Psychology and Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud Essay

The study of personality is one of the biggest topics of interest within psychology. There are numerous personality theories that exist making the most major ones fall right into at least one of our four major perspectives. These perspectives on personality attempt to describe the different patterns in personality, including how the patterns form and how people differ on individual levels. In my essay I will go into more in depth detail about these major perspectives and afterwards explain to you how changeable or unchangeable I think my personality is. To start off, there are four different perspectives. The first is Psychoanalytic Perspective. This perspective emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences and the unconscious mind. This particular perspective was created by psychiatrist Sigmund Freud who strongly believed that things that are hidden in the unconscious could be revealed in numerous different ways. However the Neo-Freudian theorists only agreed in the importance of the unconscious, but disagreed with other aspects of Freud’s theories. The second perspective is called The Humanistic Perspective. This focuses on psychological growth, free will, and my favorite, personal awareness. This perspective is my favorite because it takes a more positive outlook on human nature and is centered on how each person can achieve their individual potential. The third perspective is called The Trait Perspective. This one is centered on identifying, describing, and measuring certain traits that make up a human’s personality. By knowing and understanding this, researchers have come to believe that they can now better comprehend the differences between individuals. The last perspective is The Social Cognitive Perspective. This one emphasizes the major importance of observational learning, self-efficiency, situational influences and cognitive processes. Now as far as explaining how changeable or unchangeable I think my own personality is, my personality really depends on who you are, what day it is, what went on that day, and in a lot of cases what kind of mood I’m in.