Approaches to Personality

Psychoanalytic Approach

The psychoanalytic perspective of personality emphasizes the importance of early childhood

experiences and the unconscious mind. This perspective on personality was created by
psychiatrist Sigmund Freud who believed that things hidden in the unconscious could be revealed
in a number of different ways, including through dreams, free association, and slips of the tongue.1

Neo-Freudian theorists, including Erik Erikson, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney,
believed in the importance of the unconscious but disagreed with other aspects of Freud's
theories.

Major Theorists

Below are the most prominent psychoanalytic perspective theorists:

• Sigmund Freud: Stressed the importance of early childhood events, the influence of the
unconscious, and sexual instincts in the development and formation of personality. • Erik
Erikson: Emphasized the social elements of personality development, the identity crisis, and
how personality is shaped over the course of the entire lifespan. • Carl Jung: Focused on
concepts such as the personal unconscious (The reservoir of material that was once
conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed) collective unconscious(The deepest level of
the psyche containing the accumulation of inherited experiences of human and prehuman
species) archetypes(Images of universal experiences contained in the collective
unconscious.) and psychological types(To Jung, eight personality types based on interactions
of the attitudes (introversion and extraversion) and the functions (thinking, feeling, sensing,
and intuiting).
• Alfred Adler: Believed the core motive behind personality involves striving for
superiority, or the desire to overcome challenges and move closer toward self-realization.
This desire to achieve superiority stems from underlying feelings of inferiority that Adler
believed were universal.
• Karen Horney: Focused on the need to overcome basic anxiety, the sense of being
isolated and alone in the world. She emphasized the societal and cultural factors that also
play a role in personality, including the importance of the parent-child relationship.

Humanistic Approach

Some psychologists at the time disliked psychodynamic and behaviorist explanations of

personality. They felt that these theories ignored the qualities that make humans unique among
animals, such as striving for self-determination and self-realization. In the 1950s, some of these
psychologists began a school of psychology called humanism.

Humanistic psychologists have an optimistic perspective on human nature. They focus on the
ability of human beings to think consciously and rationally, to control their biological urges, and
to achieve their full potential. In the humanistic view, people are responsible for their lives and
actions and have the freedom and will to change their attitudes and behavior. Humanistic
psychologists emphasize looking at the whole person, and the uniqueness of each individual. It
begins with the existential assumptions that people have free will and are motivated to achieve
their potential and self-actualize.
Maslow proposed a hierarchy of five innate needs that activate and direct human behaviour.
They are the physiological, safety, belongingness and love, esteem, and self-actualization needs.
The needs are arranged in order from strongest to weakest. Lower needs must be at least partially
satisfied before higher needs become influential.

Carl Rogers believed that humans have one basic motive, that is the tendency to self- actualize
- i.e., to fulfill one's potential and achieve the highest level of 'human-beingness' we can.

Behaviorist Approach

The school of behaviorism emerged in the 1910s, led by John B. Watson. Behaviorists study
only observable behavior. They do not believe personality characteristics are based on genetics
or inborn predispositions. Instead, they view personality as shaped by the reinforcements and
consequences outside of the organism. In other words, people behave in a consistent manner
based on prior learning. B. F. Skinner, a strict behaviorist, believed that environment was solely
responsible for all behavior, including the enduring, consistent behavior patterns studied by
personality theorists. In fact, behaviorists believed that if they could perfectly control a person’s
environment, then they could impart any type of personality on any individual they choose.
Behaviorists also did not think it was necessary to understand anything that was happening in a
person’s head, since thoughts and feelings could not be perfectly objectively quantified.

Cognitive Approach

Cognitive theories of personality focus on the processes of information encoding and retrieval,
and the role of expectations, motives, goals, and beliefs in the development of stable personality
characteristics. Cognitive theorists focus on the ways in which people come to know their
environment and themselves, how they perceive, evaluate, learn, think, make decisions, and solve
problems. It focuses exclusively on conscious mental activities.