Psychology Essays (UOP)

Psychoanalytic-Social Personality Perspective

Psychoanalytic-Social Personality Perspective

Samantha Craig

Psy/250

5/14/2016

When it comes to the psychoanalytic-social perspective of personality there are many things that I can think of that makes this so unique. This is something that starts off in the individuals early childhood based off of experiences, along with the environment and social upbringing the induvial has that is said to have the responsibility for how their personality is shaped. What makes this truly unique is that it shows defenses against certain things such as anxiety but also shines light on neurotic needs and how they should be met and what happens when they are ignored. Many theories up until this only studied the individual and not how the individual interacts and why they also only focused on the conscious and unconscious mind. It is important to see what drives a person not only physically and mentally, but also how socially they are driven. Sense the day a person is brought into the world they are placed in certain environments and around others socially and this then helps shape how their personality will develop.

When it comes to psychoanalytic-social personality theories there are many main components that show some similarities and differences. One of the biggest similarities with these theories is that childhood is the beginning of personality development. This is when social interaction begins and it's when life experiences begin which is the second component that is the same in all three theories. All three theorists also previously studied under Freud but broke free of his psychosexual theories and created their own. The differences is Adler's focused more on how the child was raised along with their birth orders claiming that where the child was born among others is how their personalities grow. Erikson, focused cultural influences and nine stages of life that started in childhood but continues on even to old age but can occur in any order. Last is Horney, she studied the person themselves and what sculpted their personality such as their anxieties and why they are there. This starts by watching the child and how they behave around parents which will then determine if they move more towards people or retreat from them.

The one psychoanalytic-social personality theory that is applied through my life is Adler's Family Constellation. This covers birth order and it is something that has impacted my life along with scapegoating. I was raised off and on as an only child, younger sibling and older sibling. My birth mother has three biological kids to different men. As the oldest out of them when I lived with her my first five years even out of my cousins. I was the one they turned to help I was changing diapers and watching them, along with taking care of my mother when she was vomiting and drunk. When I moved in with my grandparents (Father Side) I was considered the youngest because my uncle lived there and he was like an older brother I looked up to him and mimicked everything he did. After five years I moved in with my father and moved around and each time I was the older sibling. When he went to jail for sexually abusing me and two other kids that lived at the house I became a foster kid. His girlfriend kept me because after four years of living with them I protected her kids the best I could. She had a son who was four years older than me but in a wheelchair and mentally younger than I was. I took on the older sibling role. Responsibilities of cleaning, helping out around the house. They got to have friends over and go to parties and I read books and made sure everyone was okay. I later started to rebel, nothing serious but grades slipped and acted out with hurting myself. I feel that now I went through all that I am a mom, I am in school working on my bachelors and still seek to be responsible but yet yearning for approval. I was also the scape goat in my family because I was always different and when things went wrong they would call me names such as little ears because if they said something I would listen and correct them and never lie to others. They found my flaw knowing that I was weaker to them as they saw it and told me it was my fault I asked for the abuse. I know better now but they refused to take account for their actions and blamed me for it.

References

Cloninger, Susan (2013). Theories of Personality (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson