Personality Theories Integrated in a Person’s Case

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The quote

“I can get quite angry when I know people are not listening to me, especially when I am talking about myself or sharing something about myself. People should respect that.”

Erik Erikson

Erikson’s relevant core concept to the quote is the concept of ego. According to him, the ego is irrational in its demands. Ego makes an individual force his or her feelings, attitudes, or thoughts on other people. Egoistic individuals think that they are always correct and thus what they think, say, or like should be respected by all people. This is sometimes not the case because people have different ideas or perceptions about an issue. The problem with egoistic individuals is that they do not acknowledge diversity but rather think that everything should be perceived or understood from their point of view. They regard anybody with a different view as wrong and an enemy to them. This irrational behavior is a result of basic mistrust which occurs when mothers act in an unreliable manner during the first stage of ego development (from birth to one year). When not resolved, the mistrust makes children develop a sense of guilty during adulthood and think that everybody is against them. The irrational behavior may also result from a lack of control over children’s needs and demands. If children are not taught that they cannot have everything, or if they are not denied some of their irrational demands at an early age, then they grow up knowing that they are supposed to get all they want at all times.

Sigmund Freud

Freud’s relevant core concept to the quote is the psychosexual theory of personality development. Freud argued that children have ways of satisfying their libido at different stages of psycho-sexual development. During the oral stage (0-one year), Freud argued that children operate at the pleasure principle, which is synonymous with the Id. The child has not fully developed the concept of self. At this stage, the sexual gratification of the child is at the mouth. This makes the child very happy when sucking things like ball pens or figures. If the parents or caregivers severely frustrate the needs of the children at this stage, then they become fixated, which is manifested in later life in terms of a manipulative personality and the need to dominate or exploit others.

Abraham Maslow

Maslow’s relevant core concept to the quote is the hierarchy of needs. In an attempt to explain human behavior, Maslow came up with what he referred to as the hierarchy of needs. According to him, human needs are arranged hierarchically. The need for self-esteem is the desire for self-respect. People who have self-esteem command some respect from people due to their profession or hobbies. Such respect, therefore, comes automatically. On the other hand, people without or with low self-esteem have a kind of inferiority complex. Such people demand respect from others and also seek glory and fame from other people. This happens because they have no recognition in society. Low self-esteem makes people exert their presence and ideas on others to gain recognition. They also have the feeling that others are not respecting or recognizing them and therefore seek to control and manipulate people with a view of seeking recognition.

Carl Rogers

Rogers’ relevant core concept to the quote is true self versus social self. According to him, human beings are born with a tendency of moving towards self-actualization. This tendency brings two types of the self, that is, the true self and the social self. The true self refers to our actual feelings, thoughts, or perceptions about the world. With the true self, the concept of ourselves is based on our feelings and biases. On the other hand, social self refers to ourselves based on other people’s expectations of us. The two types of self are always in conflict. When the true self overpowers the social self, we tend to have unrealistic expectations from others. For example, we may want everybody to think about the way we do it. We may also want everybody to respect our opinions on all issues. This is the tendency to control and dominate everybody irrespective of the differences in culture, education, and traditions. On the other hand, when the social self overpowers the true self, we can respect the concept of others about ourselves. We are also able to rationalize our feelings to be in line with what others expect of us.

B.F.Skinner

Skinner’s relevant core concept to the quote is free will versus determinism. Free will provides us with choices to make based on our will. We may choose to be polite or rude. If we choose to be rude, we may expect others to respect our opinion irrespective of what they think about the issue. The proponents of free will argue that we have the freedom to control our social environment to align it with our true feelings. This kind of control makes us not entertain other people’s ideas, believes, and perceptions. It is synonymous with manipulating our social environment to suit our personal biases.

The proponents of determinism on the other hand hold the view that our behavior is a product of our social environment; that is, we behave by the social expectations. What this means is that we rationalize our behaviors and tame any unrealistic expectations from others. According to determinists, we should not expect everybody to respect our point of view because every individual is different from us. The proponents of free will downplay the arguments of determinists by stating that determinism belongs to the old metaphysical world in which free will did not exist and therefore, people should allow their true feelings to guide their actions because they have control over their feelings and their social environment.

Carl Jung

Jung’s relevant core concept to the quote is the personality types of introversion and extraversion. Introverts are usually inward-oriented as opposed to extroverts who are outward-oriented. Introverts are more concerned with their feelings and thoughts. They tend to see things from a personal point of view and expect everybody to respect their perception of the world. Introverts rarely respect the opinion of others because to them, the world is more about themselves but not about other people and consequently, anything which is contrary to their thinking and feelings is not good for them and all people. Introversion is, therefore, a subjective world view which makes the introverts to be introspective. On the other hand, extraversion is an objective approach to issues and people. Extroverts tend to be more realistic in their thinking. They are very conscious of their biased feelings and tend to ignore such feelings to avoid conflicting with other people. Extroverts usually tolerate and acknowledge the differences in thinking between them and other people. However, the two personality traits may interchange, that is, an introvert may sometimes exhibit extrovert traits and vice versa. That notwithstanding, nobody can have the two traits at the same time.

Heinz Kohut

Kohut’s relevant core concept to the quote is the need to mirror or admire children. According to him, children need to be admired for them to have a healthy development. Mothers develop a tendency of approving the grandiosity of their children. However, they do this with caution to achieve what Kohut refers to as optimal frustration, in which mothers help their children learn to accept their realistic potentials or abilities politely. This makes the children develop what Kohut refers to as transmuting internalization experience. It is this transmuting internalization that makes children attain maturity by differentiating the realistic and unrealistic expectations from their mothers or the society in general.

In situations where mothers fail to mirror or empathize with their children, the children’s self-esteem is greatly affected. As a result, the children become fixated and try to enhance their grandiose self through being bossy, becoming easily offended, and wanting to control everything and everybody. Such fixation makes the children become overly aggressive towards their mothers and everybody in general and may develop a confrontational attitude to issues and people.

Gordon Allport

Allport’s relevant core concept to the quote is the conceptualization of personality. According to him, personality refers to the unique traits or thoughts in us or the unique motivational and cognitive processes which influence our behavior. Allport described traits as being invisible, located in our nervous system, and being able to consistently influence our behavior. A behavior is generated when a stimulus triggers a trait within us, which generates various unique responses. Accordingly, our behavior is subject to our internal processes and we have nothing much to do to change our behavior unless we change our internal mental and psychological processes.

Allport identified three distinct traits namely cardinal, central, and secondary traits. The cardinal traits are the ones that dominate the life of an individual. Such traits include the desire or greed for power, the need to dominate others, and the need to win all types of arguments. Cardinal traits make individuals have the feelings of wanting to be perfect and the avoidance of any criticism.

Raymond Cattell

Cattell’s relevant core concept to the quote is the trait approach to personality. He described traits as the building blocks of personalities. Since traits are genetically determined, they determine the personality of individuals. Even though traits are relatively permanent, they can be changed through learning.

Cattell identified particular types of traits called source and surface traits. The source traits are the basic traits while the surface traits are derived from the source traits. A source trait therefore may have several surface traits. The source traits of emotional stability and dominance are best suited to respond to the quote. The emotional source trait may have surface traits such as being reactive, guided by feelings, and being rigid in thinking.

The dominance source trait may have surface traits such as being bossy, assertive, and forceful. Individuals who have these source traits are more likely to control others than individuals with source traits of warmth and reasoning, who base their actions and responses on reasoning and rationality as opposed to feelings.

Karen Horney

Horney’s relevant core concept to the quote is Hyper-competitiveness. According to Horney, the basic need of children is the need to be safe. He defined safety in terms of freedom from fear, security, access to food and water, and parental warmth and affection. He however observed that modern society has values that make parents be hyper-competitive. Such parents fail to meet the safety needs of their children but instead, they become harsh, hostile, and cruel to their children due to lack of enough time to stay with their children. The children, therefore, develop basic hostility to their parents.

Since the children cannot do without their parents, they repress their basic hostility to their parents, which leads to basic anxiety, a situation in which the children perceive everything and everybody as a threat to their safety. To reduce or cope with the basic anxiety and re-establish their safety, the children use a defense mechanism called neurotic needs.

The aggressive type of neurotic needs makes the children become a thirst for power, control over others, admiration, recognition, and prestige. They may also develop the tendency to exploit others and intimidate those who are opposed to their points of view.

George Kelly

Kelly’s relevant core concept to the quote is the theory of personal constructs. According to him, we are all naive scientists in that we have our unique ways of perceiving the world. These unique ways of perceiving the world are based on our unique constructs which we use to predict or anticipate events. When our prediction of events is validated, then we tend to perfect those constructs which we used to predict the events.

We may for example anticipate that people may respect us after attaining a university degree. This kind of anticipation has a fifty-fifty chance of happening or not happening. If after attaining a university degree people can respect us, then we tend to perfect the construct that people with university degrees ought to be respected by everybody. As a result, we may develop a habit of demanding respect from everybody, with the assumption that all people know that we have university degrees. If people do not respect us therefore, we may get agitated or become very angry with them. However, when our predictions are not validated, we learn the art of expecting different treatment from different people, where some may respect us and others may not.

Hans Eysenck

Eysenck’s relevant core concept to the quote is the dimensions of personality. He identified four temperaments possessed by people. These include melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, and sanguine. The choleric temperament is the most relevant to the quote in that choleric people tend to be overly ambitious, passionate, energetic, and aggressive. They are very strong-willed and thus can dominate others either consciously or unconsciously. Sometimes they may exhibit dictatorial traits. Such people are very good at planning and like being in charge at all times. Due to their skills and knowledge in particular fields, they tend to demand respect from everybody. However, such people are easily depressed especially when they face challenges or setbacks in their daily chores.

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