Lifespan Development and Personality - Research Paper Example

? Lifespan Development and Personality Paper Lifespan Development Introduction Human personality comes out through one’s emotional tone or temperament. Various factors have a role in shaping it, and these arise from both heredity and the social environment. The most common terms used to explain the influence of heredity and environment are nature and nurture respectively (Ryckman, 2008). In the ‘nature’ view, people’s behavior is determined by genetic disposition or even basic instinct. The nurture view on its part suggests that people behave and think in a certain manner just because the society has taught them to do so (Cooper, 2008). As an example, Oprah Winfrey’s life was shaped by the environment, and this can best be explained through the neo-analytic theory of personality. This paper uses the psychoanalytic and neo-analytic perspectives in understanding Oprah Winfrey’s lifespan development. Oprah was born on 29 January 1954 in Kosciusko, Mississippi. For the first six years of her life, she stayed with her fraternal grandparents in Mississippi. Her grandmother became sick and had to send Oprah to her mother, a poor housemaid in Wisconsin. While there, she underwent sexual abuse in the hands of male relatives. Her mother did not offer much direction in her life and she reacted by stealing money, playing truant and eventually ran off to stay with her father in Nashville. She got pregnant at 14 but the child died from complications related to premature birth. Her suffering afterwards made her develop a strong thirst for success. She went into television and radio broadcasting and in 1976 established a successful TV chat show, People Are Talking. The success inspired her to start the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986, a hit which helped make her one of the wealthiest and influential women worldwide (Nagle, 2008). Oprah’s life appears to have been shaped by a problematic emotional development. According to Engler (2009), emotional development is one of the major aspects that determine the personality development of an individual. The troubles in her development are mostly traceable to hardship in upbringing, and most importantly, sexual abuse which affected her self-esteem and need to stand out from other people. The Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality was provided by Sigmund Freud. It focuses on ‘the Unconscious’ as a concept. This divides a person’s mind into three; the conscious, preconscious and unconscious. The human personality is on its part divided into three; the Ego, the Id and the Superego. According to Ryckman (2008), the Id is made up of primitive drives, desires and emotions while the Superego is a product of internalized societal and parental morals. The Ego plays a mediating role as it tries to balance the influences of the Superego and the Id. In Oprah’s case, a psychoanalytic analysis would suggest that she possessed a highly overactive Id, especially when she engaged in promiscuous behavior and overeating. She was sexually abused as a child and opted to use food in dealing with the inner tension that she had. In addition, she ended up engaging in promiscuous behavior so as to fulfill sexual urges. An explanation for this behavior is that the human Id works in response to what the pleasure principle demands as a way of trying to reduce inner tensions and get some pleasurable satisfaction. Oprah’s sexual activity resulted in her pregnancy at 14. During the time, getting a child while not married was a social taboo. While she had, like anybody else internalized the social norms of the time and was therefore feeling the pressure associated with the Superego, there was no much effect on her tendency towards sexual deviance. In the Freudian perspective, it is not possible that Oprah’s ego was weak but rather the personal victimization of her self made it difficult for her to try and solve the problems that she faced in a rational way, as is dictated by the reality principle. Because of this, she ended up taking part in behaviors which could reduce the inner tensions that she felt due to the abuse which she had undergone (Engler, 2009). According to Engler (2009), the Psychoanalytic Perspective raises the aspect of defense mechanisms. These are processes which distort a person’s reality so as to protect his or her ego. One of these is denial, where a person refuses to accept the existence of anxiety-provoking stimuli. Nagle (2008) explains that during one interview, Oprah acknowledged she had lived most of her life in denial and also punishing herself because of having lost the baby. The strength of her denial was shown when she took part in the Miss Black Nashville beauty pageant in 1972. There, she swore an affidavit in which she stated she had never had a child. Oprah had a strong determination to start her life anew. Because of this, she forced herself to forget her pregnancy. The idea of pushing bad ideas and thoughts into the unconscious is referred to as repression in the psychoanalytic view. She totally repressed the issues of her past, and kept her issues secret even to her closest friends. She did not ever talk about her mother, siblings or baby. Another approach that may be used in understanding Oprah Winfrey is the neo-analytical model suggested by Karen Horney. In the analysis of personality, Horney provides three aspects of the human self. These are the Ideal Self, the Despised Self and the Real Self. The Ideal Self is made up of a person’s views about perfection and arises from the perceived inadequacies. The Despised Self is made up of a person’s perceived shortcomings and feelings of inferiority. The Real Self is a personality’s inner core. It is what a person perceives about herself (Ryckman, 2008). From Oprah’s life, it is clear that she struggled to come to terms with the elements of her Real Self while a child and she ended up identifying more with the Despised Self. For instance according to Nagle (2008), she at one time recounted how she used to pray every night that her hair would have ringlet curls resembling those of Shirley Temple. Oprah also felt ashamed and laid the blame for sexual abuse on herself, believing that she must have been bad, leading to the abuse by men. The inadequacies that she felt led to the development of strong perceptions about her Ideal Self. She struggled to fit into what she considered to be the best idea of prettiness. For instance, she used to wait for and thoroughly read fashion magazines. According to Cooper (2008), Oprah spoke like a white. Such behavior shows that she over-identified herself with what she thought she should have been, and that was the Ideal Self instead of accepting herself. She however underwent a character transformation when she started accepting her self-worth. She was able to walk into classrooms and became the smartest kid there. She had been brought up believing that being lighter skinned meant being better as a person but decided to become the best anywhere in spite of her dark complexion. This shows that at this stage, she started to identify with her Real Self. She admittedly continued fighting to accept her Real Self, as she later battled weight gain for many years. There is however an indication that she found peace within and is presently identifying herself less with the Ideal Self. In 2008, she announced that she had stopped weight-watching. Conclusion In conclusion, the psychoanalytic and neo-analytic approaches offer a good way of understanding Oprah Winfrey. The psychoanalytic approach offers explanations about how she coped with sexual abuse and the victimization affected her. However, the neo-analytic method is the best theoretical approach because it has offered an insight into the social influences that impacted on her behavior and personality. From the analysis therefore, it arises that her socialization greatly determined how she dealt with challenges and developed into a successful woman. Oprah was an ordinary person with no physiological or other deformities. She was a typical girl who faced circumstances that ended up transforming her. The environment was therefore responsible for shaping her personality development. References Cooper, I. (2008). Oprah Winfrey: a Twentieth-Century Life. New York: Puffin Books Engler, B. (2009). Personality Theories: an Introduction. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Nagle, J. (2008). Oprah Winfrey: Profile of a Media Mogul. New York: Rosen Publishers Ryckman, R. (2008).Theories of Personality. 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