Psychoanalytic Personality Assessment

Psychoanalytic Personality Assessment
Psychoanalytic Personality Assessment
Personalities are like finger prints, everyone has one and they are all different. Through the years there have been many different theories that psychologists have come up with to try and determine why people think and do they way they do. One of the most famous of these psychologists is Sigmund Freud who focused on psychological concepts on unconscious personality and sexuality. Some other famous psychologists that I will be discussing in this paper are Alfred Adler and Carl G. Jung. I will also be discussing in this paper the theories of these three psychologists and the characteristics of personality. Finally I will discuss three defense mechanisms and give real life examples to help explain them.
Psychoanalytic theories are the kind of theories that Freud, Adler, and Jung focused on. “Psychoanalytic is the approach to understanding personality,” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Their theories focus on the idea that human behavior is established by an individual’s childhood experiences and their past, which effects the individual’s perceptions of current events. Each of these psychologists developed different theories in psychology. Freud focuses on psychosexual, Jung focuses on analytical psychology, and Adler focuses on individual psychology. The three characteristics that Freud has for personality are ego, superego, and id. “Ego refers to the individuality of a person that is the central core of personality,” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Ego in Latin means I, so ego refers to oneself. Ego is developed to deal with real world situations. Superego, or over-I, is, “the personality structure that develops to internalize societal rules and guide goal-seeking behavior toward socially acceptable pursuits.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). The superego helps us behave and act in a way that is socially acceptable. Id is, “the undifferentiated, unsocialized core of personality that contains the basic psychic energy and motivations.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Id refers to an individual’s instincts and or impulses.
Jung’s focus on analytical psychology deals with individual’s way to reduce pain and conflict, also to seek pleasure and their motivational energy. The three parts that Jung divided the mind into are the collective unconscious, the conscious ego, and the personal unconscious. Jung defines the collective unconscious as, “the component of the mind that contains a deeper level of unconsciousness made up of archetypes that are common across all people.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). The collective unconscious is the part of the mind that can feel like you are having déjà vu. In this part of Jung’s theory he discusses about archetypes which are, “emotional symbols that are common to all people and have been formed since the beginning of time” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Adler’s there is known as Individual Psychology which is basically that everyone has a different and unique personality and that everyone’s place in society was just as important.
The two characteristics that I agree with are Jung’s archetypes of hero and demon, and Adler’s notion that everyone has an important place in society. The archetypes hero and demon are the opposite of each other, simply put it is good versus evil. The hero archetype represents the good that battles the demon archetype, which represents evil. I agree with this characteristic of Jung’s theory because I believe that in order for there to be good in this world there needs to be bad as well so we can distinguish the two and that there has always been good versus evil since the beginning of time. The second characteristic that I agreed with was Adler’s notion that everyone has an important place in society. I believe this to be true because I believe that our personality is developed with the people we interact with. So in a sense that everyone plays an important role in society because everyone, either good or bad, helps shape someone else’s personality. The one characteristic that I do not agree with are the separation of the three characteristics of the mind by Freud: ego, superego, and id. I believe that these three characteristics of the mind should not be separate because I believe it take all three working together to help us with who we are. There is some kind of communication between the three working all the time. The second characteristic that I do not agree with is the organ inferiority that Adler discusses. Adler believes that everyone is born with some kind of physical weakness and the body finds a way to make up for this “weakness” in another area.
Next we will discuss the stages of Freud’s theory which are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages. The oral stage is the stage where, “Infants are driven to satisfy their drives of hunger and thirst, and they turn to their mother’s breast or bottle for this satisfaction as well as for the security and pleasure that comes from nursing.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). The oral stage is during the babes first year because this is where they nurse from their mother’s breast and this is where they satisfy their feeling of hunger. Some babes may have difficulty transitioning out of this stage and can develop habits of keeping their moths full of substances; this is because they are stuck in the oral stage.
The anal stage is usually between the ages of one to three. In this stage is when children are potty trained. When they are one they are wearing diapers and most three year olds are using the toilet, so for most children they are potty trained when they are two years old.
The phallic stage is, “in which sexual energy is focused on the genitals.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). This stage happens around age four and children begin to see the differences between boys and girls.
The latency stage is, “the period from age 5 to age 11 in which no important psychosexual developments take place and during which sexual urges are not directly expressed but instead are channeled into other activities.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). During this stage children channel their energy into making friends and becoming social, this stage can be considered a social stage.
Finally we have the genital stage which is the final stage of development. In this sage Freud thinks, “That if a person was not trapped or hung up along the way, then adolescence marks the beginning of an adult life of normal sexual relations, marriage, and child-rearing.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). So if a child can get through all of these stages without trouble then they can have a well balanced adult life.
Now we will discuss defense mechanisms which are, “the processes that distort reality to protect the ego.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). The three defense mechanisms that I will be discussing are denial, repression, and rationalization. Friedman & Schustack (2012) states that denial is simply refusing to acknowledge anxiety-provoking stimuli. Everyone uses denial to avoid dealing with painful feelings in their everyday lives. An example of this would be a drug addict, they may be using drugs to avoid dealing with unresolved issues but deny that they have a drug problem. Another defense mechanism is repression, “repression is the ego defense mechanism that pushes threatening thoughts back into the unconscious.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). An example of this would be a soldier trying to repress memories and thoughts of a traumatizing event that may have happened in war. Finally rationalization is, “a mechanism involving after the fact logical explanations for behaviors that were actually driven by internal unconscious motives.” (Friedman & Schustack, 2012). Examples of rationalization are when people are watching TV or go out to eat instead of doing some work that should be getting done because taking a break helps them focus better.
All of the psychologists that we discussed have similar theories when it comes to personalities but they all of differences as well. All these theories have excellent points and they all have some not so strong points but we can use all of these theories as a way to figure out who we are and out type of personality.

References
Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2012). Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.

References: Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2012). Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.