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• #Superego definition psychology series

The first axis separated strong from weak emotions (the melancholic and choleric temperaments from the phlegmatic and sanguine). However, Wundt suggested that a better description of personality could be achieved using two major axes: emotional/nonemotional and changeable/unchangeable. He developed a list of traits that could be used to describe the personality of a person from each of the four temperaments. Kant agreed with Galen that everyone could be sorted into one of the four temperaments and that there was no overlap between the four categories (Eysenck, 2009). In the centuries after Galen, other researchers contributed to the development of his four primary temperament types, most prominently Immanuel Kant (in the 18th century) and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt (in the 19th century) (Eysenck, 2009 Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991 Wundt, 1874/1886) (Figure 3). (credit b: modification of work by Wellcome Library, London) (b) An 1825 lithograph depicts Gall examining the skull of a young woman. (a) Gall developed a chart that depicted which areas of the skull corresponded to particular personality traits or characteristics (Hothersall, 1995). The pseudoscience of measuring the areas of a person’s skull is known as phrenology.

Initially, phrenology was very popular however, it was soon discredited for lack of empirical support and has long been relegated to the status of pseudoscience (Fancher, 1979).įigure 2. According to Gall, measuring these distances revealed the sizes of the brain areas underneath, providing information that could be used to determine whether a person was friendly, prideful, murderous, kind, good with languages, and so on. 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 (Figure 2). Galen’s theory was prevalent for over 1,000 years and continued to be popular through the Middle Ages. For example, the choleric person is passionate, ambitious, and bold the melancholic person is reserved, anxious, and unhappy the sanguine person is joyful, eager, and optimistic and the phlegmatic person is calm, reliable, and thoughtful (Clark & Watson, 2008 Stelmack & Stalikas, 1991). 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. Hippocrates theorized that personality traits and human behaviors are based on four separate temperaments associated with four fluids (“humors”) of the body: choleric temperament (yellow bile from the liver), melancholic temperament (black bile from the kidneys), sanguine temperament (red blood from the heart), and phlegmatic temperament (white phlegm from the lungs) (Clark & Watson, 2008 Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985 Lecci & Magnavita, 2013 Noga, 2007). The concept of personality has been studied for at least 2,000 years, beginning with Hippocrates in 370 BCE (Fazeli, 2012). What characteristics describe your personality? Historical Perspectives Happy, sad, impatient, shy, fearful, curious, helpful. The neo-Freudian approaches have been criticized, because they tend to be philosophical rather than based on sound scientific research. You'll learn about Freud and the neo-Freudian perspectives on personality in this section.įigure 1. Some of the notable neo-Freudians are Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, and Karen Horney. They generally agreed with Freud that childhood experiences matter, but they decreased the emphasis on sex and focused more on the social environment and effects of culture on personality. The neo-Freudians were psychologists whose work followed from Freud’s. Successful resolution of the stages leads to a healthy adult. Failure to resolve a stage can lead one to become fixated in that stage, leading to unhealthy personality traits. In each stage, pleasure focuses on a specific erogenous zone.

#Superego definition psychology series

Freud also said that personality develops through a series of psychosexual stages. The job of the ego is to balance the sexual and aggressive drives of the id with the moral ideal of the superego. He proposed three components to our personality: the id, ego, and superego.

He was also the first to recognize that much of our mental life takes place outside of our conscious awareness. Sigmund Freud presented the first comprehensive theory of personality. What you'll learn to do: define personality and the contributions of Freud and neo-Freudians to personality theory