The Philosophy of Personality - Essay Example

Theories of Personality: A Critical Review Theories of Personality: A Critical Review Introduction Humans have been known to havedifferent personalities and the differences in perception, mindset and behaviors are caused by divergent experiences. The classical psychological theory of Freud argues that humans tend to develop their personalities in the early five years of the lives and continue to strengthen it as they grow old. However, people do change with the passage of time (Blatt, McDonald, Sugarman, & Wilber, 1984). The changes in personality occur in response to external environment but these modifications are superficial in nature and therefore, they do not last long and the basic personality will emerge once external forces are removed. The Psychodynamic and Humanistic theories of personality are intertwined and interdependent. The abovementioned frameworks are joined because basic personality development can be influenced by the environment. In simple terms, an apparently bad person can be converted into a good one with the help of offering supportive behaviors. The support groups that render help to addicts, criminals and prisoners are there in order to ascertain likeness towards positive behaviors in people who demonstrated negative attitudes in the past. The philosophy of support group is developed on the basis of a belief that humans respond to their immediate environments and tend to win the legitimacy of their actions from the society. The theory of Humanism is of the view that humans are basically good and they become bad or behave badly because of their external environment and atmosphere. However, every individual is willing to exert his or her energies in order to better the world but the problem lies within the societal pressures of the society that do not allow an individual to do his or her good part in the community. People’s need and want to seek attachment and belonging to a certain group is so strong that they tend to change their appearances, dressing styles, way of talking and even they modify their names in order to catch an eye of group that they want to join. In the light of above argument, humans will always keep on joining the groups that go with their current state of thinking and therefore, if the group dynamics are changed of an individual then his or her behavior will also exhibit changes. The philosophy of Freud which argued that humans develop their personalities, perceptions and mindsets in early five years of their life is outdated and now group dynamics are considered as a key to do behavioral modifications. Secondly, the organizations are promoting team culture because they are well aware of the fact that humans respond to group dynamics and because of this reason, the companies tend to hire people who want to do the hard work and put in the effort and whenever significant number of organizational participants become willing to put in the efforts then the lazy ones attempt to join the club and want to fall into the line (Crisp & Tumer, 2007). The basic human psyche can be changed and modified with the help of group dynamics but the element of sincerity in terms of communicating the vision and purpose of the group is key to changing human behavior because if people start to think that they are being betrayed and deceived and they are not getting what they were promised then they will retaliate by damaging the society and this time nobody will be stopping them. The good behaviors in people are needed to be cultivated as seeds and they have to be nurtured, supported and developed in order to help the overall person to become a positive participant of the community. People need good from the society in order to respond with kindness in return because they understand the language of social exchange (Solansky, 2008). However, the bad persons have to be given kindness in return of their apparent badness so that they can see that the presence of good in the world. People have to see and feel the presence of good because most of them transform into bad persons because they lose faith in good. The theory of Freud is not wrong because it is still the foundation of human psychology and gives educationalists an opportunity to implant as many positive attitudes in children as possible in their early life. The major weakness of the approach lies in its inability to give enough value and importance to group dynamics and the modern psychotherapy needs social support in order to be effective. Freud’s philosophy does not mean that changes cannot take place in human behavior with the passage of time and his work remained silent in this regard because its target population was children. The pessimistic psychologists often tend to establish that they cannot do anything about youngsters because they have become what they meant to be in life. Nevertheless, his work needed to be carried on and those who worked on humans they found out the fact that indeed social environment of the person influences his or her behavior. In consensus, it can be established that humans do develop their personalities during early stage of their lives but these can be influenced by group dynamics and group politics can cause a bad person to become a good one and a vice versa situation can also occur. Finally, the humanistic philosophy has to be modified in order to incorporate the fact that positive changes in human behavior can only occur through sincere goals and objectives of the group and each individual must get what he or she is promised otherwise the effort will end up in smoke. Conclusion Freud is the founder of human psychology and he worked on children from where humans get elementary education and build perceptions. However, the group influences are recognized at a later stage and then social psychology initiated to develop as a proper discipline and nowadays, social support is necessary for success of psychotherapies. Both of the personality theories are interrelated and therefore, specialists should apply two of them in order to get results. References Blatt, S. J., McDonald, C., Sugarman, A., & Wilber, C. (1984). Psychodynamic theories of opiate addiction: New directions for research. Clinical Psychology Review Vol 4 (2), 159–189. Crisp, R., & Tumer, R. (2007). Essential Social Psychology. Auckland: Sage Publication. Solansky, S. T. (2008). Leadership Style and Team Processes in Self-Managed Teams. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies Vol 14 (4), 332-341. Read More