This document summarizes several theories of personality, including: 1. Sigmund Freud's psychodynamic theory involving the id, ego, and superego. 2. Alfred Adler's theory of individual psychology focusing on inferiority feelings and compensation. 3. Carl Jung's analytical psychology involving archetypes, complexes, and the collective unconscious. 4. Erik Erikson's stage theory of psychosocial development known as the epigenetic principle. 5. Trait theories that view personality as composed of definite traits that differ between individuals. 6. Type theories that classify personalities based on body structures and temperaments.

1. THEORIES OF
PERSONALITY
PRESENTER: Dr. BRIDGIT JOHN
CHAIR: Dr. A. B.BASHEERKUTTY

2. PERSONALITY
• Allport defined: personality is a dynamic
organisation with in the individual of those psycho-
Physical systems that determine his unique
adjustment to his environment.
• According to Eysenck personality is the more or less
stable and enduring organisation of a persons
character, temperament, intellect and physique
which determine his unique adjustment to the
environment.

3. TOPOGRAPHICAL MODEL OF THE
MIND
• Sigmund Freud
• Mind has three regions.
1. The conscious system
2. The preconscious system
3. The unconscious system

4. THE CONCIOUS SYSTEM
■ Perceptions coming from outside world or from within or from within body or
mind brought into awareness.
■ Attention cathexis
■ Content can be communicated only by means of language or behaviour.

5. THE PRECONSCIOUS
■ Composed of those mental events, process, contents, that can be brought into
conscious awareness by the act of focussing attention.
■ To reach conscious awareness, contents of the unconscious must become
linked with words and thus become preconscious.

6. THE UNCONSCIOUS SYSTEM
■ It is the sum total of all mental contents and process at any given moment
outside the range of conscious awareness, including the preconscious.
■ The dynamic unconscious is thought to be regulated by demands of primary
process and the pleasure principals.
■ The contents of the unconscious can become conscious only by passing through
the preconscious.
■ Content is limited to wishes seeking fulfilment.

7. PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORY
■ Sigmund Freud
■ His approach to explain personality was psychodynamic in nature.
■ Hidden or unconscious forces motivate man much more than once own
conscious and rational thought.
■ Much of behaviour is motivated by inner forces, memories and conflicts of
which a person has little awareness or control.
■ They stem from ones childhood and influence behaviour throughout the life
span.

9. ID
■ Raw, savage and immoral basic stuff of a mans personality that is hidden in
the deep layers of ones unconscious mind.
■ Consist of such ambitions, desires, tendencies and appetite of an individual as
guided by pleasure seeking principle.
■ It has no values, follows no rules, does not consider right from wrong.
■ It energised by two instinctual forces:
1. Life instinct
2. Death instinct
■ The instinctual life force that energises ID is called libido.

10. EGO
■ It spans all three topographical dimension of conscious, preconscious and
unconscious.
■ It function as a policemen to check the unlawful activities of the ID.
■ It follows the principle of reality.

11. SUPER EGO
■ It is ethical moral arm of personality.
■ Perfection is its goal rather than pleasure.
■ It is idealistic and does not care for realities.
■ It is decision making body which decides what is bad or good according to the
standard of society which it accepts.

14. ALFRED ADLER(1870- 1939)
■ Individual Psychology
■ Corner stone: moving from a sense of inferiority to a sense of
mastery.
■ Main concepts:
1. Fictional finalism
2. Striving for superiority
3. Inferiority feeling and compensation
4. Social interest
5. Style of life

15. CARL GUSTAV JUNG(1875- 1962)
■ Analytical psychology
■ Criticized the psychosexual stages of development by Freud
■ Ultimate goal is to achieve – individuation – a process continuing
throughout the life whereby persons develop a unique sense of
their own identity.
■ He divided personality into 3 components:
1. The Ego- the unconscious mind.
■ Responsible for one’s feeling of identity and continuity.
2. The personal unconscious – the store house of personal experience

16. 3. The collective unconscious
■ It is one of the most original and controversial features of Jung’s theory.
■ He believed that memory of common experiences pass from generation to generation
through genes.
■ Collective unconscious is a store house of latent memory traces inherited from one’s
ancestral past

17. COMPLEXES
Groups of unconscious ideas associated with particular emotionally toned events or
experiences
ARCHETYPES
Complexes are connected to structures embedded more deeply in the psychic apparatus
■ Persona – the role a person plays in order to meet the demands of society an expresses
the inner most feeling in an acceptable way.
■ Shadow – represents the interior evil of person.
■ The Self – the persons inner potential and strivings.
■ The Anima – female nature in a male personality.
■ The Animus – masculine characteristic in a female personality.

18. PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
Jung’s theory of psychological types has 3 axes:
1. The extroversion- introversion polarity.
i) Extroverts – generally realistic and practical.
■ Their energy flows outward first then inward.
ii) Introverts – they are oriented to their inner world (imaginative).
■ Their energy flows first inward and then to outer reality.
2. The sensation – intuition polarity
■ Concerns – perception
3. The thinking – feeling polarity
■ Deals with information processing and judgment

19. ERIK ERIKSON (1902- 1994)
■ Epigenetic principle

20. HARRY STACK SULLIVAN
■ Defined personality relatively enduring pattern of interpersonal
relations which characterise a human life.
■ Sullivan’s theory is fundamentally based on needs and anxiety.
■ Needs
i) Needs for satisfaction – includes physical and emotional needs.
ii) Needs for security- need to avoid, prevent/ reduce anxiety.
■ Self system- defined by Sullivan as the dynamism that is responsible
for avoiding or reducing anxiety.
■ It is divided into 3 parts:
i) Good me
ii) Bad me
iii) Not me

21. KAREN HORNEY (1885- 1952)
■ Holistic psychology
■ Person needs to be seen as a unitary whole who influences, and is
influenced by the environment.
■ She proposed three separate concepts of the self:
1. The actual self – sum total of a persons experience.
2. The real self – the harmonious healthy person.
3. The idealised self – the neurotic expectation or glorified image
that a person feels he or she should be.

22. ■ Basic anxiety
1. Primary theoretical concept of Horney.
2. The persons pride system alienates him/ her from the real self.
■ Basic Hostility

23. NEUROTIC NEEDS
■ Horney presented a list of 10 neurotic needs.
1. Neurotic needs for affection and approval
2. Neurotic need for partner, who will take over one’s life
3. Neurotic need to restrict one’s life within narrow borders
4. Neurotic need for power
5. The neurotic need
6. The neurotic need for prestige
7. Neurotic need for personal admiration
8. Neurotic need for personal achievement
9. Neurotic need for self sufficiency and independence
10. Neurotic need for perfection and unassailability

24. TYPE THEORIES
■ Personalities can be classified on the basis of body structures, blood types and
behavioural characterics
1. Hippocrate’s:
FLUID PERSONALITY TYPE TEMPARAMENTAL
CHARACTERISTICS
BLOOD SANGUINE CHEERFUL, OPTIMISTIC
YELLOW BILE CHOLERIC IRRITABLE, ANGRY, EXCITABLE
PHLEGM(MUCUS) PHLEGMATIC COLD, CALM
BLACK BILE MELANCHOLIC SAD, PESSIMISTIC,DEPRESSED

25. 2. KRETSCHEMER’S TYPE
■ Close relationship between one’s body structure and personality.
PYKNIC FAT BODIES SOCIABLE, JOLLY, EASY
GOING AND GOOD NATURED
ATHLETIC BALANCED BODY ENERGETIC, OPTIMISTIC AND
ADJUSTIBLE
LEPTOSOMATIC LEAN AND THIN UNSOCIABLE, RESERVED, SHY,
SENSITIVE AND PESSIMISTIC

26. 3. WILLIAM SHELDON
ENDOMORPHIC EASY GOING , SOCIABLE
MESOMORPHIC SELFASSERTIVE, LOVES ADVENTURE
ECTOMORPHIC PESSIMISTIC, UNSOCIABLE, RESERVED

27. TRAIT THEORIES
■ Personality is composed of definite predispositional attributes called traits.
■ A trait is defined as any distinguishable and relatively enduring way in which
one individual differ from another.

28. ALLPORT’S TRAIT THEORY
■ Personality formation begins at birth and is based on a persons biological endowments
and experiences.
1. Cardinal traits: can be identified in every aspects of person’s behaviour.
2. Central traits: less pervasive traits that influx some aspects of a person’s behaviour.
3. Secondary traits: come into play in some particular situations.

29. CATELL’S THEORY
■ Four types
1. Common traits: eg. Sympathy and honesty
2. Unique traits: unique to person like patience and courage.
3. Surface traits: certain qualities visible in a person’s words and deeds.eg. Truthfulness
4. Source traits: stable, considered as building blocks of personality.

30. REFERENCES
■ Kaplan and Saddock’s comprehensive textbook of psychiatry.
■ Psychology for B.Sc.(Nursing) by Dr. A.B. Kutty
■ General psychology by S.K.Mangal

31. THANK YOU