Free Essays,College Free Essays,Free College Essays at Anti Essays

There are several attributes that all members of the human race have in common: how we all develop, perceive, learn, remember, think, and feel. What makes us all different, though, can be attributed to one specific characteristic – personality. Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. I would like to discuss several different perspectives on how personality functions.

The Psychoanalytic Perspective
Sigmund Freud came up with the theory of psychoanalysis when he was working in a private medical practice specializing in nervous disorders. He observed several people who had symptoms with no explainable physiological causes. He concluded that our unconscious motives and conflicts, or those which we are unaware of, were the source of our actions.
Freud believed that personality was the result of a conflict between our pleasure-seeking impulses and our internal social restraints to resist them. He thought personality was an expression of these impulses in ways that bring satisfaction without guilt or punishment. The mind’s dynamics during this process are defined as the id, the ego, and the superego. Id operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification of aggressive and sexual drives. The ego operates to satisfy the id practically, without causing pain or destruction. The superego is the conscious; it proposes the most moral and ideal options. The ego acts as a mediator to reconcile the id and the superego, which naturally oppose each other.
Freud believed that personality developed within the first few years of life. He concluded from analyzing his patients’ backgrounds that children pass through psychosexual stages during which the id focuses on distinct pleasure-sensitive areas of the body called erogenous zones. From birth to 18 months, the oral stage focuses on the mouth. The anal stage, from 18 to 36 months, focuses on bowel and bladder...