’s calling; the stimulating year with Charcot in Paris his searching self
analysis begun in the 1890s and continuing throughout his life, the abortive
attempt to account for Psychological phenomena in terms of cerebral anatomy;
the years of isolation from the medical community of Vienna : the invitation
from G. Stanley Hall, the eminent American Psychologist and president of clark
university to address the meeting community of Vienna : the invitation from G.
Stanley Hall, the eminent American
Psychologist and president of clark university to address the meeting
commemorating the founding of that university: the establishing of the
international psychoanalytic association and the secession of such important
disciples as Jung, Adler, Rank and
Stekel the influence of world war 1 upon Freud’s thinking and his thoroughgoing
revision of the basic tenets of Psychoanalytic theory; the application of
Psychoanalytic concepts in all fields of human endeavor ; Freud’s personal
characteristics and the long torment of concern of the Jaw; and finally his
Melodramatic escape from the clutches of the Nazis. Fortunately, every nook and
cranny of Freud’s long life has been surveyed by the foremost English
Psychoanalyst, Ernest Jones, and Brilliantly related in a three volume
biography (1953, 1955, 1957). More recently, peter Gay (1988) has provide a
comprehensive albeit sympathetic biography of Freud.
Nor
does space permit as to list the published works of Feud. Beginning with the
interpretation of dreams in 1900 and terminating in the posthumously published
outline of Psychoanalysis in 1940. Freud’s psychological writings fill twenty
four volumes in the definitive, standard English edition (1953-1974) for the
reader who is unfamiliar with Freud’s theory of personality. The following
books are recommended. The interpretation of dreams (1900). The Psychopathology
of everyday life (1901), general introductory lecturers on Psycho analysis
(1933), and an outline of Psychoanalysis (1940.
In
the following account of Freud’s ideas we shall limit ourselves to those
matters that pertain to Freud’s theory of personality. In the process we
exclude from consideration the psychoanalytic theory of neurosis which in any
event. Has been covered so well by feniched (1945). The techniques of
psychoanalysis and the far flung applications of Freudian psychology in the
social sciences (see Hall and Lindzey, 1968), the arts, and the humanities. Not
shall we be able to take notice of the evolution of Freud’s thinking with
respect to the basic concepts of his personality theory; it will have to
suffice to present Freuds final world on such concepts as we shall discuss. In
we will discuss some of the additions to an modifications of Freud’s classical
theory by his followers. The dissenting theories of Jung and Adler. Who started
out or proponents of psychoanalysis.
FREUD’S
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY
We
begin our study of Freud’s approach with a look at the raw material he used to
shape his theory the thoughts and recollections of this patients. Here is a
sample from the analysis of Frau Emmy Von N., ‘a patient Freud began treating
in 1889.
“when I was a child it often happened that out of
naughtiness I refused to eat my meat at dinner. My mother was very severe about
this and. I was obliged two hours later to eat the meat, which had been left
standing on the same plate. The meat was quite cold by then and the fat was set
so hard (she showed her disgust)… “whenever I sit down to a meal I sec the
plates before Mc with the cold meat and fat on them.
“Many
years leder. I lived with my brother who
was an officer and had that horrible disease (venereal disease). I knew that it
was contagious and was terribly afraid of making a mistake and picking up his
knife and fork” (she shuddered) “… soon
after that, I nursed my other brother when he had consumption (tuberculosis) so
badly we sat by the side of his bed and the spittoon always stood on the table,
open” (she shuddered again) “… and he had a habit of spitting across the plates
into the spittoon. This always made me feel so sick. But I couldn’t show it
fear of hurting his feelings”.
As
“Frau Emmy’s” recollection spilled out, Freud’s Mind was churning, piecing
together a complex psychological puzzle. From Emmy suffered from amorexia she
avoided food and drink. Emmy also stuttered and had periodic tics seemingly
uncontrollable social contortions and bursts of inappropriate speech. For
example, in the middle of a pleasant conversation. From Emmy’s face would
sometimes twist into a grimace of disgust and
she would say. “Keen still ! Don’t say anything! Don’t touch me!” to
understand these “symptoms” and their
origin, Freud tried in whatever ways he could to unravel the complex fabric of
Fran Emmy’s personality Gradually, it occurred to Freud that Emmy’s failure to
eat and her symptoms of disgust and revulsion might all relate to deeply buried
memories – memories like those we quoted above in which food became disgusting,
unraveling current problems meant digging such memories out of the unconscious.
For
this troubled woman and for most of Freud’s other patients, the unraveling and
digging process involved reconstructing and even reliving the part often going
as far back as early childhood. Freud’s methods evolved over time. He favored
hypnosis early in his career Frau Emmy’s recollections above, were brought out
under hypnosis); but he moved gradually
toward free association in which the patient said everything that came to mind,
no matter how silly, illogical. Or even forbidden it might seem. Applying such techniques to a steady stream of
patients. Freud pieced together a picture of personality that shook the western
world and shaped much of the field of psychology for decades.
Freud’s
psychoanalysis (Freud, 1920, 1938, 1940/1949) became both a theory of
personality and a method of Psychotherapy (see
Psychoanalytic theory has three major
parts:
1. A
theory of the structure of personality, in which the ego. Id and superego are
the principal parts.
2. A
theory of personality dynamics in which conscious and unconscious motivation
and ego defense mechanisms play a major role and
3. A
theory of psychosexual development. In which different motives and body regions
influence the child at different stages of growth with effects persisting in
the form of adult personality, traits.
LEVELS
OF MENTAL LIFE
Freud’s
greatest contribution to personality theory is his exploration of the
uncoresciouis and his insistence that people are motivated primarily by
instinctual forces of which they have little or no awareness. To Freud Mental
life is divided into two levels. The
unconscious and the conscious the unconscious in turn. Has two different
levels. The unconscious proper and the preconscious. In Freudian psychology the
three levels of mental life are used to designate both a process and a
location. The existence as a specific location of course is merely hypothetical
and has no real existence within the body yet. Freud spoke of the unconscious
as well as unconscious processes.
1.
CONSCIOUS:
The conscious mind is
what you are aware of at any particular moment. Your present perceptions,
memories, thoughts, fantasies, feelings, what have you working closely with the
conscious Freud called.
2.
PRE CONSCIOUS:
The
preconscious what we might today call “available memory”. Anything that can
easily be made conscious. The memories your are not at the moment thinking
about but can readily bring to mind now no-one has a problem with these two
layers of mind but Freud Suggested that these are the smallest parts.
UNCONSCIOUS:
The
unconscious it includes all the things that are not easily available to
awareness including many things that have their origins there such as our
drives or instincts and things that are put there because we cant bear to look
at them such as the memories and emotions associated with trauma.
According
to Freud the unconscious is the source of our motivations. Whether they be
simple desires for food or sex neurotic compulsions or the motives of an
artinet or Scientist And Yet we are artinct or scientist and yet we are often
driven to deny or resist becoming.
Conscious
of these motives and they are often available to us only in disguised form we
will come back to this.
STRACHAR
OF PARSONALITY:
The
personality is made up of three major systems. The id, the ego and the super
ego. Although each of these provinces of the total personality has its own
functions. Properties, components, operating principles, dynamisms and
mechanisms. They interact so closely
with one another that it is difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle their
effects and weigh their relative contribution to human behavior. Behavior is
nearly always the product of an interaction among these three systems, Rarely
does one system operate to the exclusion of the other two.
1.
ID:
The
nervous system as ID translates the organisms needs into motivational forces
called German Triebe which has been translated as instincts or dyives.
Freud also called them wishes. This
translation from need to wish is called them wishes. This translation from need
to wish is called the primary process.
The
ID works in keeping with the pleasure principle which can be understood as a
demand to take care of needs immediately just picture the hungry intanct.
Screaming itself blue. It doesn’t ‘know’
what it wants in any adult sense; it Just knows that it wants it and it
wants it now the infant in the Freudian
view is pure or nearly pure id and the id is nothing if not one Psychic
representative of biology.
Unfortunately,
although a wish for food such as the image of a Jujey steak, might be enough to
satisfy the id it isn’t enough to satisfy the organism the need only gets
stronger and the wishes just keep coming you may have noticed that when you
haven’t satisfied so me need such as the need for food it begins to demand more
and more of your attention until there comes a point where you can it think of
anything else. This is the wish or drive breaking into consciousness.
Luckity
for the organism there is that small portion of the mind we discussed before
the conscious that is hooked up to the world through the senses. Around this
little bit of consciousness during the first year of a child’s life some of the “id” becomes “I” some of the
id becomes ego.
2. EGO:
The
ego relate’s the organism to reality by means of its consciousness and it
searches for objects to satisfy the wishes that it creates to represent the
organisms needs this problem salivng activity is called the secondary process.
The
ego comes into existence because the needs of the organism require appropriate
transactions with the objective world
of reality. The hungry person has to seek find and eat food before the tension
of hunger can be eliminated. This means that the person has to learn to
differentiate between a memory image of food and an actual perception of food
as it exists in the out or world. Having made this crucial differentiation it
is then necessary to convert the image into a perception which is accomplished
by locating food in the environment. In
other words, the person matches the memory image of food with the sight or
smell of food as they come to the person through the senses. The basic
distinction between the id and the ego
is that the id knows only the subjective reality of the mind whereas the
ego distinguishes between things in the
mind and things in the external world.
The
ego unlike the id functions according to the reality principle which says “take
care of a need as soon as an appropriate
abjeat is found” it represents reality and to a considerable extent reason.
However as the ego struggles to keep the id (and ultimately the organism)
happy. It meets with obstacles in the world. It occasionally meets with objects
that actually assist it in attaining its
goals. And it keeps a record of these obstacles and aides. In particular it
keeps track of the rewards and punishments meted out by two of the most
influential objects in the world of the child mom and dad. This record of
things to avoid and strategies to take becomes the superego.
3.
SUPEREGO:
The
superego it is not completed until about seven years of age in some people it
never is completed.
There are two aspects to the superego one is the
conscience which is an internalization of punishments and warnings. The other
is called the ego ideal. It derives from rewards and positive models presented
to the child the conscience and ego ideal communicate their requirements to the
ego with feelings like pride shame and
guilt.
It
is as if we acquired in childhood a new sector needs and accompanying wishes
this time of social rather than biological origins unfortunately these new wishes can easily
conflict with the ones from the id you see. The superego represents society and
society often wants nothing better than to have you never satisfy your needs at
all.
A
well developed superego acts to control sexual and aggressive impulses through
the process of depression. It canno4t produce repressions ego watches closely
over the ego judging its actions and intentions guilt is the result when he ego
acts or even intends to act contrary to the moral standards of the superego.
Feelings at inferiority arise when the
ego is inable to meet the superego’s standards of perfection. Cuilt, then is a
function of the conscience. Whereas inferiority feelings stem from the
ego-ideal (Freud 1933, 1964).
The
superego is not concerned with the happiness of the ego it strives blindly and
unrealistically toward perfection. It is unrealistic in the sense that it does
not take into consideration the difficulties or impossibilities faced by the
ego in carrying out its orders not all its demands of course are impossible to
fulfill. Just as not all demands of parents and other authority figures are
impossible to fulfill the superego however is like the id in that it is completely
ignorant of an unconcerned with the practicability of its requirements.
Freud
(1933/1964) pointed out that the divisions between the different regions of the
mind are not sharp and well defined the development of the three divisions
varies widely in different individuals for some the superego does not grow
after childhood for others. The superego may dominate the personality at the
cost of guilt and inferiority.
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The relationship among id. Ego and
superego in three hypotheocal persons feelings. For yet others the ego and
superego may take turns controlling personality which results in extreme
fluctuations of mood and alternating cycles or self-confidence and self
depreation. In the healthy individual the id and superego are integrated into a
smooth functioning ego and operate in
harmony and with a minimum of conflical persons for the first person the id
dominates a weak ego and a feeble superego preventing the ego from
counterbalancing its incessant demands and leaving the person nearly constantly
striving for pleasure regardless of what is possible or proper. The second
person with strong feelings of either guilt or inferiority and a weak ego will
experience. Many conflicts because the
go cannot arbitrate the strong but opposing demands of the super ego and
the id. The third person with a strong ego that has incorporated many of the
demands of both the id and the superego. Is psychologically healthy and in
control of both the pleasure principle and the moralistic principle.
REFERENCES:
1. Theories of Personality
Calvins, Hall
Gardner Lindzey
John B. Campbell
2. Introduction to Psychology
Clifford T. Morgan
Richard A. King
John R. Weisz
John Schopler
Seventh Edition
3. Psychology
Prof. P. Nataraj
First Edition PART : II
Srinivasa Publication, Mysore.
4. Internet Materials
5. Introduction to Psychology
Clifford T. Morgen
Richard A. King
TATA McGRAW – Mill Publishing Company LTD, New Delhi,
FIFTH Edition
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