Personality Theory: A Comparison of Freud and Carl Roger's Theories

This article compares the personality theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers. It discusses the impact of the unconscious mind and self-concept on motivation and behavior.

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Psychology
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The personality theory is one of the most essential and prominent platform among the
concept of the personality psychology (Gross, 2015). As per the theory of personality, traits
or personality is made up of number of broad traits that is a relatively stable characteristics
that tends to cause the individual for behaving in some of the certain ways.
The theory of personality by Sigmund Freud highlights the psychoanalytic model
regarding the development of the personality arguing the three fundamental structures
through which the personality of an individual is formed. These include the id, the ego and
the superego. The theory by Freud illustrates the development of the personality through the
psychosexual stages of development from the childhood (Freud, 2018). His structural theory
regarding the personality emphasized greater importance regarding the conflicts among the
mind, the behaviour and the personality of an individual.
The humanistic theory of personality by Roger emphasize on the essentiality and the
importance regarding the tendency of the self-actualization towards the development of the
self-concept (Weiner & Greene, 2017). Carl Roger developed his theories on the basis of the
personality development regarding the humanistic psychology and the theories related to the
subjective experiences. According to the theory of the Roger, all the behaviour is motivated
by the tendencies related to self-actualization that tends to drive an individual towards the
achievement of their highest level.
The role of the unconscious mind and the self-concept plays an important role relating
to one’s motivation and action. Freud in his theory of personality emphasized on the
essentiality of the unconscious mind. One of the primary assumption of the theory by Freud
includes the classification that the unconscious mind governs the nature towards a greater
level as compared to the rate of the suspecting by the people. According to Freud,
unconscious mind plays an important role in the psychoanalysis dividing the mind in ego or

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the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. In relation to one’s action and motivation,
Freud analysis divided the level of the consciousness in three of the major level of awareness
which are the conscious, preconscious and unconscious.
With the analysis of the evidences and the psychological literature from both the
theories in discussion, the theory of personality by Freud and that of the Carl Roger, it has
been evident that the psychoanalytical theory of personality by Freud have much more impact
on the personality of the individual (Schultz & Schultz, 2016). This is because, the theory of
the personality states the context of the unconscious mind that includes the factors such as
urges, thoughts, feelings, memories which are outside the awareness. According to theory of
the personality by Freud, the unconscious mid plays a very essential role that influences the
experiences and the behaviour of the individual even in case of unawareness of the
underlying influences (Dominic et al., 2018). The theory by Carl Roger is not that impactful
towards the individual’s personality since the theory is strictly defined towards the opinions,
the totality of the beliefs, the preferences and the attitudes of individual towards personal
existence. The theory strictly follows the components of self-actualisation and factors related
to personal identity which varies as per the congruency of the individual’s actual behaviour.

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Reference
Dominic, W., Saskia, R., Nicole, S., Russell, W., & Danielle, M. (2018). Motivation: A
Critical Consideration of Freud and Rogers’ Seminal Conceptualisations. Polish
Psychological Bulletin.
Freud, A. (2018). The unconscious. In The Harvard Lectures(pp. 5-19). Routledge.
Gross, R. (2015). Psychology: The science of mind and behaviour 7th edition. Hodder
Education.
Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2016). Theories of personality. Cengage Learning.
Weiner, I. B., & Greene, R. L. (2017). Handbook of personality assessment. John Wiley &
Sons.