Running Head: EXPLAINING MY PERSONALITY 1

Abigail Floriano-Monarrez

Explaining My Personality With The Help Of Three Theorists

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Explaining My Personality
In this paper I will be going through three Personality theories, explain them, and then

incorporating the theories into understanding my personality. Jung, Rotter, and Mischel’s

theories will be used in this paper.

Jung’s theory focuses on a person’s levels of psyche and his or her quest for self-

realization. He explained how Archetypes in each person’s unconscious are shared universally

and how these can help develop our personality. He also articulated the theory of opposites and

explained the types of opposites there are, and described the therapeutic model, a form of therapy

that helps people tap into their personal/collective unconscious.

Two theorists with a different approach compared to Jung’s would be Rotter and Mischel.

Their theories of personality both focus on personality being a process and how a person

interprets the world. This way of looking at personality was more in a cognitive way rather than

seeing personality in a psychodynamic approach as most theorist before them thought about

personality. They explained that social factors highly influence what a person does, and they also

emphasized that cognition was essential in understanding people’s selection of information and

how they interpret it.

Starting off with explaining Jung’s theory. Jung’s theory starts with the levels of the

psyche, which are the conscious, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.

Conscious is the obvious one, being the area of the mind that carries out daily activities and

senses the world. The personal unconscious has the repressed thoughts and experiences you’ve

had in your life. Within the personal unconscious there are things called complexes, these are

webs of ideas and themes. West (2015) stated that the original state of a complex is when trauma

or a trauma event happens to someone and then a part of the psyche is split off (West, 2015). The
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trauma created thus helps with creating people’s personalities, but these traumas go unseen

because they stay in the personal unconscious. The collective unconscious is the area in the mind

that stores universal ideas and these can aid in the way we perceive the world. The universal

ideas shared by everyone are called archetypes, these ideas can also be altered by experiences

that a person may go through. These are Jung’s levels of the psyche described in his theory.

The archetypes are psychic impulses that express themselves in dreams, fantasies,

delusions, and psychotic states. There are eight known archetypes in the collective unconscious:

persona/mask, shadow, anima, animus, great mother, wise old man, hero, and the self. Jung

(2013) refers to archetypes as preexistent thought forms, meaning that these ideas have already

been in unconscious because it is shared with every human being. Jung also stating that these

then, in turn, give form to information that can enter the conscious. He also explains that when a

situation occurs, the archetype that is related to the situation is then put into the conscious but if

there is resistance in the mind to the archetype it can lead to chronic distress (Jung, 2013). The

archetypes that may pop in when situations occur have different meanings to them and how they

can be perceived in the mind. The shadow are the “dark” qualities every person has inside of

them. We tend to hide these qualities from others and tend to project these feeling onto the

world, but there should be a strive to recognize the shadow and embrace it. The anima is the

feminine archetype. Related to woman hood, irrational thought, symbolizes moods and feelings,

female side of men and can be difficult for men to explore but can help men to relate to women.

The animus is the masculine archetype. Related to fatherhood, being reasonable, rational, and is

the male side of women. The Great Mother is a derivative of the anima. Represent both the good

(fertility and nourishment) and bad (power and destruction). The Wise Old Man symbolizes

wisdom. The hero vanquishes evil but comes with a tragic flaw. The self is an inherited tendency
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to move toward growth, perfection, and completion. This also known as the archetype of

archetypes. The persona/mask refers to a persons way of presenting themselves to society with a

role of some kind, but if too attached to the role they may never reach self-realization being

Jung’s main point to his theory.

Jung’s theory of the opposites refers to every good must have its bad, one thing must

have its opposite in order to be integrated. Attitudes are a form of the opposite, a person being

either an introvert or an extrovert. In this theory, one attitude is conscious while the other is

unconscious. So, if the introversion is conscious a person is turning his or her psychic energy

inward and if the extraversion is conscious of psychic energy it is being directed towards an

object. Jung also described the four functions and how people see the world and take in

information. The four functions being: thinking (recognizing its meaning), feeling (its worth),

sensing (determining for something), intuiting (implicit understanding, knowing how you know).

Another example falling underneath the theory of opposites is the use of perception and

judgement, with perception describing the tendency to be open to all information all the time that

you only take the information you need to plan or to reach closure.

The therapeutic model is designed in order to help people discover their unconscious,

both personal and collective, meaning that bringing the ideas of the unconscious to the conscious

and interpreting the information instead of repressing them. Jung (2013) explains that once in the

conscious, the idea can become dangerous to the person undergoing therapy and the therapist

themselves and determining of one’s fate. If the psychotherapist is not his or herself aware of

their own ideas and inner thoughts, then they cannot help their patient (Jung, 2015). Word

association, dream analysis, and active imagination are the names of the methods used in the

therapeutic model. Word association being helpful in bringing out true feelings towards certain
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things and can uncover complexes (constellation of ideas and themes, live in the personal

unconscious), usually when given a word the opposite of the word is usually said back. Dream

analysis gives symbols for anything and everything and can make sense of things in the real

world. The active imagination tends to picture the details of problems in a larger context (more

complicated) or smaller (simplified). Jung’s goal is for everyone to reach self-realization, where

the conscious and the unconscious are in harmony. Jung’s theory of the opposites where often

spoke of there being an opposite to anything and without the opposite, there is no balance. He

also incorporates this theory in his word association test with people often giving the opposite of

the word. Jung’s theories are not vey scientific and rely mostly on theory, but it is still

influencing people to use it for everyday issues.

While Jung focused on the ideology of the conscious, personal unconscious, and the

shared unconscious as the reason behind a persons personality, Rotter and Mischel focused more

on how a person interprets a situation and how they go about it depending on their past

experiences and other factors alike. Starting off with Rotter. His theory starts with knowing that

cognitions are essential to mentally processing information and understanding the information

just received. Having to focus on one self-interpretations in which depending on one’s emotions

and behaviors. He mentioned that our behavioral had both expectancy and reinforcement operate.

The expectancy refers to predicting what will occur, for example if someone had studied for a

test in the past and passed the exam they studied for, they are likely to predict that outcome.

Reinforcement is how much it is valued to the person in a psychological setting being the general

conflict, for example they studied the test, passed, and that being a positive outcome would make

them more likely to repeat a certain action.

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An important idea that comes out of Rotter’s theory is the Locus of Control, which is

described as an individual’s idea that he or she can control/direct experiences and incidents that

can affect their life (Brownlow, 2019). There are two poles to the Locus of Control: internal and

external. Internal is when there is a relationship with effort and the outcome. The more people

are aware that they are responsible for their own experiences when they have control over their

effort. External Locus of Control is characterized by belief that the reason something had a

certain outcome was due to luck, teacher was not helpful, or any other outside factor. Rotter also

had another discussed aspect to his theory, maladaptive behaviors. Maladaptive behaviors can be

seen when looking at one’s goals and their expectancies, setting goals too high, “I’ll do it right

every time” for example. Arogundade (2010) had a study in which teachers in Queensland, when

frustrated, had tons of work pressure, and/or emotional exhaustion were tested how they

moderated their locus of control and where they pointed their frustration. Those who had an

external Locus of Control would show behaviors that in turn did not help them at all and very

counterproductive, they blamed outside factors (Arogundade, 2010).

Another theorist with similar ideologies to Rotter would be Mischel. Mischel’s theory

starts with the idea of processes in situations which interact with personal dispositions. So, for

example this means that if a person is assertive, yes that will come out in certain situations but in

other circumstances that assertiveness can be toned down or not shown at all because a person

brings more than a disposition to a situation. A person is often consistent with this and the

changes can be very predictable.

Mischel also had a system termed CAPS (Cognitive Affective Personality System),

which has five cognitive affective units which are psychological, physiological, and social

aspects of a person that causes them to interact with their surroundings in a predictable way
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(pattern-like). Mischel (1998) describes it being that the five units being part of a personality

system that is a network of many things related to one another. CAPS is seen to be unique in

each person due to how some of its aspects are deactivated/ activated in how a person would take

on the environment they are in (Mischel, 1998). For example, if he or she uses their

competencies in their environment in predictable manner. The five units being encoding,

competencies, expectancies/beliefs, goals/values, and affective responses (emotionality).

Encoding is how a person takes in information and processes it. Competencies is someone

knowing what she/he cannot do, this unit tends to be stable. Expectancies/beliefs come from

experiences and the interpretations of them a person may have, this kind of behavior is only

controlled by the person that has experienced a situation and has interpreted it a certain way.

Goals/values are ideas that are taken to every situation and are consistent. Affective responses

are a person’s tendency to act a certain way towards a situation. Mischel and Rotter both

believed that personality was a process and cognition was essential to understanding a person’s

motives.
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All About Me

I was born in the city of Roanoke, Virginia and only lived there for about a year and a

half. Celebrated my first Christmas there and walked for the first time in a park that was near my

parents first apartment in the U.S. According to my parents I was a very outgoing baby,

extraverted to be exact. We had a pet cat that went by the name Oliver and my brother loved

him. My dad later found work in North Carolina and decided to move the whole family into my

aunts’ small trailer home. I do not remember much from this home. We later moved to a house

that resided in the tiny town of Catawba. We still live in Catawba to this day, same house and

everything.

The house was filled many residents such as: me, my mom, dad, older brother, uncle,

aunt, and their three daughters. They had just come from Mexico and they had a daughter that

was near my age. We became super close and are still close to this day. I was very talkative and

goofy coming up through out my childhood. Very playful but could be very shy at times. My

family was huge and very close when I was younger, and I miss that sometimes.

A turning point in my life had to be when my younger sister was born, and I no longer

was the little girl in my immediate family. I was very cold towards her and I remember I would

often attempt to run away due to the drastic change in dynamics in the household. I often look

back to this and laugh because I now have a strong bond with my younger sister.

Kindergarten to third grade were great years for me. I made many friends, loved my

teachers, and still had nap time. Fourth was not so fun, I got bullied. I was made aware that I was

not as skinny as my female classmates nor popular. I then in turn, became the bully. My

personality changed in which the talkative and goofy Abigail was now gone, and the intimidating

and moody Abigail took charge. I now wanted a say in what my mom bought me to wear for
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school (I had a tomboy look now), most of the boys were terrified of me all thorough out the rest

of elementary school, and I always had hair covering one of my eyes . Although I had this

intimidating energy at school, I was very self-conscious in myself. I attempted to take my own

life but backed out because I was scared. This carried a bit into middle school.

Middle school isn’t necessarily a kid’s favorite part of growing up. It’s a very awkward

stage in life. Since I was going to a new school, I wanted to essentially re-brand myself. I came

in with a more preppy style. This look was taken very positively by my new friends and boys

were no longer intimidated by me. I still had my ups and downs during middle school, it

could’ve been a lot worse. Middle school was also the year I tried out sports for the first time.

During these years I also lost a pet that was very close to me.

Highschool was an adventure to say the least. Freshman year I had my Quinceañera, a

celebration of a young girl becoming a woman. I did a traditional Mexican dance and many

family members came to celebrate with me. Sophomore year sort of flew by and not much

happened except that I did start playing soccer. The transition to junior year was difficult. There

was teenage drama and was very demanding when it came to my classes. Junior year was the

year to do great since it is what colleges see when accepting in students. Senior year was fun and

the year I decided to be rebellious. I went to my first Halloween party, experimented, and

skipped school (only once). I wanted to do something crazy since my parents were very

overprotective. I also lost a pet during these years. In high school, my grandpa died in Mexico. I

never got to meet him as an adult.

Freshman and sophomore year in college were some of the best years in school I’ve had

so far. I went out to college parties, went out to the clubs in charlotte, and I really enjoyed my

classes. I relatively did well in my classes and liked my professors. I made some good friends at
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my first job at Old Navy with that being said, I would never go back to Old Navy to work again.

After Old Navy, I started a job at my old elementary school, and I loved it. I worked with kids,

which is my focus group for counseling. Everyday was a fun day at work and cherished every

moment spent there. Except one thing that really messed with me during these years would have

to be that someone took advantage of me. I thought I could trust this person, but it turns out they

just wanted something from me.

Junior year of college is quite different from the rest of my experiences in college.

Transitioning into a new school was difficult. I knew virtually no one at Catawba and being a shy

kid, this wouldn’t help with making friends. Catawba doesn’t seem to be a good fit for me and

while attending I had been thinking of transferring again. During my junior year, I was drugged

and ended up in the hospital. It’s made me more precocious of who I surround myself with. I’ve

visited a counselor and I am working on my attitude towards hanging out with friends and going

out. This experience has made me feel like my elementary school self, very self-conscious.

My relationship with family is relatively stable. Me and my siblings have our differences

sometimes, but we always talk it out in between each other, view both sides of the argument, and

come up with a solution. With my father is sort of that way as well but he wants the last word in

every conversation. My relationship with my mom is difficult sometimes. We often yell at each

other and sometimes I feel as if I moved away, the problems I have with her would disappear. I

love my though, I don’t hate her, I just sometimes wish it were easier to talk to her sometimes.

At my very core I am a creative, friendly, shy, introverted person. I try not to stand out

from the rest, and I am very easily embarrassed if I sense someone is making fun of me. A thing

I have noticed that if it is a friend/loved one being made fun of, I tend to become this different

version of myself where I stand up for them and tell off the people being the bully. I wish to be
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this strong person eventually in the future. For now, I am taking small steps to be more outgoing

and expressing myself through my clothing options.

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Analysis Of My Personality

In the following section of this paper I will be using Jung’s, Rotter’s, and Mischel’s

theories to explain my personality.

Jung’s theory focuses on the levels of a person’s psyche: the conscious, the personal

unconscious, and the collective unconscious. The conscious/ego is what senses the world, our

way of presenting ourselves to the world. My conscious would be viewing the world in an

introverted point of view. The personal unconscious is the place repressed thoughts and

experiences someone has had in their lifetime. In the personal unconscious there are things called

complexes that are webs of ideas and themes. West (2015) states the original form of a complex

is when trauma or trauma event happens to someone and then a part of the psyche is split off

(West, 2015). This trauma could shape a person’s personality. In my twenty years of life, I have

gone through some heavy stuff that has molded me into the person I am. Some major events that

have shaped me are my little sister being born, being bullied in elementary school, attempting to

take my own life, becoming the bully, losing a pet, the pressure to have good grades in junior

year, losing another pet, losing a grandparent without meeting him, being taken advantage of,

going to new school and feeling like an outsider, drugged and ending up in the hospital, and my

relationship with my mom. West (2015) mentions that Jung described that it can be difficult to

integrate our complexes if something is not accepted by our parents/society or it was a painful

experience. He states that the signs of a complex are fear and the refusal to accept (West, 2015).

Most if not all my experiences that I have listed fall in these categories. Some of these

experiences have been so repressed that by slowly remembering to put them in writing has left

me at a lost for words. “Without having integrated these complexes our lives are hampered, as if

we are going about with one hand tied behind our backs” (West, 2015, p.3). By Jung’s terms, I
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have yet to integrate most of my trauma into my personality. The collective unconscious is the

area in the mind that stores universal ideas shared by everyone that are called archetypes.

Though universal, it can be different since it can be altered by experiences a person has.

The archetypes can be seen in dreams, fantasies, delusions, and psychotic states. Jung

(2013) refers to the archetypes as preexistent thought forms, meaning that these ideas have

already been in the collective unconscious because it is shared with every human being. He

explains that when a situation occurs, the archetype that is related to the situation is then put into

the conscious but if there is resistance in the mind to the archetype it can lead to chronic distress

(Jung, 2013). There are eight archetypes in the collective unconscious. The person/mask is what

we present to the world. My persona to the world is a shy college student who also happens to be

the middle child in the family Jung would say that I shouldn’t identify to closely to this role since

I will not become conscious of my self-individuality. The shadow are the dark qualities a person

may have. We tend to hide these qualities from others and ourselves. A lot of my dark qualities

have been created due to my complexes in the personal unconscious. I have yet to accept these

qualities in myself and by doing so, I will have trouble reaching self-realization. The anima is

the archetype that deals with womanhood, irrational behavior, symbolizes moods and feelings,

and is the feminine side for men. In my lifetime the anima has been something that has stayed

relatively neutral. The animus is the archetype that symbolizes rational thought, fatherhood,

masculine part for women. I was very in touch with my animus when I was in elementary school.

I was very close to my father and brother and I wanted to feel strong like them, so I dressed like

them. The great mother represents both good and bad qualities for example “mother nature”.

This archetype tends to come up in my conscious whenever I have conversations with any

woman older than me, especially my mom. My relationship with my mom can be difficult
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sometimes and the bad side of the great mother archetype tends to stay in the conscious for a

long time and sometimes I resist those thoughts because I love my mom. Whenever I do this, I

put myself under a lot of stress to the point where I end up crying about the situation. The wise

old man represents the wisdom one gets while going through life. In my twenty years of life, I

have gained some wisdom. I have gone through some stuff to learn valuable lessons from them.

The hero is the archetype that symbolizes vanquishing evil, but the hero has a tragic flaw.

Sometimes this archetype pops up in my head when a loved one/friend stands up for a difficult

situation and fixes it. For example, when my brother broke up an argument between my mom

and me. I saw him as a hero in that situation and he fixed the problem we had. The self is the

inherited tendency to move toward growth, perfection, and completion. I have a difficult time

sometimes when trying to grow from a situation, especially a traumatizing situation. Some of

these archetypes I have an issue with comprehending with and is holding me back from self-

realization.

Jung’s theory of the opposites is that every good must have a bad side in order to be

integrated. This way of thinking can be compared to attitudes such as a person being an introvert

or an extrovert. My form of thinking has always been through introversion in the conscious. I

turn my psychic energy inward with orientation and it is subjective to biases, dreams, and

fantasies. In other situations, I do think in an extraversion conscious way. Taking my psychic

energy and directing it toward an object but not focusing on surroundings. The four functions

were described as how people see the world and take in information. The four functions include

thinking, feeling, sensing, and intuiting. Most situations when I go through the four functions are

what does it mean to me, is it worth my time, can this help with anything, and understanding the

situation. Another idea in the opposite’s theory is the use of perception and judgement. Most of
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the time I am a perception (in tune to incoming information all the time) but can also be in

judgement mode (seeking only enough info to reach closure).

Jung’s therapeutic model is designed in order to help people discover their unconscious,

both personal and collective, bringing the ideas of the unconscious to the conscious and

interpreting the information instead of repressing them. This therapeutic model would help me in

numerous ways. I would be able to openly talk of memories that had been buried deep down in

my unconscious. The therapeutic model comes in three parts, word association, dream analysis,

and active imagination. Word association is helpful in bringing out true feelings towards certain

ideas and can uncover complexes. When presented with the word mom two words came to mind:

mean and caring. This just highlighted my complex on my relationship with my mom. Dream

analysis gives symbols for anything and everything. In my chats with my counselor, I explained

to her a nightmare I had following the events of me being drugged and hospitalized. The dream

included me, my mom, and a bug. There was a bug that was only attacking me, and my mom

was trying to shoo it away from me. It kept bothering me and next thing I know I wake up in a

cold sweat. She explained to me that it could be that I see my mom is a protector and that the fly

could’ve been the perpetuator who slipped something into my drink. The active imagination can

make certain details in a situation be bigger (complex) or smaller (simple). Sometimes in my

active imagination I tend to make the situation much larger and complicated than it is until I

receive help from a trusted source.

Onto Rotter, the main point to his theory is knowing that cognitions are essential to

mentally processing information and understanding the information just received. Your own

interpretations (emotions and behaviors) determine what you do next. The behavioral potential is

separated into two parts, expectancy and reinforcement. Expectancy is predicting what will
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occur, for example I predicted this semester to be exciting and making new friends.

Reinforcement is how valuable it is to the person in my example my prediction did not occur,

and my uplifting prediction is no more.

The Locus of Control is someone’s idea that he/she can control/direct experiences and

incidents that can affect their life (Brownlow, 2019). There are two poles to this theory: internal

and external. Internal is when an individual is responsible for their own experiences when they

have control over their effort. I was most in touch with this when it came to junior year in high

school. I was very focused on making good grades that year to impress my future college. I

managed to be in the top 40 list of students in my graduating class. This was also something that

I was very in tune with when it came to my job at the elementary school. I strived to be the best

“group leader” those kids had and helped them with any situation I could. External is when it is

believed that the reason something had a certain outcome was due to luck or any other outside

force. This is still how I see my transition to Catawba college. I believe that the reason I am not

having a great time at my new school is that it’s the school’s social environment, not me. Rotter

would say that this thought behavior is maladaptive and not very counterproductive.

Transitioning to Mischel’s theory, his theory is the idea that processes in situations

interact with personal dispositions. In my case that would be that yes, I am shy and tend to not

stand up for myself but change the situation and it’s a friend in danger, I become very protective

and stand up for them. It just comes out in certain situations .

CAPS was also something that came from Mischel. CAPS stands for, Cognitive Affective

Personality System that has five units called the cognitive affective units. These units help with

interpreting personality. The five units being encoding, competencies, expectancies/beliefs,

goals/values, and affective responses. In the following example I will be using my experience
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after I was taken advantage of. Encoding is how you take in information and process it. After I

was taken advantage of, I had a hard time processing as to why I felt confused and disgusted of

myself and the person. It took months to come to conclusion that what that person did to me was

not right. Competencies is someone knowing what she/he can and cannot do. I knew I could stop

talking to him, stay away from him, and I also knew I couldn’t take that night back and prevent it

from happening. Expectancies/beliefs come from experiences and the interpretations of them. I

believed that this could’ve never happened to me even with the stats being one in five. I had

never experienced something like this ever in my life and that’s why I was in a state of shock at

the encoding unit. Goals/values is what you take to every situation. My goal in this situation was

just to kiss this person but it led to something I never wanted. My view of that person in value

was zero and I could never see that person in the same light as I did before. Affective responses

are a person’s tendency to act a certain way towards a situation. When it came to intimacy after

this event, it was difficult. I became very wary of people and really didn’t trust in men for a good

while in my life.

Overall, my personality on paper is one to be concerned about. I noticed that I tend to put

a happy face when on the inside I am hurting deeply. I need to speak up about what is bothering

instead of hurting myself mentally by keeping it all in. I learned that I need some sort of

professional psychologist, a necessary thing for all individuals to be mentally healthy. I

enjoyed/hatted writing this paper since it made me aware of how I truly felt and how much I

have to work on things in my personal life.

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References

Arogundade, O., & Itua, O. (2010). Locus of Control and Self-Esteem as Predictors of

Teachers' Frustration in Lagos State Secondary Schools. Ife Psychologia, 18(2), 339-351.

Brownlow, S. (2019). Retrieved from https://bba.catawba.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-228850-

dt-content-rid-1421246_1/courses/PSYC3380-10026-Fall19/RotterMischel 4_2 12 min(3).mp4

Jung, C. J. (2013). Abstracts of the collected Jung, edited by C. L. Rothgeb. Retrieved

from https://www.cgjungpage.org/learn/resources/jung-s-collected-works-abstracts/854-

abstracts-of-the-collected-works-of-cg-jung

Mischel, W., & Shoda, Y. (1998). Reconciling processing dynamics and personality

dispositions. Annual Review of Psychology (49), 229-58.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.49.1.229

West, M. (2015). Retrieved from West, M. (2015). Complexes and Archetypes. Retrieved

October 16, 2019, from https://www.thesap.org.uk/resources/articles-on-jungian-psychology-

2/about-analysis-and-therapy/complexes-and-archetypes/.