Development of Personality: Comparing Freud and Eysenck's Perspectives

This essay provides a comparative analysis of Sigmund Freud's and Eysenck's theories on personality development. Freud's theory emphasizes the role of early childhood experiences and unconscious processes, outlining five developmental stages (oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital) interconnected with the ego, super ego, and Id. Conflicts during these stages shape personality. Eysenck, on the other hand, proposes that personality is based on dimensions like extraversion-introversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism, which lead to personality types such as melancholic, choleric, phlegmatic, and sanguine. The key difference lies in Freud's focus on the unconscious and developmental stages, while Eysenck emphasizes conscious dimensions and the potential for abrupt personality development at any point in life. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a wealth of study resources for students.

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,

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Development of personality
2011). So, human beings can either show a high level of extroversion or a high level of
introversion or the vice versa. On the other hand, there can also be personality type which shows
the balanced state between these two above mentioned personality dimensions (Fabrigar &
Wegener, 2011). After the assessment of the position of human personalities on the basis of these
dimensions, four concrete personality types can emerge such as melancholic, choleric,
phlegmatic and sanguine.
Thus, the difference between the two theories lies in the fact that Freud gives importance
to unconsciousness whereas Eysenck gives importance to consciousness while discussing human
personality. On the other hand, Freud analyzed the role of emergence of personality as linked
with human development whereas for Eysenck, personality has no logical and systematic
connection with one’s development and can emerge or develop at any point of human life
abruptly.

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Development of personality
Reference list
Cooper, C. (2015). Individual differences and personality. Routledge. 43-305.
Fabrigar, L. R., & Wegener, D. T. (2011). Exploratory factor analysis. Oxford University Press.
19-38.