Psychological Paradigms: Towards a Theory of Human Personality - Essay Example

Paradigms are typically used to explain different features or components of human psychology; as a result, it is most useful to identify these paradigms and then piece them together into a larger cohesive whole. The first paradigm that needs to be included involves the work done with trait theories. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, based on the previous theoretical work of Carl Jung, seeks to explain many types of human psychology in terms of particular traits, such as introversion versus extroversion and thinking versus feeling.

The second type of paradigm which needs to be accounted for, though perhaps with an acknowledgment of the sub-fields uncertainty, is psychoanalytic. A third paradigm ought to include modern behavioralist theory; for purposes of constructing larger psychology of the human being, paradigms based on the types of theories espoused by B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov are most useful. This is because research demonstrates quite clearly that behavioralism, an organism's reactions to external stimuli, is a fundamental feature of human psychology.

The final non-biological paradigms should include models espoused by leading theorists in the fields of cognitive development and the humanistic or subjective models of human psychology. Piaget's linear model of cognitive development, while too rigid for many, provides a useful framework for tracking cognitive development, and Maslow's work on the influence of subjective perceptions on human psychology ensures that individual variations will be accounted for.A complication in the construction of an overarching theory of human psychology is the extent to which biopsychological and neuropsychological paradigms are included.

This is complicated because new data is being generated annually, theories are constantly being revised, and once-solid assumptions are being overturned. For the purposes of this essay, it is enough to suggest that these biologically-rooted features of psychology appear to be valid and increasingly significant. Research has established, for instance, that certain features of human psychology become rooted biologically in early development contexts. If true, and there is some evidence to support this type of statement, then it becomes necessary to include these biopsychological paradigms alongside the more environmentally-oriented theories.

In the final analysis, human psychology is an amalgamation of a vast variety of lesser and more specific paradigms. Both environmentally and biologically-oriented paradigms need to be included in a larger and cohesive theory of human psychology. Human psychology, therefore, is composed of traits, the sub-conscious, behavioral responses to external stimuli, lifelong cognitive developmental processes, subjective variations, and biopsychological and neuropsychological features. Taken together, these paradigms offer the most useful larger framework for understanding and describing human psychology.