Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality: Learn It 1—What Is Personality?

  • Describe personality and the theories about how it develops
  • Understand the psychodynamic perspective on personality development
  • Describe defense mechanisms
  • Describe the psychosexual stages of personality development
  • Explain Adler and Erikson’s contributions to personality theory
  • Explain Carl Jung’s contributions to personality theory
Three masks are arranged side by side. The masks are almost identical, but with slightly different facial expressions resulting from the masks being at different angles. The first mask is tilted downward and has downcast eyes. The second mask is shown straight on and is directing its gaze slightly higher than the first. The third mask is tilted upwards so its gaze is directed more upward.
Figure 1. In the ancient world, a persona was a mask worn by an actor. While we tend to think of a mask as being worn to conceal one’s identity, the theatrical mask was originally used to either represent or project a specific personality trait of a character.

Personality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways. Our personality is what makes us unique individuals. Each person has a distinctive pattern of enduring, long-term characteristics and a manner in which they interact with other individuals and the world around them. The word personality comes from the Latin word persona.

Personality encompasses a broad range of factors that influence how people perceive, interpret, and respond to their environment, including their temperament, emotions, motivation, beliefs, values, and attitudes.

Personality is typically seen as relatively stable across time and situations, but can also be influenced by various factors such as culture, social environment, life experiences, and personal growth. Understanding an individual’s personality is important in many areas of psychology, including clinical and counseling psychology, where personality assessment can help diagnose and treat mental health conditions, as well as in social and developmental psychology, where it can shed light on how people form relationships, develop identity, and navigate the world around them.

Most students in a psychology class are eager to learn about personality and personality tests. Are the tests accurate and do they work? Can I change my personality? We’ll dive into those types of things soon, but first, we want to examine the history of personality and how it is studied.

Personality-building with tower cranes constructing the 3d word
Figure 2. For centuries and beyond, people have been curious to know what causes our personalities to be the way that they are. What causes variations in personality and temperament? The ancient Greeks surmised that certain imbalances in the body could shape a personality.

Historical Perspectives

The concept of personality has been studied for thousands of years across various cultures and philosophies.

Beginning in the 1st millennium BCE and further developed throughout the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, the Chinese philosophy of Taoism, developed by Laozi and Zhuangzi, emphasized the idea of balance and duality in nature and human life. Within Taoist philosophy, the concepts known as Yin and Yang represent complementary forces that create a dynamic balance within all elements of life and existence, including human personalities. People were seen as possessing different combinations of Yin, or “soft”, and Yang, or “hard” qualities, which influenced their personality traits and behaviors (Wang & Wang, 2020) [1].

In India, the concept of Guna appeared first in the Bhagavad Gita somewhere between the 5th and 2nd century BCE (Srivastava, 2012)[2].  These texts delved into the concept of the three Gunas, or qualities, known as Sattwa (purity, harmony), Rajas (activity, passion), and Tamas (inertia, darkness). These Gunas were believed to influence individual personalities and determine one’s predominant nature.

In 370 BCE, Hippocrates theorized that personality traits and human behaviors are based on four separate temperaments associated with four fluids (“humors”) of the body (Fazeli, 2012). Centuries later, the influential Greek physician and philosopher Galen built on Hippocrates’s theory, suggesting that both diseases and personality differences could be explained by imbalances in the humors and that each person exhibits one of the four temperaments:

  • choleric temperament (yellow bile from the liver); the choleric person is passionate, ambitious, and bold
  • melancholic temperament (black bile from the kidneys); the melancholic person is reserved, anxious, and unhappy
  • sanguine temperament (red blood from the heart); the sanguine person is joyful, eager, and optimistic
  • phlegmatic temperament (white phlegm from the lungs); the phlegmatic person is calm, reliable, and thoughtful (Clark & Watson, 2008; Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; Lecci & Magnavita, 2013; Noga, 2007).
Photograph A shows the cover of the American Phrenological Journal circa 1848. Across the top it reads: “American Phrenological Journal.” Below that it says “Know thyself.” Below that is a picture of a human head facing left, with many pictures comprising the area where the brain is. Below the person’s ear it says “Home truths for home consumption.” The lines below that read: “1848,” “Vol. X, March, No. 3,” “O.S. Fowler, Editor,” “Phrenology, Physiology, Physiognomy, Magnetism,” “New York,” “Fowlers and Wells,” “Phrenological cabinet, 131 Nassau-Street,” and “Terms $1 a year, invariably in advance. Ten cts. a Number.” Photograph B shows a printed cartoon of a person in a chair with another person behind. There are three other people in the room, and the wall is decorated with various skulls. Below the picture it reads: “Drawn on Stone by E.H,” and “The Phrenologist.”
Figure 2. The pseudoscience of measuring the areas of a person’s skull is known as phrenology. In 1780, Franz Gall, a German physician, proposed that the distances between bumps on the skull reveal a person’s personality traits, character, and mental abilities. Initially, phrenology was very popular; however, it was soon discredited for lack of empirical support (Fancher, 1979)(a) Gall developed a chart that depicted which areas of the skull corresponded to particular personality traits or characteristics (Hothersall, 1995). (b) An 1825 lithograph depicts Gall examining the skull of a young woman. (credit b: modification of work by Wellcome Library, London)

Later psychologists, most prominently Immanuel Kant (in the 18th century) and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (in the 19th century), elaborated on this model of personality.

Kant developed a list of traits that could be used to describe the personality of a person from each of the four temperaments.

Wundt suggested that a better description of personality could be achieved using two major axes: emotional/nonemotional and changeable/unchangeable. The first axis separated strong from weak emotions (the melancholic and choleric temperaments from the phlegmatic and sanguine). The second axis divided the changeable temperaments (choleric and sanguine) from the unchangeable ones (melancholic and phlegmatic) (Eysenck, 2009; Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991; Wundt, 1874/1886).

A circle is divided vertically and horizontally into four sections by lines with arrows at the ends. Clockwise from the top, the arrows are labeled “Strong Emotions,” “Changeable Temperaments,” “Weak Emotions,” and “Unchangeable Temperaments.” The arcs around the perimeter of the circle, clockwise beginning with the top right segment are labeled “Choleric,” “Sanguine,” “Phlegmatic,” and “Melancholic.” The sections inside each arc contain descriptive words. Inside the Choleric arc are the words “excitable, egocentric, exhibitionist, impulsive, histrionic, and active.” Inside the Sanguine arc are the words “playful, easygoing, sociable, carefree, hopeful, and contented.” Inside the Phlegmatic arc are the words “reasonable, principled, controlled, persistent, steadfast, and calm.” Inside the Melancholic arc are the words “anxious, worried, unhappy, suspicious, serious, and thoughtful.”
Figure 3. Developed from Galen’s theory of the four temperaments, Kant proposed trait words to describe each temperament. Wundt later suggested the arrangement of the traits on two major axes.

Developing Personality Theories

Sigmund Freud’s psychodynamic perspective of personality was the first comprehensive theory of personality, explaining a wide variety of both normal and abnormal behaviors. According to Freud, unconscious drives influenced by sex and aggression, along with childhood sexuality, are the forces that influence our personality. Freud attracted many followers who modified his ideas to create new theories about personality. These theorists, referred to as neo-Freudians, generally agreed with Freud that childhood experiences matter, but they reduced the emphasis on sex and focused more on the social environment and effects of culture on personality. The perspective of personality proposed by Freud and his followers was the dominant theory of personality for the first half of the 20th century.

Other major theories then emerged, including the learning, humanistic, biological, evolutionary, trait, and cultural perspectives. In this module, we will explore these various perspectives on personality in depth. Let’s start with Freud.

  • How would you describe your own personality? Do you think that friends and family would describe you in much the same way? Why or why not?
  • How would you describe your personality in an online dating profile?
  • What are some of your positive and negative personality qualities? How do you think these qualities will affect your choice of career?
  1. Wang, Z. D., & Wang, F. Y. (2020). The Taiji Model of Self II: Developing Self Models and Self-Cultivation Theories Based on the Chinese Cultural Traditions of Taoism and Buddhism. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 540074. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.540074 ↵
  2. Srivastava K. (2012). Concept of personality: Indian perspective. Industrial psychiatry journal, 21(2), 89–93. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-6748.119586 ↵