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11.2 The Origins of Personality
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Describe the strengths and limitations of the psychodynamic approach to explaining personality.
- Summarize the accomplishments of the neo-Freudians.
- Identify the major contributions of the humanistic approach to understanding personality.
Although measures such as the Big Five and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI) are able to effectively assess personality, they do not say much about where personality
comes from. In this section we will consider two major theories of the origin of
personality: psychodynamic andhumanistic approaches.
Psychodynamic Theories of Personality: The Role of the Unconscious
One of the most important psychological approaches to understanding personality is based on the
theorizing of the Austrian physician and psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who founded
what today is known as the psychodynamic approach to understanding personality. Many people
know about Freud because his work has had a huge impact on our everyday thinking about
psychology, and the psychodynamic approach is one of the most important approaches to
psychological therapy (Roudinesco, 2003; Taylor, 2009). [1] Freud is probably the best known of
all psychologists, in part because of his impressive observation and analyses of personality (there
are 24 volumes of his writings). As is true of all theories, many of Freud’s ingenious ideas have
turned out to be at least partially incorrect, and yet other aspects of his theories are still
influencing psychology.