Six major theoretical approaches to personality psychology

¶ … Personality Theories in Psychology

To the layperson, the term personality is a generic descriptor for an individual's traits. However, personality has a more specific meaning to psychologists. According to Dan McAdams, "Personality psychology is the scientific study of the whole person" (McAdams, 2006, p.12, para.1). While different psychologists and their theories have become well-known enough to be referenced in casual conversation, there is still some confusion among laypeople about personality theory and whether all personality theories are basically the same. That confusion is understandable, because there are different approaches to the study of personality, buy they all purport to give functioning descriptions of the individual. "Personality psychologists develop and validate ways of measuring individual differences, necessitating a quantitative and focused inquiry into single dimensions of human variation together into illuminating personological portraits of the individual case" (McAdams, 2006, p.12, para.1). Therefore, while personality theories should be comprehensive enough to describe all people, they should also be specific-enough to comprehensively describe an individual

Personality psychology was the first real type of psychology, and the man frequently credited as both the father of modern psychology and the father of personality theory is Sigmund Freud. Freud debuted the idea of psychoanalysis, and though this classical theory has faced many challenges, in many ways it remains one of the supporting pillars of modern personality psychology. However, later theorists expanded upon and challenged Freud's work, coming up with their own descriptions of personality psychology. Some of these could be incorporated into existing theories, while others were so revolutionary that they clearly merited a different type of study. For example, Skinner and behaviorism are so distinct from Freudian psychoanalysis that they would not seem like part of the same field if they were not both used to describe the character traits of an individual.

This paper will investigate the six main theoretical approaches to personality theory: classical psychoanalytical, contemporary psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioral, humanist-existential, narrative, and psychometric/descriptive. To do so, it will focus on the primary works of those who are generally considered to be founders or leaders of each field. However, in doing so, the author acknowledges that the picture of each approach will be incomplete. There is simply not enough time and space to devout a complete overview to each theory. Therefore, while the information on classical psychoanalysis will detail Freud's work, it will not delve into works by Carl Jung or even Anna Freud, who built upon Freud's work, but also challenged some of his preconceived notions. Therefore, while this paper will provide an overview of each theory, they will simply be overviews.

In addition, the paper will attempt to give historical perspective to each of the personality theories. For example, many modern scholars might find Freud's Oedipal complex to be laughable and point to the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse in modern society as a reason to dismiss the rest of his theories by suggesting that Freud missed his opportunity to uncover this phenomenon. However, the reality is that Freud initially suggested that his female patients had actually suffered sexual abuse, but the people of his time were not willing to even consider that possibility, forcing him to examine other alternatives in developing his theories. It is important to understand how historical limitations might impact not only how a theory develops, but also some of the practical information impacting the practice of personality psychology. Simply because an idea is currently seen as antiquated does not mean that it is not an important part of the field of personality psychology.

Classical Psychoanalytical Theory

One simply cannot discuss personality theory without discussing psychoanalysis and Sigmund Freud. To many, Freud is psychology and they have little understanding of psychology beyond the idea of Freudian psychoanalysis. There is good reason for this; Freud certainly brought the idea of psychoanalytic therapy and the notion of a talking cure into modern science. However, while it might be accurate to consider Freud the father of modern psychology in many ways, it is also somewhat misleading, because it would certainly be an error to assume that one could recognize Freudian psychoanalysis in many modern psychological theories. Instead, psychoanalysis opened the gateway to personality theory and many modern theorists have gone in directions far away from Freud's initial vision.

The backbone of Freudian psychoanalysis is that much of human behavior is not controlled on a conscious level, but on a subconscious level. Freud breaks the human psyche down into three different levels: the id, the ego, and the superego. These three elements are constructs; they do not have, nor did Freud believe them to have, actual biological representations in the human brain. Instead, they are the descriptors for how different layers of human awareness interact to form motivation. For many, understanding these parts of the psyche are critical to understanding Freud, though Freud himself did not label them until later in his practice.

The id is the most basic level of the human psyche. It is unconscious both disorganized and immoral; in is motive by the desire to avoid pain or displeasure. Furthermore, it is the first part of the psyche to develop; in many ways, babies are simply id. According to Freud, "The id of course knows no judgments of value: no good and evil, no morality. The economic, or, if you prefer, quantitative factor, which is intimately linked to the pleasure principle, dominates all its processes. Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge- that, in our view, is all there is in the id" (Freud, 1989, p. 93, para. 2). Freud seemed to consider the id to be a dark part of the personality, but it is important to keep in mind that he did not label it morally bad, but simply amoral.

The ego is the second part of the psyche to develop. To Freud, the ego is the id modified by the external world (Freud, 1989, p.94, para.1). "The relation to the external world has become the decisive factor for the ego; it has taken on the task of representing the external world to the id- fortunately for the id, which could not escape destruction if, in its blind efforts for the satisfaction of its instincts, it disregarded that supreme external power" (Freud, 1989, p.94, para.1). Therefore, the ego functions as a mediator between a person's subconscious and the external world. "In accomplishing this function, the ego must observe the external world, must lay down an accurate picture of it in the memory-traces of its perceptions, and by its exercise of the function of 'reality testing' must put aside whatever in this picture of the external world is an addition derived from internal sources of excitation" (Freud, 1989, p.94, para.1). However, it would be wrong to view the ego as simply a tool for the id. "The ego controls the approaches to motility under the id's orders; but between a need and an action it has interposed a postponement in the form of the activity of thought, during which it makes use of the mnemic residues of experience. In that way it has dethroned the pleasure principle" (Freud, 1989, p.94, para. 1).

The super ego is the third level of the psyche, and it its function is a little like the angel sitting on someone's shoulder, telling them to behave well. Freud frequently compared the super ego to the internalization of the parental influence on a person. "It is also the vehicle of the ego ideal by which the ego measures itself, which it emulates, and whose demand for even greater perfection it strives to fulfill" (Freud, 1989, p.81, para.2). The super ego's goal is perfection, even when there is an awareness that perfection is impossible. The super ego also seeks to behave in a socially appropriate manner, even when social norms conflict with the base drives of the id. It is from the super ego that human being have morality, because the super ego is the source of feelings of right and wrong, and also for feelings of guilt.

When one views the super ego, with its focus on the external world, and the id, with its focus on fulfilling inner-driven drives and demands, it becomes clear that that the ego has to play a role in the relationship between the id and the super ego. In fact, the ego not only mediates between the id and the outside world, but also between the id and the superego. Therefore, the ego is that part of the psyche that interacts with the outside world, but it may not reflect even a small portion of the actual personality of the subject. The ego is also where human consciousness can be located, though the ego also operates on subconscious levels. The ego looks out for the safety of the person, trying to balance the basic urges of the id with the higher demands of the superego. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that Freud frequently depicts the ego as being in conflict. This conflict between the higher demands of the superego and the base urges of the id manifest themselves in human beings in negative feelings like guilt, anxiety, and inferiority. For Freud's patients, the goal of psychoanalysis was to help mitigate some of these feelings and reconcile some of the differences between the id and the superego. Of course, human beings were able to reconcile these competing differences before the advent of psychoanalysis. They did so in a number of ways, which Freud referred to as defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms are subconscious ways that a person deals with the tension between the id and the superego. These defense mechanisms include: compensation, denial, displacement, fantasy, intellectualization, projection, rationalization, reaction formation, regression, repression, and sublimation (See generally Freud, 1989).

There are certainly numerous flaws in Freud's theory. First, he was working in a repressive time which did not allow him to focus more effort on uncovering the truthful reality behind the Oedipus complex, which many people assume was not fantasy-based but reflected childhood sexual abuse by his female patients that presented with neurosis. Moreover, Freud was limited by his source of subjects for study, which were generally relatively affluent white people. However, he was motivated to try to understand why so many of these people, who seemed to have their basic needs met, presented with such unhappiness and anxiety. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that for this group of people, who faced significant pressures to conform to societal norms and great consequences for failure to conform, the conflict between inner desires (the id) and societal mandates (the superego) became the central defining feature in Freudian psychoanalysis.

Contemporary Psychodynamic

As society moved away from the rigid social norms that existed when Freud was developing his theories of psychoanalysis, psychologists moved away from traditional psychoanalysis and began to investigate other ways to describe the human personality. Erik Erikson was not a Freudian, which differentiated him from many of his colleagues at the time. In fact, he did not have the formal medical or psychological educational background of many of his peers. Instead, he was a keen observer of the human condition. Though not a Freudian, he did look at Freud's theories and expand upon those ideas. His most significant change to classical Freudian psychoanalysis was in his conception of the new ego. Instead of looking at the ego as merely a mediator between the id and the outside world and the id and superego, he believed that the ego was the essence of conscious humanity. He looked at this ego as ego identity. In fact, to Erikson, the goal a person's development over their lifespan was to develop and maintain a personal identity. According to Erikson, "Ego identity, then, in its subjective aspect, is the awareness of the fact that there is a selfsameness and continuity to the ego's synthesizing methods and that these methods are effective in safeguarding the sameness and continuity of one's meaning for others" (Erikson, 1994, p.22, para. 3). Therefore, the ego simultaneously gives a person a sense of uniqueness and a sense of belonging.

Because the ego plays a role in synthesizing the individual with society, people with weaker egos are at risk. Those whose egos are not sufficiently developed are prone the identity crisis. An identity crisis refers to any point during a person's life when they are overwhelmed by feelings of uncertainty. Moreover, to Erikson, there are numerous opportunities for people to experience these crises. Like Freud, Erikson believed that neurotic (or unresolved) conflict was "not very different in content from conflicts which every child must live through in his childhood, and that every adult carries these conflicts with him in the recesses of his personality (Erikson, 1994, p. 52, para. 3). To Erikson, it is how the individual resolves those conflicts that determines his ego identity.

For Erikson, there were eight stages of psychosocial development, and each involves a conflict between two diametrically opposed conditions. These stages occur sequentially in the life of a person and successful resolution of a prior stage enables a person to successfully resolve later stages. The first stage occurs during infancy and involves trust vs. mistrust (Erikson, 1994, p.57, para.3). If an infant can trust its caregiver it gains confidence in the outside world, but if unable to trust the caregiver to meet basic needs, the infant becomes fearful of the outside world. Stage two occurs during toddler years and involves autonomy vs. shame and doubt and it focuses on toilet training and the acquisition of other basic forms of independence. "From a sense of self-control without loss of self-esteem comes a lasting sense of autonomy and pride; from a sense of muscular and anal impotence and loss of self-control, and of parental overcontrol comes a lasting sense of doubt and shame" (Erikson, 1994, p.70, para. 3- p.71, para. 1). Stage three occurs during the preschool years and focuses on initiative vs. guilt. It is during this time period that a child determines what kind of person he is going to be, and if he is able to make his own decisions without being criticized, he develops initiative (Erikson, 1994, p.78, para. 1). Stage four occurs prior to puberty examines industry vs. inferiority; children who are encouraged for showing initiative demonstrate industry, while those who are discouraged internalized feelings of interiority (Erikson, 1994, p.87, para.1). Stage five happens during adolescence and involves identity vs. role confusion and looks at who the child wants to be as an adult. Stage six occurs in early adulthood and is the conflict between intimacy and isolation, and helps determine the ability of the person to engage in intimate relationships without withholding from intimacy (Erikson, 1994, p.97, para. 2). Stage seven occurs in middle adulthood and is the conflict between generativity and stagnation and examines whether people achieve the objectives of work productivity, community involvement, establishing and maintaining romantic relationships, and family building (Erikson, 1994, p.103, para. 2). Finally, the eighth stage is ego integrity vs. despair, which is a period of looking back at life and examining whether a person has accomplished his life goals; if not, that person may slip into despair (Erikson, 1994, p.105, para.1).

There are certain strengths to Erikson's theory, and the idea of life stage development is one that recurs in later psychological theories. It takes a very orderly approach to life and suggests ways for people to resolve their struggles. In fact, it is a much more resolution-oriented approach than psychoanalysis, which, by struggling to integrate two diametrically-opposed forces, could continue indefinitely without reaching a resolution for the client. Moreover, Erikson seemed far more willing than Freud and the Freudians to acknowledge the very real possibility that parents might be actively and intentionally harmful to their children, thus impacting development at critical life stages. However, like the Freudians, Erikson was very concerned with the idea of conformity and with meeting certain expectations and different points in life being critical to a person's psychological health. In this way, his was a psychology of the normal, which is something that later theorists would find troubling.

Humanist-Existential

In fact, the idea of normalcy was one that pervaded the study of personality in the early history of the science, but that some theorists think is inappropriate. In fact, when contrasted with both psychoanalysts and behaviorists, it becomes clear that Abraham Maslow took a different approach to personality, though, in many respects, it is a throwback to the idea of the id, because it focuses on human needs. According to Maslow, human beings are driven and motivated by needs, some basic and others far more complex. Moreover, one cannot meet the higher needs unless the underlying needs are substantially met. Many people envision Maslow's hierarchy of needs as pyramid, with the most basic needs appearing at the bottom and supporting the development of the higher needs. According to Maslow, "Our godlike qualities rest upon and need our animal qualities" (Maslow, 1991, p.192, para. 1). The first level of need refers to the physiological needs such as oxygen, food, water, shelter, and sex. The second level of need refers to safety needs such as personal security, health, safety, personal well-being, and, in a market economy, can include the need for financial resources. The third level of need refers to the need for belonging and is satisfied with friendship, intimacy, and family, however, the drive for this particular need can override other basic drives, like the drive for safety, which can help drive social problems like domestic violence. The fourth level of need refers to the need for esteem, but self-esteem and acceptance by others. The fifth need is self-actualization, which is a movement towards human perfection, or being the most a person can be. Maslow was not content with the psychology of the normal because he believed that human beings had a need to be more than normal. According to him, "Certainly it seems more and more clear that what we call 'normal' in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily" (Maslow, 1991, p.21, para.1).

Existential and humanistic approaches to psychology are often considered together and Rollo May is considered the preeminent modern American existential psychologist. He builds upon traditional existentialist thought, borrowing from philosophy, and has a traditional focus on anxiety. However, he also incorporates the use of stages in his work, in a way that makes his existentialism more about personality than about philosophy. He discusses the emptiness of modern man and how this emptiness is the major psychological and philosophical crises of modern times (May, 2009, p.4, para. 1). Furthermore, this emptiness comes because people really lack self-awareness. "When they talk about lack of autonomy, or lament their inability to make decisions -- difficulties which are present in all decades- it soon becomes evident that their underlying problem is that they have no definite experience of their own desires or want. Thus they feel swayed this way and that, with painful feelings of powerlessness, because they feel vacuous, empty" (May, 2009, p.4, para.1). Moreover, this lack of self-awareness is counterintuitively intimately tied to people's needs to be linked to others; because the dominant values in society "are being liked, accepted and approved of, much anxiety in our day comes from the threat of not being liked, being isolated, lonely, or cast off" (May, 2009, p.25, para.1).

The humanist existentialist approach is a helpful one in that it can help explain why seemingly successful people can be so disenchanted with their lives. Is it enough to have success and the trappings of success if that success is not fulfilling a person's own desires? Are modern people raised to ignore their own wants so that they can meet societal expectations? Does shelving personal desire in order to fulfill needs create a vacuum inside a person? All of these issues are critical to the humanist/existentialist approach. What is interesting is that these approaches do help explain behavior that seems insane, even when committed by people who are seemingly mentally healthy, in part by pathologizing normalcy. Take, for example, a woman who kills her children in order to make herself more appealing to a man. For most people, this behavior seems abhorrent, but, when one looks at Maslow's needs hierarchy, it becomes clear that the woman places her need for love above the need for her children's safety. It removes the pathology from the scenario, which helps explain why seemingly rational people can do things that seem completely irrational.

Narrative

In fact, as personality psychology has developed, it has gone from Freud's careful study of the individual to develop a comprehensive theory to study the study of groups of people, and back to the study of the individual. Narrative personality psychology examines the individual story and how it interacts with the psychology of personality. Narrative psychology is as old as personality psychology; after all, Freud developed the principles of psychoanalysis by examining his patients' narratives. However, narrative theory, in its modern form, first began to emerge in the 1970s, when Tomkins proposed the script theory of personality, which "imagined the developing individual as something of a playwright who organizes emotional life in terms of salient scenes and recurrent scripts. In Tomkins' view, the most important individual differences in psychological life had little to do with basic traits or needs but instead referred to the particular kinds of affect-laden scenes and rule-generating scripts that individuals construct from their own experiences as they move through life" (McAdams, 2006, p.13, para. 3).

In the 1980s, Dan McAdams developed the life-story model of identity. According to him, "people being, in late adolescence and young adulthood, to construe their lives as evolving stories that integrate the reconstructed past and the imagined future in order to provide life with some semblance of unity and purpose (McAdams, 2006, p.13, para.3). Building upon his earlier work, McAdams focused on the three levels of personality and how the redemptive self personal life narrative illuminates personality psychology.

According to McAdams, Level 1 refers to dispositional traits. Dispositional traits "refer to those broad, linear, bipolar, comparative and decontextualized differences between people that go by such names as extraversion, depressiveness, friendliness, orderliness, playfulness, pugnacity, the tendency to seek out adventure, the tendency to feel vulnerable, and so on" (McAdams, 2006, p.15, para. 2). Level 2 refers to characteristic adaptations. "Characteristic adaptations are more particularized aspects of personality that are contextualized in time, place, or social role. Encompassing motivational, social-cognitive, and developmental concerns, they include characteristic motives, goals, strivings, interests, attitudes, values, coping skills, defense mechanisms, relational styles, social schemata, stage-specific concerns, and domain-specific patterns of response" (McAdams, 2006, p.15, para.3). Level 3 refers to integrative life stories and is where the personal narrative enters the picture. Integrative life stories "are those internalized and evolving self-narratives that people construct to make sense of their lives in time. Strongly shaped by culture, class, gender, and other contextual factors, life narratives are psychosocial constructions of the self- they are co-authored by persons and the social worlds wherein their lives make sense" (McAdams, 2006, p.16, para. 2).

At the start of the 21st century, McAdams and Jennifer Pals sought to expand upon McAdams narrative approach to personality and develop a five-point framework to examine the science of personality. Under this big five theory, "(1) an individual's unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as a developing pattern of (2) dispositional traits, (3) characteristic adaptations, and (4) self-defining life narratives, complexly and differentially situated in (5) culture and social context" (McAdams & Pals, 2006, p.204, para. 1).

Honestly, the narrative approach does not seem to provide significant information about the psychology of the individual. It seems like the least useful of the six major approaches, because it focuses on how a person sees himself. However, how a person frames himself within his own story might help define a personality, but also makes it very difficult to use narrative in a predictable manner. For example, it is well-known that serial killers exhibit a triad of markers: bed-wetting, animal cruelty, and pyromania. However, serial killers are studied far more than the average person in society. How prevalent are these characteristics in the non-serial killer population? That is the problem with the study of narratives; for the most part, for there to be a real interest in narratives, the person has to have done something exceptional, whether it is positive or negative. How do relatively normal people frame relatively normal events? Perhaps even more significant is: how to relatively normal people frame abnormal events?

Psychometric/Descriptive

To some modern psychologists, who seem to be channeling Skinner and the other early behaviorists, the idea of the personal narrative is simply too uncertain to be the basis of personality study because it cannot be used in groups. Some theorists, like John Digman, believe that personality is a construct that can essentially be measured and broken down into discrete elements. Digman did not create the Five Factor model, which had been developed by a variety of different theorists over the course of the 20th century, including Tupes and Cristal, Goldberg, Cattell, and Costa and McRae. Though all of these different researchers used different names for their traits, they consistently identified five factors in personality that were linked to the same traits. While Digman did not develop the Five Factor model, he did do a great job of synthesizing prior research and describing the model. Digman's describes the historical Five Factors and labels them as five different dimensions: (i) extraversion/introversion; (ii) friendliness/hostility (agreeableness); (iii) conscientiousness (will); (iv) neuroticism/emotional stability; and (v) intellect (openness) (Digman, 1990, p.484, para.4). Dimension I measures extraversion/introversion (Digman, 1990, p. 282, para. 6). Dimension ii involves "the more humane aspects of humanity characteristics such as altruism (Digman, 1990, p.282, para. 7). Dimension iii, which is conscientiousness or will is a difficult factor to capture; while it can refer to social responsibility, it can also refer to as a will to achieve (Digman, 1990, p. 424, para. 2). Dimension iv, which is neuroticism/emotional stability is measured by looking at an individual's negative emotionality (Digman, 1990, p.282, para. 6). Dimension v, which is openness or intellect is measured by looking at an individual's openness to feelings and new ideas, flexibility of thought, readiness to indulge in fantasy, cultural interests, and educational aptitude (Digman, 1990, p.424, para.3).

The study of these quantifiable traits is interesting, but imperfect. Using them, one is able to paint a broad picture of a person, and could probably predict how that person would act under a generic set of circumstances. However, the best and the worst of human behavior has consistently been revealed when people are acting under unusual circumstances. The traits or other characteristics used in a psychometric/descriptive approach to personality are simply too general to permit that type of prediction.

Conclusion

The study of the personality is complex, perhaps because the human personality is complex. The six different theoretical approaches to personality each have their own strengths and weaknesses. However, when one looks at them as a group, it is easier to highlight the weaknesses of each approach. Why are people unique? Why are people the same? Those two questions are at the foundation of the study of human personality. In many ways, each individual human being has such a unique history that it would be plausible for them not to share any characteristics with other humans. In other ways, the human experience is so universal for most people that the tremendous variety in human personality is mind-boggling. The reality is that none of the theories can describe every variation in human personality. However, particularly when used together, they can help a person develop a better understanding of their fellow humans, which is the heart of the study of psychology.