Personality Essay

Personality Overview
Gurveer Dosanjh
Psych 405
11/14/2011
ANGELA SNELLING

Personality Overview
Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic theory has many strengths, however it lacks empirical evidence. Carl Jung was the creator of the psychoanalytical psychology, and unlike Freud who focused on the self or the inner workings of the mind and conscious, Jung focused on a network of interacting systems that want to achieve harmony. Jung created the concept of the psych while Freud made the concept of the id, ego, and super ego. While there are many theories in psychology that have laid great foundation for the emergence of psychology, Freud’s Psychoanalysis and Jung’s Psychoanalytical approach have contributed an enormous amount of theories, critical thinking, and development of treatment techniques. Freud’s Psychoanalyses focuses on three parts of personality, the id, ego, and super ego. The Id operates according to the pleasure principle, which seeks to immediate tension reduction (Engler, B. (2009). The ego follows the reality principle, or acts as an intermediary between the id and the world. The superego involves the moral standards of society, values and ideals. Freud’s theory also involved two motivational drives, which are Eros and Thantos. Eros is the sex drive and thantos is the aggressive and death instinct. According to Freud “Personality is shaped as the drives are modified by different conflicts at different times in childhood” (Engler, B. 2009, pp. 48). Freud’s Theory was unconscious, meaning that the id, ego, and superego all occurred in the unconscious. Individuals do not know what is happening in the unconscious and it is our underlying motivation for our behaviors. Freud said that all behavior had a cause, whether it was conscious or unconscious and that our behavior was largely determined by our unconscious (McLeod, S. 2007). Unlike the behaviorists, the psychodynamic approach was not empirical, it actually ignored hard science and instead focused on how to get inside an individuals head in order to make sense of their relationships and how they experience the world (McLeod, S. 2007). The psychodynamic approach is largely deterministic as well, there is little free will involved, meaning a person has little power over himself or herself in this theory. The concepts of the Freud’s theory are subjective and largely unscientific in the analysis of human behavior, and it is heavily criticized for this. It is also criticized for being too deterministic by the humanistic as well because there is no personal agency involved (McLeod, S. (2007). The last criticism of Freud’s theory his how he arrived at his theories which were from his case studies, but the major problem with case studies is that only one person can be studied at one time and his finding were inappropriately applied to a wide general population (Engler, B. 2009). Carl Jung developed the school of though known as analytical psychology. In Jung’s approach there are two attitudes toward reality and four functions, which come together to form the personality, or Psyche as he named it. The Term psyche was used to emphasize, the unconscious and conscious processes, not one or the other. The psyche included feelings, sensations, wishes and so on. The ego, in Jung’s theory is in the conscious mind, and is responsible for feelings of identity and continuity. The ego also is involved with thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and memories in Jung’s theory. Jung also developed the Personal unconscious and the personal unconscious is where memories have been put aside and may be retrieved easily and it also involved repressed memories. The collective unconscious is shared not personal like the personal unconscious. The collective unconscious refers to how human beings share certain potentialities. Other aspects that make up the personality in Psychoanalytical approach are archetypes and there are several archetypes that are influential. The persona is the role someone assumes in society and what their understanding of the role is, the shadow addresses unsocial thoughts, feelings and behaviors, and anima and animus are the gender. Anima is the archetype for female or femininity and animus is the archetype for masculinity. The last but most influential archetype is the self, and the self is the striving unity of all parts of personality. The self regulates behavior in certain situations such as at work, school, or parties. The two basic attitudes of Jung’s theory are extraversion and introversion. Extraversion is the attitude where the psyche is focused on the objective world and introversion is when the psyche is focused on the subjective world (Engler, B. 2009). The four functions are sensation, intuition, thinking and feeling. Sensation and intuition refer to how we gather information (Engler, B. 2009). Thinking and feeling refer to how we come to conclusions (Engler, B. 2009). Carl Jung had also developed another way to conduct therapy, in Jungian therapy; the therapist was self-disclosing and foreshadowing. For Jung, an emotional disturbance was a persons attempt to reconcile the flaws in his or her personality (Engler, B. 2009). Unlike Freud’s theory, Jung’s theory brought the first experimental data on unconscious processes; this was done by the word association test, which is still used today. His theory has developed other research for the unconscious, something Freud’s theory was unable to do. Jung himself said that he was interested in facts and had empirical data to support his theory. However, there are many criticisms of Jung and one of those is that he fell short of following the rigorous standards of research such compatibility, and simplicity, which makes his theory more a philosophical view than an empirical one (Engler, B. 2009). Recent research on archetypes has also not been able to provide evidence that they are inherited. Jung’s theory was free will, with emphasis on the individual and it involved both unconscious and conscious motives for behavior. Freud developed the Psychodynamic thought while Jung developed the Psychoanalytical thought. Although Jung and Freud have collectively worked together for years, the two theories are very different. Freud Focused largely on the unconscious, concluding it was the cause of all behavior while Jung said it was process between the conscious and unconscious. Unlike Freud who believed that the ego was unconscious and focused on the pleasure principle, Jung thought that the ego was one one’s conscious mind that involved feelings and perceptions. While Freud believed in three factors of personality, Jung’s theory had many more. Those were the persona, the shadow, anima, animus, body, unconscious, conscious, mind, and over sex characteristics, all these mixed together made the self. There were also key differences in their styles of therapy. In Freud’s psychotherapy, the therapist is to remain detached while the Jungian therapist is supposed to be more self-disclosing (Engler, B. 2009). The Jungian therapist also sees the patient less often than the psychotherapist would. The two also had very different styles of dream analysis. Freud thought of dreams as the expression of the unconscious but Jung also added that dreams can be both prospective and retrospective, that is they are to help with the future, not just past events. Freud focused on dreams at the object level, while Jung focused on the subject level. Amplification was use by Jung in his dream analysis, which would make a person focus one element of a dream and give it multiple meanings, but Freud used free association, which had a patient list the elements of the dream and go on like a chain reaction (University of Phoenix, 2009, Para. 29). Sigmund Freud brought the Psychodynamic approach to psychology, which has had an everlasting effect. Although his theory generated research, it was never backed up by empirical data. It still however, had a profound effect on psychology. Along with his approach, came Psychotherapy, which is still used to today to treat patients with all sorts of disorders and illness. The fact that Psychotherapy remains today shows how great of an effect Freud had on psychology even without empirical data or research. Carl Jung followed Freud’s theory for sometime, before breaking off and creating his own. His theory became known as the Psychoanalytical approach. Carl Jung left a huge impact on modern psychology as well, because his approach, although it was analytical and focused on the conscious, did generate future research, and he himself had empirical data to back up his proposals. His theory showed that the conscious could be empirically researched. Jung like Freud also developed therapy technique that is used to day as well to treat patients, which demonstrates his lasting impact on psychology. These two men made their mark on psychology by creating new effective ways to treat patients, developing new theories without constraining themselves of empirical data, and brought a style of thinking that has been controversial but lasted for many years.

References

Engler, B. (2009). Personality theories (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
McLeod, S. (2007). Simply psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/psychodynamic.html
University of Phoenix. (2009). Theories of personality. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, Psych405 website.

References: Engler, B. (2009). Personality theories (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. McLeod, S. (2007). Simply psychology. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/psychodynamic.html University of Phoenix. (2009). Theories of personality. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, Psych405 website.