Understanding Personality: Factors, Development, and Freud's Theory

**Principles of Personality**

An individual's personality comprises attributes that represent ongoing behavior. These attributes may be acquired through unique personal experiences or shared experiences with others. They can also result from hereditary influence or the interaction of heredity and environment.

**General Factors Influencing Personality**

Regardless of the theory proposed to explain personality, two general factors influence its development: a person's experiences within their environment and the individual's hereditary basis.

**Environmental Experience**

Experiences within a person's surrounding environment can significantly affect the development of personality characteristics. These experiences can be unique to an individual or common to many people.

**Hereditary Effects**

The particular genetic pattern established at conception affects the personality characteristics a person will develop later. Inherited brain damage or birth defects can have a pronounced influence on behavior. In addition, other organic factors such as height, weight, skin color, and the functioning of sensory organs can all affect personality development.

**Interaction of Heredity and Environment**

Several personality attributes result from the combined effects of heredity and environment. In most cases, it is difficult or impossible to assign a percentage of importance to the influences of one over the other, but it is easy to see that the two interact.

**Research on the Effects of Inheritance and Environment**

Psychologists have attempted to determine the relative effects of heredity and environment on personality development. In general, it appears that a closer relationship between two people makes it more likely that their personality characteristics will be similar. However, this trend is affected by environmental circumstances. Thus, identical twins reared together probably have more similar patterns of conduct than identical twins reared apart, although the latter will have more similar behavior than those who are not twins.

**Freud's Motivation Theory of Personality**

The famous theory of personality developed from the work of Sigmund Freud, the Viennese doctor. In his theory, Freud emphasized the concept of mental illness and the use of psychotherapy to help people with problems. Freud's theory of personality emerged from his attempt to develop satisfactory therapeutic techniques.

**Structure of Personality**

Freud believed that personality had three basic components: the id, ego, and superego. Personality was motivated throughout life by the fundamental impulse called libido. Libido supplies psychic energy dedicated to achieving goals. Freud primarily emphasized the sexual nature of libido and found that most of the targets could be described as a quest for "pleasure."

• Id: The id is the most primitive and instinctive part of the personality. It operates according to the pleasure principle, that is, maintaining pleasure and avoiding pain, ignoring social views or restrictions. This means that actions generated predominantly by the id are likely to be spontaneous and unrestricted. (A child's behavior often shows control by the id.)
• Ego: In Freud's approximation of personality, the ego is the area of the personality that solves problems, acting on the reality principle. The ego seeks pleasure and avoids pain in a rational way that society approves. Thus, the ego takes the demands of the id and determines how to meet them in an acceptable manner.
• Superego: The third component of personality is the superego. The superego reminds the person of what would be ideal behavior and what behaviors are totally unacceptable. Consciousness is based on the superego.