Question

(Question)-Describe the eight basic perspectives used to define "personality."

Answer must be at least 150 words

Answer 1

There are eight prominent perspectives that have helped the discipline of psychology reach this far. All these eight perspectives are used separately or together in diagnosing and treating people today.

1. Psychoanalytic perspective which was proposed by Freud focuses on the importance of the unconscious mind. Today, it is used in many ways to study the impact of someone’s past in their present life.
2. Neo-analytic perspective was introduced by Carl Jung who along with the unconscious mind introduced the concept of Collective Unconscious as Thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting.
3. Biological perspective emerged to study the genetic impact on one’s personality, attitude and behaviors. This is where they introduced the concept of natural make-up which was checked against the nurture theory later.
4. Behaviorist perspective was one of the revolutionary perspectives that focused more on the nurture theory as opposed to the nature theory. These people believed that a person’s environment where one grows make them the person they are.
5. Cognitive perspective works towards studying the thought process of people ignoring the unconscious and genetic make-up. People in this perspective believed that a person’s thought process affects one’s personality.
6. Trait perspective explores the skills, motives and free will of a person.
7. Humanistic perspective look at people with an open-mindedness where it tries to understand the person as he/she is, rather than looking at nature, nurture, cognition etc.
8. Interactionist perspective tries to understand people from their situation point of view because they behave differently with different people.