Personality Theories Paper

Personality Theories Paper

Rick Pacheco

PSY/211

August 28, 2012

Latanya Henry-Smith

Personality Theories

Psychodynamic approaches to personality are based on the idea that personality is motivated by inner forces and conflicts about which people have little awareness and over which they have no control. Sigmund Freud is the pioneer of psychodynamic methodology. Freud had a few people that studied under him which disagreed on his theories and they were called Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts. Couple of them were Carl Jung and Alfred Adler which developed the own outlook of psychodynamic approaches.

Carl Jung (pronounced “young”,) Jung suggested that we have a universal collective unconscious, a common set of ideas, feelings, images, and symbols that we inherit from our relatives, the whole human race, and even nonhuman animal ancestors from the distant past. This collective unconscious is shared by everyone and is displayed in behavior that is common across diverse cultures—such as love of mother, belief in a supreme being, and even behavior as specific as fear of snakes (Oehman & Mineka, 2003; Drob, 2005; Hauke, 2006). Carl Jung did propose archetypes, which falls under collective unconscious. An archetype is the universal symbolic representations of a particular person, object, or experience (such as good and evil). For example, police officer: To serve and protect. Unfortunately, there is not any reliable evidence that confirms collective unconscious. Carl Jung even admitted it would be difficult to come up with proof of its existence. Even though it has had an impact outside psychology. For example, personality types derived from Jung’s personality approach form the basis for the Myers-Briggs personality test, which is widely used in business and industry (Gladwell, 2004; Bayne, 2005; Furnham & Crump, 2005). Now, Alfred Adler had a different approach on personality studies.

Alfred Adler proposed that the primary human motivation is a striving for...