Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality Assessment

Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality Assessment

  • Submitted By: mslorib
  • Date Submitted: 03/03/2010 9:54 AM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 1649
  • Page: 7
  • Views: 1

Running head: Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality Assessment

Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality Assessment
Name
Tutor
Course

Date

Psychoanalytic and Trait Approaches to Personality Assessment
Personality is an important aspect in the study of the broad field of psychology. Many theories and approaches have been advanced to explain human personality and try to understand why people behave the way they do and not otherwise. Examples of such personality theories include; Psychoanalytic, Neo-Freudian, Biological, Cognitive, Behavioral/Social, and Humanistic theory. This paper seeks to compare and contrast two major personality theories; the Psychoanalytic and Trait theories. It will also describe the oral and anal components of Freud’s theory and use it to explain the personality characteristics. This work will further describe some of the Freudian defense mechanisms and cite real-life examples. More so, I will use the Big five factors to state the ones that describe me best and the least. At the end, the paper will highlight the theory that I feel describes my personality the best.
These two personality theories differ first in their definition and their approaches to the understanding of human personality. The psychoanalytic theory was advanced by Sigmund Freud. Other psychoanalytic theorists derived from his work. He conceived the structural model where personality is composed of three elements. The first element is the Id, the Ego, and the third is the Superego and these works together to produce complex and unique behaviors (Abbott, 2001). According to Freud, the Id component is natural and one is born with it. It consists of primitive and instinctive behaviors which seeks to satisfy all the wants, desires and other needs that must be met or result in tension and anxiety. The ego is the element which develops from the id and it checks the impulses of the Id. According to...

Similar Essays