Personality Case Study

Personality is an individual’s unique and relatively consistent patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Learning about personality helps us to understand how and why people act the way they do. There are four perspectives of personality: psychoanalytic perspective, humanistic perspective, social cognitive perspective and trait perspective. The psychoanalytic emphasizes the importance of unconscious mental processes and the influence of early childhood experience. The humanistic perspective represents an optimistic look at human nature, emphasizing the self and the fulfillment of the person’s unique potential. The social cognitive perspective emphasizes learning and conscious cognitive processes, including the importance of beliefs about the self, goal setting, and self-regulation. The trait perspective emphasizes the description and measurement of specific personality differences among individuals.

When comparing theories of personality development only one comes to mind, Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud (1905) believed that everyone was progress through five psychosexual stages of development. The stages are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Freund (1940) said, “sexual life does not being only at puberty, but starts with clear manifestations after birth”. Freud based his theory on sensual pleasures from different areas of the body. For example an infant explores objects with their mouth.

Another theory to compare is Maria Montessori. Montessori (1897) believed that every child has innate skills and talents. She based her theory on personality by the emotion of learning with the encouragement of adults. She believed that guiding a child with love that they would learn almost on their own. The Montessori theory taught children through hands on activities with encouragement from adults. The teacher’s roles are to observe and take advantage of what Dr. Montessori called sensitive periods.

Lev Vygotsky (1924) believed that nurture was more influential that nature in child development. Vygotsky developed five steps to process sociocultural development. Step one: adults provide the tool, modeling, guidance, interaction and encouragement. Step two: a child performs tasks under adult supervision. Step three: adults help the child divide tasks into smaller segments and asses the child’s understanding. Step four: adults provide support, or scaffolding, that is necessary in a learning situation. Step five: adults guide a child into a new situation through transferring familiar knowledge to a new or unfamiliar situation or task.

Sigmund Freud, Maria Montessori and Lev Vygotsky all had very great theories on development. Their theory on personality do differ. Freud’s theory is based on pleasure, Montessori based her theory on emotion and Vygotsky based his theory on nurturing a child. I believe that all these theories do help people learn because no two people learn the same.

Personality can be assessed test that are given to a subject. These test are used by psychologists, counselors, employers and researchers. Assessments are tested in many different ways. Some of the test are the Thematic Apperception Test or TAT (Morgan & Murray1935), the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) first published in 1940s, revised in the 1980s and the Rorschach Inkblot test (Hermann, 1992) first published in 1921. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or MMPI is a test that is pen to paper testing, you have true, false or cannot say answers. This test is benefits by helping people pick the right subject for the job or for a project. The MMPI consists of over 500 statements with true, false or cannot say answers.

The other test is the Rorschach Inkblot test, this test consists of 10 cards. Of those 10 card there are 5 with black and white inkblots and there are 5 with colored inkblots. The Rorschach Inkblot test is when the subject looks at each card and the subject describes what they see. This test help to see if the subject is seeing the whole blot or just fragments of the inkblot. The Thematic Apperception Test or the TAT, is a test were the subject looks at a series of cards and asked to tell a story about the series of cards. The subject is asked to explain the characters feelings and how they would resolve conflict.

Using personality assessments can benefit in many different ways. These test are here to help an employer to hire or promote an employee. The test are good for helping counselors understand what is going on in a subject’s life. This way the counselor can know where to start in helping a subject out. Being able to use these test to help see a subject’s types of skills and traits can help improve the way a psychologists can help a subject.

There are many ways that a personality test can help but not many people look at how they can hurt a job, the way a subject need to be treated with medicines or could be given the wrong advise. These issues could effect a subject’s life in my different ways. Some subjects could fake their answers to make them look better for a job or promotion, because when the subject gets in the position and they cannot handle the stress this can hurt the company. Some subjects do may not have accurate answers because they are not a good judge for their own behavior.

Personality development and learning to assess personality is one way that the subjects can be helped and heard. Learning how people develop can help parents raise their children for the better. Learning that there are assessments to help people improve for jobs and for their mental state, can let everyone breathe a little easier.

References:
Freud, S. (2014). Discovering Psychology (6th Ed.). Retrieved from. Montessori, M. (2014). Montessori Education. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education. Vygotsky, L. (2014). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky.