Development of Personality

Running head: Development of personality
DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY

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Development of personality
Personality refers to the patterns of cognitions, behaviors and emotions that are the
grounds of someone’s character. This personality can be evolved from environmental and
biological factors. There are many psychological theories that deal with human personality but
two of the most significant personality theories have been proposed by Sigmund Freud and
Eysenck.
According to Freud, human personality evolves from the experiences of the early
childhood stage. He said so because for him personality is something that is the byproduct of
human experiences that we face at each and every developmental stage. So, it can be said that
physical developmental stages are interconnected with the mental or psychological
developmental stages which collaboratively creates one’s holistic personality (Cooper, 2015). As
per the doctrines of Freud, there are five developmental stages in human life including oral, anal,
phallic, latency and genital stage. While saying so, Freud mentioned that these stages are
interlinked with three levels of mind that include ego, super ego and Id.
Without going into details of these stages, it can be said that individuals go through the
above mentioned stages while going through the three levels of human mind simultaneously. As
a result, conflicts arise at every stage and thus it is possible that an individual becomes incapable
of completing one developmental stage with ease. Hence, the effect of that lack of development
will be reflected on the personality of that person (Cooper, 2015). In other words, human beings
face two kinds of challenges from their childhood stages when they are in the constant battle
with social expectations and biological drives. Consequently, personality is generated from that
battle of conflicts. Unconsciousness is the key to his theory of personality because he believes
that human beings unconsciously either wins the battles or loses them.
Then another person comes into the picture that gave the notion of dimensions to the idea
of human personality and denied to see them as traits. These dimensions are extraversion-
introversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. Again without explaining all of them, it is better to
say that these are the forbearers of different kinds of human personality traits that make people
who they are. For example, extroversion has a set of personality traits such as restlessness,
excitement, activeness, optimism, aggression and more. On the other hand, introversion consists
of the traits such as rigidity, moodiness, anxiety, pessimism and so on (Fabrigar & Wegener,