Freud's Theory of Personality

### Presentation Outline

• Module 1: Introduction to Personality Development
• Module 2: Human Development (bio-psycho-social framework) and Ecological Framework
• Module 3: Core Social Work Concepts and Introduction to the Theory of Human Behavior
• Module 4: Psycho-Dynamic, Psycho-Analysis and Socio-Cultural Theories
• Module 5: Cognitive Behavioral Theories (Watson, Pavlov, Skinner, Piaget)

### Personality Development

• dynamic organization – personality is constantly evolving and changing. A newborn infant lacks personality because his or her behavior keeps on changing. An infant's personality is influenced by heredity and by the surrounding condition. Personality development begins at birth and unfolds gradually until death.
• psychophysical – personality is neither exclusively mental nor exclusively neural. The organization entails the operation of both body and mind. People's functions include vegetative, sentient, and rational functions.
• determine – personality is what lies behind specific acts. It is within the individual. A person is not simply a passive reactor to the environment but does something about it.
• characteristic behavior and thoughts – the revised definition of personality considers all behaviors and thoughts, whether or not they are related to adaptation to the environment.

### Personality

• An individual's patterns of behavior or the characteristic expression of himself. It refers to the total individual and includes needs, motives, methods of adjusting, temperament qualities, self-concept, role behaviors, attitudes, values, and abilities.

### What is Personality?

• Pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person's behavior.
• The dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to the environment.
• Which defines what a person will do when faced with a defined situation.
• An individual's unique variation on the general evolutionary design for human nature, expressed as developing pattern of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptation, and integrative life stories complexity and differentially situation in culture.

### Definitions of Personality by Psychologists

• Personality is that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation. (Cattell, 1950)
• Personality is a person's unique pattern of traits (Guilford, 1959)
• Personality is more or less stable and enduring organization of a person's character, temperament, intellect and physique which determines his/her unique adjustment to the environment (Eysenck, 1970)

### Nature of Man

• Personality includes both structure and dynamics. Personality is viewed in terms of both the parts and the relationship among the parts of a system;
• Personality is ultimately defined in terms of behavior; and
• Personality manifests consistencies in individuals and in group of individuals.

### Physical Environment

• Culture refers to the knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, etc., that constitute the way of life of a people or society.
• The physical environment has two aspects: (1) the natural environment, which makes demands, sets constraints and provides resources (e.g., climate, topography, amount of rainfall and ozone levels); and (2) constructed environments such as homes, offices, and hospitals, which can have psychological effects (e.g., very limited space, no windows, poor ventilation, and seating arrangements that prevent interaction).

### Personality Theories and Human Development

• Totality of the individual psychic qualities such as temperament, traits, one's mode of reaction and character.
• A stable and enduring organization of a person's character, temperament, intellect, physique which determines his/her unique adjustment to his/her environment.
• Individual's unique constellation of consistent behavioral traits.
• According to Allport, personality is the dynamic organization of traits within the self that determines the individual's unique way of playing his social roles.

### Module 2: Human Development

• Bio-Psycho-Social Model:
  • Bio: Genes, Nutrition, Physiological Activities, Brain Changes,
  • Psycho: Emotions, Behaviors, Reactions, Personality, Thoughts,
  • Social: Social Support, Stress, Trauma, Environment
• Biological, Psychological, and Socio-cultural Forces: This concept acknowledges that human development is influenced by a combination of biological factors (such as genetics, brain development, and hormones), psychological factors (such as cognitive processes, emotions, and personality), and socio-cultural factors (such as family, peers, education, and cultural norms). These forces interact with each other dynamically throughout a person's lifespan.

### Five Ecological Concepts

• Microsystem: immediate environments and relationships (family, peers, school, and community).
• Mesosystem: interconnections between microsystems (e.g., family dynamics, school experiences).
• Exosystem: external settings that indirectly influence development (e.g., government policies, community organizations.)
• Macrosystem: broader cultural, societal, and historical contexts (e.g., cultural norms, beliefs.)
• Chronosystem: the dimension of time and how historical changes and life transitions impact individuals.

### Module 1: Introduction to Personality Development

• The origin of personality comes from the word "persona", theatrical masks worn by Romans in Greek and Latin dramas.
• Personality also comes from the two Latin words "per" and "sonare", which literally means "to sound through".
• This concept extends to Jung's component of "persona", meaning "public image", which refers to the role expected by social or cultural convention.
• In 1937, Gordon Allport defined personality as “what a man really is".
• In 1961, Allport defined personality as a dynamic organization within an individual of the psychophysical system that determines his/her characteristic behaviors and thoughts.

### Methods of Assessing Personality

• First Impression: gives some people a clue to the pattern of the observed individual. The initial impression of the individual influences the expectations of others. This expectation influences his/her behaviour.
• Three Pseudo-scientific Methods
  • Physiognomy: judging personality through a person's physical features (most specifically facial features).
  • Phrenology: judging personality by the size and shape of the skull
  • Graphology: judging personality through handwriting
• Scientific Methods of Assessing Personality
  • Disagreement regarding the components of personality
  • The tendency to fake responses so as to present oneself in a more favorable light.
• Three Common Methods of Assessing Personality:
  • Objective Tests: written self-rating tests, e.g., questionnaires answered with yes or no or true/false.
  • Interview: face to face interaction for a specific purpose.
  • Life History method: biographical or auto-biographical techniques, diary or anecdotal issues.
• Projective Techniques
  • Word Association
  • Sentence Completion
  • Thematic Perception Test
  • Rorschach Inkblot Test
  • Expressive Technique
• Word Association: the oldest method in which the subject is asked to respond to some stimuli with the first word that comes to mind.
• Sack Sentence Completion: consists of 60 incomplete sentences. The instruction is to complete the sentences with the first thing that comes to the subject's mind.
• Thematic Perception Test: consists of 20 pictures.
• Rorschach Inkblot Test: consists of 10 ink blot pictures with the instruction to describe what the blot looks like and what it might be. The responses are recorded in three bases: location, determinant, and content.
• Expressive Technique: a type of projective test; assessed through self expression. The types are: Drawing Test (Machover Draw a Person Test) and Toy Test( using dolls and puppets)

### Temperament

• Descriptions of the four temperaments- Choleric (Right Cerebral), Sanguine (Right Limbic), Melancholic (Left Limbic), and Phlegmatic (Left Cerebral). Descriptions include the types of action each temperament takes.

### Personality Development

• Definition of Personality:
  • The origin of personality comes from the word &persona"; theatrical masks.
  • Personality results from the two Latin words “per" and “sonare”, "to sound through".
• In 1937, Gordon Allport defined personality as "what a man really is”.
• In 1961, Allport redefined it as a dynamic organization within an individual of the psychophysical system that determines his or her characteristic behaviors and thoughts.

Myers-Briggs

• The Myers-Briggs test was created by a mother-daughter team based off of Carl Jung's work.
• The test aims to bring Jung's theories to the public to provide personality matches for social and work environments.
• The test is now a more popularly accepted interpretation of Jung's theory.
• The test was intended to bring everyday applications of Jung's work to the public in order to provide personality matches for social and work environments.
• The test was a new interpretation of Jung's theory and added to it by including how people deal with the outside world.
• There have been over 600 dissertations written about the study and 1000's of articles and books.

### The Test

• Favorite World: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or your own inner world? (Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I))
• Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interrupt and add meaning? (Sensing (S) or Intuition (N))
• Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? (Thinking (T) or Feeling (F))
• Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? (Judging (J) or Perceiving (P))

### Theories of Social Work

• Theories of social work explain the nature and role of social work in society.
• Theories of social work describe which activities constitute social work, describe aims for social work activities, and explain why those activities are relevant and effective to meet the aims.
• Theories of social work explore the psychological, social, and general social science behind social work and provide evidence for social work's prescriptions.
• Theories of social work practice describe how the other theories are applied to worker and client interactions.

### Practice Perspectives, Practice Theories, and Practice Models

• Practice Perspectives: ways of viewing social functioning and important considerations in a social work practice situation. Two popular perspectives include general systems perspectives and ecosystems perspectives.
• Practice Theories: offer both an explanation for behaviours and insight on how behaviours can change. Psychodynamic theory and ego psychology can both be used as practice theories.
• Practice Models: provide guiding concepts and principles for intervention activities including the medical model (diagnosing, treating) and the legal model (social action, client advocacy which includes competition).

### Why Theories are necessary to Social Workers

• Necessary as a well-studied foundation, to accurately plan changes and help strategies are executed as clients' needs and interests.
• Understanding personality helps the Social Workers interact and engage with individuals because it is a fact that people are different and have various learning styles.
• Having an understanding of personality and learning styles of individuals in your organization can generate a productive and pleasant place to work.
• Theories can help to make sense of a situation. Using theory you can generate ideas about what is going on, or why situations are the way they are. For example, information gathered during an assessment can seem like a jumble of information; but by applying theory, it helps to ‘make sense’ of the information.
• Using theory is important in justifying your actions and explaining your practice to service users, carers, and society. The aim is that this will lead to social work becoming more widely accountable and ultimately more respected as a profession by society.

### Five Factors Influencing Identity Development

• Social Factors: unique experiences and challenges each individual faces.
• Political Factors: policies, laws, and governance structures perpetuate or challenge social inequalities.
• Economic Factors: economic situation significantly influences identity, life chances, and access to resources.
• Cultural Factors: norms, values, beliefs, and practices influence belonging, expression, and experiences of discrimination or acceptance.
• Sexual Factors: sexual orientation, gender identity, and sexuality intersect with other social identities, affecting identity development.

Stages of Psychosexual Development

• Personality is mostly established by the age of five. Early experiences play a large role in personality development and continue to influence behavior later in life.
• Personality develops through a series of childhood stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain erogenous areas.
• Fixation – a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage until the conflict is resolved and the individual will remain ‘stuck in this stage’.

Levels of Mental Life

• Unconscious: drives and instincts beyond awareness, motivations, and behaviour.
• Preconscious: images and thoughts not in awareness but accessible with effort.
• Conscious: everyday awareness, perceptions, or logical thought.