Personality Theory and Description of Sigmund Freud’s theory .1 Definition of Personality
Based on the explanation above, the writer can generally conclude, psychology and had the same equality in exploring person, and both of them can’t be separated one
another, because psychology explores person from the real life, while literature explores fictitious person which is imitated from the real life.
3.2 Personality Theory and Description of Sigmund Freud’s theory 3.2.1 Definition of Personality
The field of personality addresses three issues that sometimes are difficult to reconcile: 1 human universal, 2 individual differences, 3 individual uniqueness. In
studying universals, one asks: what is generally true of people? What are universal features of human nature and basic operating principles of personality? Regarding the
second issue, individual differences, the question are: how do people differ from one another? Are there basic categories or dimensions of individual differences? Finally,
regarding uniqueness, the primary questions are. What makes people unique? How can one possibly explain the uniqueness of the individual in a lawful scientific manner?
Personality psychologist address dozens of more specific questions – why do some achieve and others not? Nevertheless, all these specific issues are addressed in terms of
overarching questions about universal properties of personality, individual differences, and the uniqueness of the individual.
Given this three – part focus, how are we to define “personality “? Many words have multiple meanings, and personality is certainly no exception. Different people use
the word in different ways. In fact, there are so many different meanings that one of the first text books in the history of the field Alport 1937 devoted an entire chapter
merely to the question of how the word “ personality “ can be defined.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Philosophers teach us that if one wants to know what a word staffs, one should see hoe the word is used Wittgenstein, 1953 different people use the word personality
in different ways. The public often uses the term to represent a value judgment: if you like someone, it is because he or she has a good personality or lost of personality. A
boring person has no personality. Personality scientist, however, use the word differently. The scientist is not trying to provide subjective value judgments about
people. A scientific definition of personality tells us what areas are to be studied and suggests how we might best study them.
For the present, let us use the following working definition of personality: personality refers to those characteristics of the person that account for consistent pattern
of feeling, thinking, and behaving. This very broad definition allows us to focus on many different aspects of the person. At the same time, it suggests that we attend to consistent
patterns of behavior and to qualities insider the person that account for these regularities, as opposed, for example, to looking exclusively at qualities in the environment that
account for such regularities. The regularities of interest to us include the thoughts, feelings, and overt
observable behaviors of people. Of particular interest to us is how these thoughts, feelings, and overt behaviors relate to one another, or cohere, to form the unique,
distinctive individual. Although one of definitions has been suggested here, others are possible. Alternative definitions should not be construed as right or wrong; rather, they
may be more or less useful in directing us to important areas of understanding. Thus, a definition of personality is useful to extent that it helps advance the field as a science.
To summarize, the scientific exploration of personality involves systematic effort to discovers and explain regularities in the thoughts, feelings, and overt behaviors of
people as they lead their daily lives. Personality scientists try to develop theories that
Universitas Sumatera Utara
enable one to understand these regularities. One hopes that these theories also can be used to benefit human welfare it is to the nature of such theories of personality that we
now turn. Now that we have provided a definition of personality, we can consider some new questions. They concern the goals of theorizing. When developing a theory of
personality, what goals is the theorist trying to achieve? What questions is the personality theorist to answer? What do we seek to explain with a theory of personality? If we study
individuals intensively, we want to know what they are like, how they became that way and why they behave as they do. Thus, we want a theory to answer the questions of what,
how and why. The refers to the characteristics of the Person and how these characteristics are
organized in relation to one another. Is the person anxious, persistent, and high in end for achievement? If so, are they anxious and persistent because they are high in need for
achievement? Alternatively, are they persistent and high in need for achievement because they are anxious? They how refers to the determinants of a person’s personality? How
did genetics influences contribute to the individual’s personality? How did environmental forces and social learning experiences contribute to the person’s
development? How did biology and environment interact with each other? How do people, through their own choices and efforts, contribute to their own personality
development? The why refers to the reasons for the individual’s behavior? Answer refers to the motivational aspects of the individuals – why he or she
moves at all, and why in a specific direction. If an individual to make a lot of money, why was the particular chosen? If a child does well in school, is it to please parents, to
use talents, to bolster self – esteem, or to compete with peers? Is a mother overprotective because she happens to be affectionate, because she seeks to give her children what she
missed as a child, or because she seeks to avoid any expression of the resentment and
Universitas Sumatera Utara
hostility, she feels toward the child? Is a person depressed because of humiliation, because of the loss of loved one, or because of a feeling of guilt? A theory should help us
understand to what extant depression are characteristic of a person, how this personality characteristic developed, why depression is experienced in specific circumstances, and
why the person behaves in a certain manner when depressed. If two people tend to be depressed, why does one get out and buy things whereas the other withdraws into a
shell? In answering the questions of what, how and why a personality theory should
cover four areas. There is 1, structure the basics units or building blocks of personality 2 process the dynamic aspects of personality including motives 3, growth and
development how we develop into the unique person each of us is and psychopathology and behavior change how people change and why they sometimes resist change or are
unable to change. Of each of these four areas is necessary to obtain comprehensive answer to questions about the what, how, and why of personality.
The concept of personality structure refers to stable or enduring aspects of personality. People possess psychological qualities that endure from day to day and from
year to year. The enduring qualities that define the individual and distinguish individuals from one another are what the psychologist refers to as a personality structures. In this
sense, they are comparable to parts of the body, or to concepts such as atoms and molecules in physics. They represent the building blocks of personality theory. Theory of
personality also is a systematic idea about human as a personalization. This theory created because of human needed to know the other human personalization clearly.
Personality theory tries to know the human personalization, related with the situation in a daily and environment with their experience. The most important is the aspect – aspect
the personalization, not only the general characteristic as a human, but also the specifics
Universitas Sumatera Utara
and unique. That is why, theory of personality focus on the personalization characteristic from human, and related with the concrete situation, such as, to approach the human
condition as a subject and more concrete. Theory of personality tries to see the human as a total subject with the specific
aspect. For example: is the one people more emotional or more connotative. Therefore, the mains object of the theory of personality is the specific aspect from the psyche life in
the relation with the total subject. Theory of personality appear because of stimulated with the needs in human live,
namely to know the people in their daily lives. Because in every people always there are the stimulate “azali “to know more other individual, as a partner in this lives. There are
desires in every people to know the other people with the characteristic and psyches lives. For example : when a teacher want to teach their student and want to search the
develop of the student as a individual that will touch of course the teacher give the attention to characteristic child which individual.
Personality, etymologies come from the word Latin “persona “means that “disguise “or in Indonesian “kedok. “ This disguise usually used by the people who act
the drama in ancient time, to act one type of behaviors and character and it also come from the word “ personare “ it means that to pierce, where the actors through their
disguise try to pierce out. To express one type of human picture, such us, the pictures of the people, who act sad, happy, and selfish. Therefore, the personality not only the actor
it self but he or she want to describe one type of human. Actually, every people in their life will use “disguise “means that human in one
situation would do the especially different with the behaviors or attitude as usually. In every situation, response or conception of people will be a different. Sometimes, he or
she acted full angrier and sometimes he become a kind people, very smith and familiarly
Universitas Sumatera Utara
and in other time, he or she became sad. It is very difficult to give the definition the really reality and character of some people.
Many people, which has pretend attitude, some times pretend to be well and used to do some thing different from the characteristic. Therefore, personality has a function
to set free the disguise in human being and try to understand the characteristic. Therefore, there is a desire about the psyche lives from a people and other people. The
personality directly related with capacity psyche of people and related with purpose of live.
Here, the writer also gives the definition about personality from some experts.
We begin from the personality theory, which is composed by Sigmund Freud. Sigmund
Freud 1856-1939 developed his ideas about psychoanalytic theory from work with mental patients. He was a medical doctor who specialized in neurology. He spent most of
his years in Vienna, though he moved to London near the end of his career because of the Nazis’ anti-Semitism.
Freud believed that personality has three structures: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id is the Freudian structure of personality that consists of instincts, which
are an individual’s reservoir of psychic energy. In Freud’s view, the id is unconscious; it has no contact with reality. As children experience the demands and constraints of
reality, a new structure of personality emerges- the ego, the Freudian structure of personality that deals with the demands of reality. The ego is called the executive branch
of personality because it uses reasoning to make decisions. The id and the ego have no morality. They do not take into account whether something is right or wrong. The
superego is the Freudian structure of personality that is the moral branch of personality. The superego takes into account whether something is right or wrong. Think of the
superego as what we often refer to as our “conscience.” You probably are beginning to
Universitas Sumatera Utara
sense that both the id and the superego make life rough for the ego. Your ego might say, “I will have sex only occasionally and be sure to take the proper precautions because I
don’t want the intrusion of a child in the development of my career.” However, your id is saying, “I want to be satisfied; sex is pleasurable.” Your superego is at work, too: “I feel
guilty about having sex before I’m married.” Remember that Freud considered personality to be like an iceberg; most of
personality exists below our level of awareness, just as the massive part of an iceberg is beneath the surface of the water. Freud believed that most of the important personality
processes occur below the level of conscious awareness. In examining people’s conscious thoughts about their behaviours, we can see some reflections of the ego and
the superego. Whereas the ego and superego are partly conscious and unconscious, the primitive id is the unconscious, the totally submerged part of the iceberg.
How the ego resolves the conflict among its demands for reality, the wishes of the id, and constraints of the superego? Through defence mechanisms, the
psychoanalytic term for unconscious methods the ego uses to distort reality, thereby protecting it from anxiety. In Freud’s view, the conflicting demands of the personality
structures produce anxiety. For example, when the ego blocks the pleasurable pursuits of the id, inner anxiety is felt. This diffuse, distressed state develops when the ego senses
that the id is going to cause harm to the individual. The anxiety alerts the ego to resolve the conflict by means of defence mechanisms.
Repression is the most powerful and pervasive defence mechanism, according to Freud; it works to push unacceptable id impulses out of awareness and back into the
unconscious mind. Repression is the foundation from which all other defence mechanisms work; the goal of every defence mechanism is to repress, or push
threatening impulses out of awareness. Freud said that our early childhood experiences,
Universitas Sumatera Utara
many of which he believed are sexually laden, are too threatening and stressful for us to deal with consciously. We reduce the anxiety of this conflict through the defence
mechanism of repression. In the early 1900s, Sigmund Freud developed the psychodynamic view of human
behaviour. This model relies on the premise that human behaviour is brought about by inner forces over which the individual has little control. Dreams and slips of the tongue
are clues to what the individual is really thinking. We may have one point in our lives been caught speaking a Freudian slip, or slip
of the tongue. For example, we may have intentions of saying to a member of the opposite sex: “I believe we have not been properly introduced yet.” Instead, we might
accidentally say: “I believe that we have not been properly seduced yet.” According to Freud, such events are not just random slip-ups. Rather, such slips
of the tongue may be an indication of deeply felt emotions and thoughts that reside in the unconscious, a part of the personality of which a person is not aware. The unconscious is
the safe haven for our recollection of painful events and it is where we store our instinctual drives. The most compelling criticisms of Freudian personality point out that
this theory is created upon a lack of scientific data. There are no physical parts of a person’s brain that represent three elements of personality. Freud based on his theory on
a wealth of individual assessments, but there are no actual concrete data. Another criticism is that we can often explain behaviour after the fact using Freudian concepts,
but we can rarely predict behaviour. In addition, Freud made his observations and thus derived his theory from a limited population, primarily upper-class Austrian women
living in a strict era of the 1900s. Despite the criticisms of the theory, Freudian personality has had an enormous
impact on the field of psychology. The idea of the unconscious and the elements of
Universitas Sumatera Utara
personality have often leaded us to wonder about our own motivations for our behaviour. Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious has been partially supported by some current
cognitive psychology research. Such work has revealed that mental processes about which people are unaware have an important impact on thinking and actions.
The most important contribution of Freud’s psychoanalytic theories is perhaps the fact that it ignited more study of the human mind, and the motivation behind an
individual’s behaviour, thus leading to more study and discovery of new ideas and theories.
After Freud’s opinion, there is another personality theory, which is composed by Alfred Adler 1870 – 1937. For approximately a decade, Alfred Adler is an active
member of the Vienna psychoanalytic society, however , in 1911, when he created his views to the other member of the group, the response is so hustle that he leaves it to form
his own school of individual psychology. Most significant in Adler’s split from Freud is his greater emphasizes on social
urges and conscious thought than on instinctual sexual urges and unconscious processes. Early in his career, Adler becomes interested in organ inferiorities how people
compensate them. A person with a week organ may attempt to compensate for this weakness by making special efforts to strengthen that organ or to develop other organs.
For example, someone who stutters as a child may attempt to become a great speaker, or someone with defect in vision may attempt to develop special listening sensitivities.
Whereas initially, Adler is interested in psychological feelings of inferiority and compensatory striving to mask or reduce these painful feelings. According to Adler, how
a person attempts to cope with such feelings becomes a part of his or her style – a distinctive aspect of his or her personality functioning. These concepts already suggest
much more the social rather than biological emphasis. This social emphasis increasingly
Universitas Sumatera Utara
becomes an important part of Adler’s thinking. At first, Adler speaks of a will to power as an expression of the person’s effort to cope with feelings of helplessness dating from
infancy, this emphasis, gradual, shifts to an emphasis on striving for superiority. In its neurotic from, this striving could be expressed in wishes for power and control over
others; its healthier form, it could be expressed as a great upward drive toward unity and perfection the healthy person, the striving for superiority is expressed in social feelings
and cooperation as well as in assertiveness and competition. From the beginning, people have a social interest, that is, an innate interest in relating to people and innate potential
for cooperation. Adler’s theory is also noteworthy for its emphasis on how people respond to
feelings about their self, how people respond to goals directly their behaviour toward the future, and how the order of birth among siblings can influence their psychosocial
development. In relation to birth order, many psychologist note the tendency for only sons or first – born sons to achieve more than later sons in a family do.
Then, after Adler’s theory, Carl G. Jung 1875 – 1961 presents with his analytical psychology about personality. Like Adler, Jung is distressed with what he feels
is an excessive emphasis on sexuality. Jung’s views the libido not as sexual instinct, but as generalized life energy. Although sexuality is a part of this basic energy, the libido
also includes strivings for pleasure and creativity. To Jung, this reinterpretation of the libido is the primary reason for his break with Freud.
Jung’s analytic psychology features additional themes that differentiate it from Freud psychoanalysis. Jung feels that Freud overemphasizes the idea that our current
behaviour is a repetition of our past, with the instinctual urges and psychological representations of a childhood being repeated in adult life. Instead, Jung believes that the
developed personality also marked by a forward –moving directional tendency. People
Universitas Sumatera Utara
try to acquire a meaningful personal identity and a sense of meaning in self. Indeed, people are so forward – looking that they commonly devote efforts to religious practises
that prepare them for a life after death. A particularly distinguishing feature of Jung’s psychology is his emphasis on the
evolutionary foundations of the human mind. Jung accepts Freud’s emphasis on the unconscious as a storehouse of repressed experiences from one’s life. However, he adds
to this idea the concept of the collective unconscious the cumulative experiences of past generations. The collective unconscious, as oppose to the personal unconscious, is
universal. All humans because of their common ancestry share it. It is a part of our human as well as our animal heritage, and thus is our link with the collective wisdom of
millions of years of past experience. This psychic life is the mind of our ancient ancestors, the way in which they
thought and felt, they way in which they conceived of life and the world, of gods and human beings. The existence of these historical layers is presumably the source of belief
in reincarnations and in memories of past lives “ Jung 1939, p.24 The collective unconscious contains universal images or symbols, known as
archetypes, archetypes, such as the mother archetypes, are seen in fairy tales, dreams, myths, and some psychotic thoughts. Jung is stuck with similar images that keep
appearing, in slightly different forms, in different cultures that are distant from one another. For example, the mother archetype might be expressed in different cultures in a
variety of positive or negative forms; as life giver, as all giving and nature, as the witch or treating punisher, and as the seductive female. Archetypes may be presented in our
images of person, demons, an animal, natural, forces, or objects. The evidence in all cases for their being a part of our collective unconscious is their university among
member’s cultures from past and current periods.
Universitas Sumatera Utara
Another important aspect of Jung’s theory is his emphasis on how people struggle with opposing forces with them. For example, there is a struggle between the face and
mask we present to others, represent in the archetypes of the persona, and the private or personal self. If people emphasize the persona too much, there may be a loss of self of
sense and a doubting about who they are. On other hand, the persona, as expressed in social roles and costumes, is a necessary part of living in society. Similarity, there is the
strangle between the masculine and feminine parts of ourselves. Every male has a feminine part; an every female has a masculine part to her personality. If a man rejects
his feminine part, he may emphasize mastery and strength to an excessive degree, appearing cold and insensitive to the feelings of others. Jung emphasize that all
individuals face a fundamental personal task; finding unity in the self. The task is to bring the harmony, or to integrate the various opposing forces of the psyche.
The person is motivated and guided along the path to personal knowledge and integration by the most important of all Jungian archetypes; the self. In Jungians
psychology “the self “does not the refer to one’s conscious beliefs about one’s personal qualities. Instead, the self is an unconscious force, specifically, an aspect of the collective
unconscious that functions as an “organing centre “of the person‘s entire psychological system. Jung believes that the self often is represented symbolically in circular figures –
the circle representing a sense of wholeness that can be achieved through the self- knowledge.
Roger’s clinical experiences convince him of central tenet of his personality theory; that the core of our nature is essentially positive. The direction of our movement
is toward self – actualization. It’s roger contention that religion, particularly the Christian religion, has thought us to believe that we are basically sinful. Furththenmore, Rogers
contends that Freud and his followers have presented world with a picture of the person
Universitas Sumatera Utara
with an id and an unconscious that would, if permitted expression, manifest itself in incest, murder, and other crimes. According to this view, we are at heart irrational,
unsocalized, and destructive of self and others. For roger, we say at times function in this way, but at such times we are functioning freely, we are to experience and to fulfill our
basic nature as positive and social animals. In attempting to understand human behavior, Rogers always starts with clinical
observations, and then uses these observations to formulate hypothesis that could be tested in a rigorous way. He views therapy as a subjective “letting go “experience, and
research as an objective effort with its own kind of elegance; he is as committed to one as a source for hypotheses as he is to the other as a tool for their confirmation.
Throughout his career, Rogers attempt to bridge the gap between the subjective and the objective, just as in his youth he feels a need to bridge the gap between religion and
science. Within the context, Roger is concerned with the development of psychology as a science and with preservation of people as individuals whoa re not simply the pawns of
science. Roger’s focus is on the process of psychotherapy and his theory of personality is
an outgrowth of his theory of therapy. His work contrast with psychoanalysis in terms of both theory and research methods. Regarding to the theory, psychoanalytic theory
emphasizes biological drives, the unconscious, tension reduction, and early character development. In contrast, Roger’s phenomenological approach emphasizes conscious
perception, feelings regarding social interactions, self – actualization motives, and processes of change.
After Roger’s, Kelly comes with his different personality theory. The key structural variable in Kelly’s theory of personality is the personal construct. A construct
is a concept used to interpret, or construe, the world. People use the concepts to
Universitas Sumatera Utara
categorize of behavior. According to Kelly, person experiences events, interpret them, and places a structure and a meaning on them.
Other definition about personality namely:
Gordon W. Allport says, personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical systems, which determines his unique
adjustment to his environment.
May says, personality is social stimulus value.
Morton prince says, personality is the sum – total of all the biological innate disposition, impulses, tendencies, and appetites, instinct of the individual and the
acquired dispositions and tendencies acquired by experience.
H. C. Warpen says, personality is the entire mental organization of a human being at any stage of his development. It embraces every phase of human character,
intellect, temperament, skill, morality, and every attitude that has been built up in the course of one’s life.
Prescott Lecky says, personality is unified scheme of experience and organization
of value that are consistent with one another.
R. Linton says, personality is the organized aggregate of psychological processes and states pertaining to the individual.
From some theories above, the writer thought that Freud’s theory is more applicable to the main source of her thesis. Which is the human personality divides into
three structures; the id, the ego, and super ego in character personality of human mind.
Universitas Sumatera Utara