PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

SELF AND RELATED CONCEPTS

Over the past centuries, the concept of self has been studied by many personality theorists. Self
as a concept is broad and complex, that it is important for us to flesh out the self in the context
of personality, as represented by some major perspective of psychology. Personality is defined
as the totality of who you are—your actions, behaviors, attitude, thinking-process and emotions
(Ciccarelli and White, 2015). This totality makes you different from other individuals throughout
life. Some of the most essential parts of personality are character and temperament. Character
refers to the assessment and judgement of what is right or wrong that define how we behave
towards others (Ciccarelli and White, 2015) while temperament is the innate and stable
characteristics that include emotional, motor and regulative capacities with which each person is
born with (Zentner and Shiner, 2015).

MAJOR PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

The analysis and understanding of self in the context of psychological realm essentially involve
some framework of human being. These frameworks help us understand the complexity of
human behavior. Most of these frameworks are rooted in certain norms, similar pattern of belief
and philosophical assumptions. Let us study more about these perspectives below.

1. Psychodynamic Perspective
Freud’s psychoanalysis posited that a person can be described in terms of their motives
and meaning which is somehow tied to their concept of self. Self in his theory is placed
in his conceptualization of drives and division of personality (Brinich and Shelley, 2002).
He claims that the human mind and instincts develop at birth and that the human mind
will likely encounter conflicts when the drives contact the demands of society
(Haugaard, 2007). This sense of self is driven by sex and death drives within selves.
The sexual drive causes human to seek pleasure while death drive continually seeks for
self-destruction or aggression. For example, if the ego cannot operate properly, all of us
might do as we wish without thinking of the societal consequences of our actions or
whether we might be violating the rights of others.

Freud's theory is highly influenced by the unconscious forces. He argues that humans
are dominated by their unconscious, which they are incognizant of and have little control
over. Unconscious materials are never open to inspection, and most of the materials
under this state may be unbearable to the person. Dream is a good source of
unconscious material for Freud (Feist, Feist & Roberts, 2013) and it gives an indirect
measure of the unconscious. Materials from this state spring from repressed childhood
experiences and inherited unconscious images. For example, an employee who seems
to create a negative relationship with all his/her superior may learn that this unconscious
anger towards the parents is driving his(/her) behavior toward other authority figures.

Freud’s divisions of the personality: step toward the self. Freud assumes that
personality can be divided into Id, Ego and Superego. Id is the pleasure center of your
personality that seeks pleasure without regard to the consequences and for what is
proper or just. Ego on the other hand refers to the part of personality that is responsible
for decision-making out of a need to deal with reality. Superego is the moral
center/conscience of the personality that tends to be unrealistic in its demands for
perfection which makes people feel guilty. These three parts of personality are
constantly in conflict, like “Devil me”, the Id; Self, the ego; and the “Angel me”, the
Superego. Hartmann (1950) suggests that the term self can be used to refer to a
person’s experience of “body ego” combined with the experience of the conflicts in the
psyche of the person in terms of id, ego and superego. This implies that each person is
confronted with the co-existence of these dimensions wherein the self struggles to
satisfy them.

Psychosexual stages of personality development. Freud gave emphasis on the role

of childhood experiences. He assumes that adult personality development is due to past
experiences or childhood issues. Specifically, psychosexual stages of development
exhibit a causality in terms of personality or abnormality. For example, in oral stage
(first 18 months) when an infant is given too much oral pleasure, then it might result to
oral-retentive- which is characterized by too dependent or too submissive personality.
An adult who is not working and will just wait for his mother's instruction or ask for
support from his parents is an illustration of this. On the other hand, if the infant does
not receive enough mouth pleasure then it might result to being aggressive, e.g. if the
person manifest rebelliousness and cynicism, this may be attributed to oral stage of
Freud.

In anal stage (18 to 36 months), when a child who openly defies going to the toilet
becomes an adult; they tend to have an anal expulsive personality, i.e. someone who is
messy, destructive and hostile. Some children, however, are defying passively, e.g.
retaining feces. As adults, they tend to develop anal retentive personality which is
characterized as being frugal, inflexible, and excessively neat. In phallic stage (3 to 6
years old), Freud assumes that boys experience Oedipus complex wherein children
develop sexual attraction to their mother and feels jealous) toward their father during
this stage. Girls go through a similar experience which is termed as as the Electra
complex. If children cannot identify with the parent of the same sex as them, they tend
to grow as “mama’s boy” or “papa’s girl”. They tend to look for much older father- or
mother-figure to marry. In ages six through adulthood, Freud claims that the child
channels their energy on socialization. During Latency stage (6 years to puberty), the
individual extends their contact beyond family and will play only with the same sex,
while during Genital stage (puberty onwards) the individual focuses on sexual curiosity
and attraction.

Neo-Freudians. The main objective of neo-Freudian's is to expand the concept of “ego” more
independently from the id, possessing its own energy and being free from conflict (Schultz &
Schultz, 2012). They also try to minimize the importance of infantile sexuality and Oedipus
complex. They emphasize the importance of the relationship in their theories.
Jung. Carl Jung believed that self is formed by an individual’s past experiences, their
goals, hopes, and aspirations. He also claims that people have collective unconscious,
with opposing and co-existing archetypes that highly influence the person. Archetypes
refer to a collection of archaic images and characters that move unconsciously to
organize experiences (Jung, 1968). This also assists in the process of integrating the
parts of the personality towards individuation. Jung believes that there are a lot of
archetypes and some well-known archetypes are the persona, anima/animus, and the
shadow. Persona is the mask or the public self of the person. It aids in the act of
obscuring and hiding the inner self. Anima and Animus refer to the soft side of a man
and the manly side of a woman, respectively. Jung assumes that this can influence the
personal and social inner lives of a person. Shadow refers to the dark side of
personality or to urges that are socially unacceptable. For him, a healthy individual can
balance these opposing qualities. The self-acceptance is the key to wholeness or the
Self (self-realization).

Adler. Alfred Adler believes that self is tied to social interest or feeling of community and
is considered as a product of style of life (own personality). This style of life is a
product of the interaction of the person’s environment, heredity and creative power
(ability to shape one’s personality). The person’s formative years help in building this
style of life and are influenced by the birth order and the relationship established by the
child. This suggests that one’s style of life serves as the basis for attitude, behavior,
views of self, others and the world. Self also involves feelings of inferiority that are
rooted from deficiencies, family dynamics or societal influences. Adler believes that
there’s nothing else a person can do to change one’s inferiority, instead suggested that
people must focus on the perception or interpretation of experiences
(present/conscious) rather than on the past, and strive for success or superiority. When
individuals are discouraged, they often resort to fictional means to relieve or mask the
feelings rather than overcome their inferiority feelings.

Klein. Similar to Freud, Melanie Klein believes that adult personality is rooted from the
early experiences of an individual. However, she emphasizes that it is the nature of their
relationship for the 1st to 6th months (with the mother/significant other) of life that
somehow determines the personality. The baby, in her theory, develops mental
representations of his/herself and the others. She also describes Self as the whole
personality that includes the ego, superego and the id (Klein, 1975). The milestone of a
normal social development of self with Klein starts from the perception that the mother
is bad if her breast is not given to the baby or the perception that the mother is good if
her breast is always available for them (paranoid-schizoid). The baby perceives that
the bad and good are independent from each other and outside of the self. In time, the
baby turns into a realization that the mother and the breast is only one (depressive)
where the good and bad are not also split into separate objects. This representation of
object is moved or brought into the self. Overall, this implies that the connectedness of
the baby to their mother will serve as the template on how they deal with the world.

Horney. Karen Horney proposed a model of self in his feminine psychology writings.
She describes) self as having four divisions (Brinich and Shelley, 2002): (1) Ideal self
which refers to perfected image of an individual that resulted from alienation, isolation,
abuse, neglect and feeling unloved. (2) Actual self is also known as the objective “me”
or simply refers to other’s perception of them. (3) Real self refers to the subjective “me”
of the person that includes the unconscious elements and capacity for being. And (4)
Despised realself which refers to the reservoir of the tyranny of should, negative
selfevaluation, feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. She also suggests that each
individual has the capacity to gain some control over intrapsychic conflicts that lead
them toward self-realization (self-analysis). For her, adult personality develops in early
childhood years(parental interaction) but changes throughout life. Experience of love,
affection, and discipline leads (lead) to feelings of safety and satisfaction that allows
them to grow in accord with the self. For others who receive less love and affection,
they tend to develop neurotic anxieties. Some would deal with their anxieties through
the moving toward people, move against people, and moving away from people.
Moving toward people tends to rely on their significant others. On the other hand,
moving against people tends to be troublesome and hostile while moving away tends to
withdraw from their significant others.

2. Humanistic Perspective: Carl Rogers

This perspective assumes that each person has an innate humanity and goodness. It also
claims that a person can progress and tends to move towards fulfillment of human potential.
The emphasis of this perspective is on human optimism, conscious experiences, free will and
potentiality. The experiences and perceptions of the people are influential in the course of one’s
actions.

Rogers believes that sense of self becomes apparent during infancy and continuous to
develop throughout life. Self for him acts as the creator, as free and as self-determined
being (Rogers, 1989). This sense of self allows the people to consciously fulfill their
innate potential. The self has two subsystems: (1) the self-concept, which includes all
those aspects of one’s identity like actual perception of characteristics, traits, and
abilities that they are aware of, and (2) the ideal self, refers to view of an individual to
 himself as what he wants to be. He argues that when self-concept and ideal self are
matched, we can feel competent and capable congruence, but a gap between the
twowill result into incongruence and the tendency to have psychopathology.

3. Trait perspective: McCrae and Costa

Robert Roger McCrae and Paul Costa believe that personality is largely the product of biological
intermediates. Theyare consistent in claiming that personality originates from biological factors,
such as genetics, hormones, and brain structures. They also believe that personal
characteristics such as trait (constant pattern of thinking, behaving or feeling) interacts with
environmental factors. Traits influence the way we deal with our environment(e.g.
decisionmaking, preferences, attitudes, coping). These are organized hierarchically and can be
arranged from narrow and specific to broad and general. Unlike other trait theorist, they work on
five factors of personality that resulted from the use of factor analysis. These five dimensions
are known as the five-factor model or the Big-five.

The five personality factors are commonly addressed as OCEAN(acronym), in which each of the
letters represent one of the five factors of personality.

• Openness refers to willingness and active seeking of new things/experiences. People

with high openness are more likely to seek out adventures, and are more unconventional and
spontaneous. Low scorers of this dimension tend to be traditional and to not like changes.

• Conscientiousness dimension checks on the person’s organization, control and goal-

directed behaviors. High scorers in this dimension tend to be meticulous, organized and
persevering. People with low score on this dimension tend to be late on important social events
and to be disorganized.

• Extraversion refers to preferred interpersonal interaction, activity and needed stimulation.

People who scored high in this dimension are person-oriented, talkative and sociable, whereas
low scorers are more reserved, prefer to do solitary activities and dislike being the center of
attention.

• Agreeableness refers to the basic emotional style of a person along the continuum from
compassion to antagonism. People with high score in this dimension tend to be friendly, helpful
and soft-hearted while low scorers in this dimension tend to be hard to get along with, cold, and
uncaring.

• Neuroticism refers to emotional instability and emotional adjustment. People who are
high (scorers) in this dimension tend to be worriers, anxious, and moody whereas those scored
low in this dimension tend to be calm and level-headed.

Reflective questions
1. How will the psychological perspectives help me in understanding myself better?
2. Is there one perspective/theory that appealed to you the most? If so, why?
3. What aspects of the psychological perspective do you think is relevant in explaining today’s
world?

SUMMARY
• Personality and self can be explained through early experiences, free will and traits.
• Psychoanalytic perspective emphasizes on the importance of the unconscious and
childhood experiences. Freud describes personality component in terms of three: id, ego,
and superego while Neo-Freudians conceptualization of personality emphasizes on the
social relationship.
• Rogers’ conceptualization of personality focuses on free will and provides aspects of self
namely, ideal self and self-concept. McCrae and Costa on the other hand, provides five
personality factors namely Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and
Neuroticism.