Each individual human has a unique thing about them that makes them who they are. Although individuals have different physical characteristics that may set them apart from the rest of the population, it can be argued that there is a more important factor that makes individuals unique from others: personality.
Personality is an individual’s characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting. Everyone has a distinct personality that sets them apart from everyone else. Our personality develops due to our efforts to deal with conflicts between our biological impulses and social restraints. The mind is seen as an iceberg, most of it is mostly hidden and lives in the unconscious mind. According to Freud, he believed that personality formed during the first few years of life that are divided into psychosexual stages. These stages include, oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
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In order to evaluate someone’s personality projective tests are used to understand the form of the unconscious mind. The most common projective test that is used is the Rorschach inkblot test. This test seeks to identify someone’s inner feeling by analyzing their interpretations of the blots. According to The Rorschach Inkblot Test: An interpretive guide for clinicians, Choca asserts that the test was used to discover what a practitioner what to know about a person, he also downplays the blots as communication of perceptions. Another test that is used is the thematic apperception test (TAT). This test was developed by Henry Murray in 1943 and is used for people to express their inner feelings about interests through stories they make up about ambiguous scenes. The TAT test is used to measure deeper layers of someone’s personality. (Dhar & Mishra, 2014) TAT is a projective test that is used to estimate a person’s patterns of attitudes, deliberation, observational capacity, and emotional responses to uncertain test materials. During the test the patient is shown a set of picture cards and is asked to create a story based on them, emotional responses should be described to determine personality traits. The Meyers-Briggs Type indicator is another test that is bases on Jung’s sequence of four cognitive functions, they determine that personality can be measured on four continuums. Those include extroversion/introversion, sensation/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. Everyone has all these characteristics to a greater or lesser degree. Jung and Myers believed that each person has certain inborn characteristics. (Hubbell, 1991). Although projective tests are used critics argue that they lack reliability and validity.
Through modern research in evaluating the psychoanalytic perspective, research has shown that personality develops throughout life and is not completed during childhood. Freud also discussed how peer influence has a major impact on an individual just as much if not more than parental influence. This theory rests on the repression of painful experiences into the unconscious mind. Painful experiences play a hug role in early childhood, and the majority of children are unable to repress those painful experiences into their unconscious mind. With the unconscious mind, there may be other reasons for dreams besides wish fulfillment.
Maslow proposed that we as individuals are motivated by the hierarchy of needs. It begins with physiological needs, as we try to reach the state of self-actualization which helps fulfill our potential. Self-actualization refers to the need for personal growth and development that is present and exists throughout someone’s life (Tripathi & Moakumla, 2018). Individuals search for higher needs when their lower level needs are fulfilled. The highest level of needs can only be reached by individuals that are mentally strong and practice self-actualization in a healthy manner. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a motivational theory that is made to try to understand the motivational instinct in humans. Humans are driven and stimulated to achieve certain needs and some needs are more important as others. Once one level is achieved the next level activates and it stimulates the human instincts to reach those next needs. Carl rogers also believed in these needs and self-actualization tendencies. He came up with unconditional positive regard which is an attitude of acceptance of others despite their failing. When assessing personality, Rogers asked people to describe themselves as they would like to be seen and as they actually are, this helps explain self-concept, which refers to all the thoughts and feelings about ourselves. These thoughts and feelings include many things. A few of these things are beliefs about the individual and how others respond to those beliefs and actions.
A person’s personality is composed of a unique constellation of durable dispositions and consistent way of behaving, or traits, which constitutes that person’s personality. Each personality is made up of multiple traits. Each personality has five major factors that all relate to each other in some way: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. One of these factors is openness. Openness simply means one’s attitude and responses to a huge variety of stimuli. These could include how a person responds to someone else’s beliefs and ideas. The second factor that determines a personality is conscientiousness. Conscientiousness refers to a person’s ability to plan. Different people have different ways of accomplishing tasks or going about day to day life. A person might be a very thorough planner and stick to his schedule accordingly whereas on the other end of the spectrum another individual might be completely spontaneous and adventurous. Neither one of these is right or wrong, which makes people across the world have a wide variety of personalities that can all be brought back to the same basic principles. The next factor is extraversion. This is one of the more common factors. While taking personality determining tests such as the Myers-Briggs assessments, the number one distinguishing factor of one’s personality is whether or not the individual is extraverted or introverted. Extraverted individuals thrive off of social settings. These individuals tend to find their energy in settings where many people are present, and many stimuli are being presented. One the opposite side of this, introverted people thrive in settings where they can find quietness and have time to themselves. However, introverted people do not always like to be by themselves contrary to popular belief. Highly social settings just tend to drain them more than add energy to their lives. The next factor that determines a personality is agreeableness. Agreeableness is a person’s ability to show kindness and selflessness to others. For example, some people have very giving and kind personalities that make them easy to get along with. On the other hand, other people with different personalities might come off as rude and selfish. The last factor that determines personalities is neuroticism. This refers to a person’s inclination to be anxious or nervous. There isn’t much to this specific factor besides making each individual more inclined to worry and be anxious about more things than those with different personalities. Although these all determine a person’s personality, none of these are positive or negative traits. Just because two people are different, their personality traits make them who they are.
In conclusion, each and every person that is alive today has a personality unique to the individual. Although two people are alike, they are not identical when it comes to personality. Through research and studies, personality is said to develop in the early stages of life when an individual begins to mature (psychosexual stages). However, personality does not stop developing in childhood years; personality development continues into adulthood. There are many tests that are used to determine personality such as the Rorschach inkblot test and the Myers-Briggs tests as well. Personality is also determined by many different factors that are all related to each other in one way or the other. An individual’s personality is what makes him/her unique; the more we understand personality, the more we are able to understand the human race in general.
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