Understanding Personalities - Essay

Understanding Personalities - Essay

  • Submitted By: clamon4
  • Date Submitted: 01/05/2011 7:09 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 745
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 1

Understanding Personality

CNSL 506

Understanding Personality

It is important for a counselor to determine personality before he/she can define who you are. There are many personality traits and it cannot be determined that just one fits all. In order to receive proper counseling the personality has to be established for each individual. It is believed that there are thousands of different personalities and 11 different counseling styles. There are many factors that determine ones personality: personality dynamics, cognitive processes, cultural influences, and environmental influences.
Personality derives from the Latin persona and means mask and it was a principle used to represent or characterize a character. Today, personality is known as the underlying cause within a person that explains a person’s behavior and experience. Personality is a dynamic and organized set of characteristics that is possessed by a person that uniquely influences his or her cognitions, motivations, and behaviors in various situations (Cloninger). Personalities can be positive as well as negative and it is difficult to place a person in one category. Each of us creates our own personality and it is up to the individual to take actions and make decisions that suit one’s life.
Personalities consist of traits that people possess and what makes them different from each other: type, trait, and factor approach. The type approach is a personality which appears only in a partial numbers of various categories. According to this view, a person will only belong to one category. Only a small number of categories are used to describe people and therefore we can presume that these are qualitative. As an example, we can think about the psychological approach of extravert vs. introvert, or political view: liberal vs. conservatives.
The trait approach is a measurement of traits. These traits are defined as habitual patterns of emotions, thoughts, and behavior. Traits are...

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