Review of studies of personality and character in domestic and foreign psychology

The concept of personality theory

Personality theory is a set of assumptions about the prerequisites and methods of personal development.

Each theory strives for an individual interpretation and prediction of social behavior.

The personality structure contains an endopsychological component (sensitivity, inclinations) and an exopsychological component (character, abilities).

Basic questions of personality theories:

What is the nature of the mechanisms of personal growth?
What period of formation is most important in personal development?
What processes are dominant in the personality structure?
Does free will exist in individuals?
Is the inner world of a person subjective or objective?

Domestic and foreign approaches to defining the category “personality”

There have been many approaches to defining the category “personality”. According to psychodynamic approaches, the impact of people on the environment in one direction or another is predetermined through the conflict between the forces of its subconscious and external reality (Freud's psychoanalysis, Adler's individual psychology, Jung's analytical psychology).

Freud, describing the topography of the psyche, considered 3 levels:

Consciousness,
Preconscious,
Unconscious.

Adler's individual psychology did not assign important importance to libido in personality development. The scientist attached primary importance to the “will to power.” She, in his opinion, has been the main impulse since birth and is present in every person. From the first years of life, this impulse begins to conflict with the demands of the adult world. It makes children feel the burden of their own inferiority.

C. G. Jung minimized the importance of the individual unconscious, replacing it with the collective unconscious, which has an innate character and has been passed on from generation to generation for millions of years. Its content includes, in particular, archetypes (the primary image that appears in dreams and forces an individual to behave in certain situations in a way that is typical for representatives of all cultures).

If we analyze V. M. Bekhterev’s views on personality, then it is important to emphasize the importance of studying personality as an integrative whole. The scientist introduces into science the categories of “individual”, “individuality” and “personality”. He considered personality in the form of two sets of traces, closely related to each other.

The personal approach of S. L. Rubinstein was characterized by the fact that personality was defined as a dependence of mental processes. This was expressed, firstly, through individual differential differences between people. In different people, in accordance with their individual characteristics, you can see different types of perception, memory, and attention. Secondly, the expression of the personal dependence of mental processes was that the process of development of mental processes itself depended on the general development of the individual.

Basic theories of personality

Analytical (K. Jung): personality is a community of archetypes; personality structure - the relationship of the conscious to the unconscious, extroverted to introverted.
Psychodynamic (S. Freud): personality – a system of aggressive and sexual motivations and defense mechanisms; personality structure – the relationship between personality traits and defense mechanisms.
Humanistic (A. Maslow): personality – the inner world of a person; structure – the relationship between the real and ideal “I”.
Cognitive (D. Kelly): personality – a system of internal blocks for processing human experience; structure is a cognitive element for determining future events.
Activity (S. Rubenstein): a person is a subject with a certain social position; the individual plays a certain role that is important for society; structure – the interaction of direction, self-control and system-forming personality traits.
Behavioral (E. Thorndike, behaviorism): personality as a result of learning; structure – a system of human skills; the main role is subjective significance.
Dispositional (E. Kretschmer): personality is a combination of temperament and socially conditioned personal qualities; structure – temperament, biological traits

Modern theories of personality occupy a large layer in sociological knowledge. Examples: sociodynamic (from the point of view of external circumstances), internationalist (as a system of internal and external factors), trait theory (differences in the traits of individuals).

The inner world of a person is full of secrets and mysteries. Throughout historical development, scientists have not been able to come to a general theory of personality, so consideration of individual aspects of basic theories will allow us to form an individual point of view regarding the structure of the human psyche.

The problem of personality and character in psychology

The concept of personality is a system-forming and basic concept in almost all pedagogical and psychological disciplines. This question is capable of revealing ideas about the main characteristics of personality as a mental phenomenon, which gives a system of ideas about foreign and domestic theories of personality.

The problem of personality and essence, as well as psychological characteristics, is considered one of the most difficult in theoretical psychology. In foreign studies, each psychological direction has proposed its own concept of personality. In Russian psychology, one of the early ideas about personality was the “collector’s” idea.

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Initially, personality was considered as a container that took on the traits of temperament, character and prevailing needs. In this case, the personality acted as a set of the following components:

Qualities,
Properties,
Characteristics,
Peculiarities.

By the end of the 70s. In the last century, the orientation towards a structural approach to the problem of personality has changed to a tendency towards using a systematic approach. A. N. Leontiev gave his own definition of personality, which later becomes the basis for working with this concept within the framework of a systems approach.

According to Leontiev, personality is a special quality acquired by an individual in society in a set of relationships that are social in nature. In other words, personality is a systemic category. For this reason, it was often considered as a “supersensible” quality, although its bearer was a completely sensual and corporeal individual, possessing innate and acquired properties.

The properties of an individual constituted only the conditions (prerequisites) for the development and functioning of the individual, including external conditions and life circumstances. Personality and the individual must, according to the scientist, be considered as a unity. However, these categories are not identical to each other. Personality is a special “systemic quality that begins to reveal itself in three spaces of the “psychological dimension.”

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Scientists consider the problem of character in close connection with the category of temperament, although these are different manifestations of personality and individuality. Temperament can act as a natural and conditioned prerequisite for the development of character traits. Most often, it manifests itself in the dynamics of reactions (excitability, pace, strength of reactions, general psychological tone, mood).

Afterword

The concepts discussed are similar in some ways, but completely different in others. In particular, there is no clear answer about what ultimately comes first: man or society, nature or the environment.

But if we focus on domestic concepts, we can note that a person becomes a person under the influence of society, through relationships and the assimilation of cultural experience.

You can read more about what personality is in the articles “The concept of personality in psychology: essence and structure” and “Personality orientation - what is it in psychology.”

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In foreign psychology there are a huge number of different theories of personality. Conventionally, all of them can be divided into three large groups: psychoanalytic, behavioral and humanistic theories.

1. Psychoanalytic concept of S. Freud. One of the most widespread theories that still influences personality psychology is Freudianism. This theory arose during that period of personality research, which we defined as clinical. The creator of this theory is S. Freud. Subsequently, on the basis of Freudianism, a whole series of theories arose that can be conditionally united into the group of theories of neo-Freudianism.

Considering the problem of behavior, Freud identifies two needs that determine human mental activity: libidinal and aggressive. But since the satisfaction of these needs encounters obstacles from the outside world, they are repressed, forming the region of the unconscious. But still, sometimes they break through, bypassing the “censorship” of consciousness, and appear in the form of symbols. The main sections of Freud's personality theory were problems of the unconscious, the structure of the mental apparatus, personality dynamics, development, neuroses, methods of studying personality. Subsequently, many famous psychologists (K. Horney, G. Sullivan, E. Fromm, A. Freud, M. Klein, E. Erikson, F. Alexander, etc.) developed, deepened and expanded precisely these aspects of his theory.

2. K. Jung’s personality typology. He distinguishes two types of personality: extroverts (oriented towards the outside world) and introverts (oriented towards the world of their own experiences). K. Jung was one of the first students of Freud to dissociate himself from his teacher. The main reason for the disagreement between them was Freud's idea of pansexualism. But Jung fought against Freud not from a materialistic, but from an idealistic position. Jung called his system “analytical psychology.” According to Jung, the human psyche includes three levels: consciousness, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The decisive role in the structure of a person’s personality is played by the collective unconscious, formed from traces of memory left by the entire past of humanity.

3. A. Adler’s theory of inferiority complex. Another, no less famous student of Freud, who left his teacher, was A. Adler, the founder of the so-called individual psychology. He sharply opposed Freud's biologizing theory. Adler emphasized that the main thing in a person is not his natural instincts, but a social feeling, which he called the “sense of community.” This feeling is innate, but it must be socially developed. He opposed Freud's view that man is from birth aggressive, that his development is determined by biological needs.

In his opinion, the personality structure is uniform, and the determinant in personality development is a person’s desire for superiority. However, this desire cannot always be realized. Thus, due to a defect in the development of bodily organs, a person begins to experience a feeling of inferiority; it can also arise in childhood due to unfavorable social conditions. A person strives to find ways to overcome feelings of inferiority and resorts to various types of compensation. Adler examines different forms of compensation (adequate, inadequate) and talks about its possible levels

4. Personality Theory by K. Horney. The listed authors did not consider themselves direct followers of Freud. The main representatives of neo-Freudianism are the direct students of Z. Freud - K. Horney and G. S. Sullivan. Karen Horney was at first a devoted student of Freud. In 1939, already in the USA, she published the book “The Neurotic Personality of Our Time,” in which she warmly thanks her teacher. However, she soon began to sharply criticize Freud for his attempt to reduce the mechanisms of human behavior to two tendencies - libidinal and aggressive, as well as for pansexualism.

5. Concept (theory) of personality by K. Rogers. He called his method of therapy non-directive, i.e. focused on the patient. According to this method, the doctor should not put pressure on the patient. Contact between doctor and patient should be based on respect for each other; Moreover, both of them are full participants in the conversation or contact. The function of the therapist is to create a situation where the doctor acts as the second “I” of the client and treats his inner world with understanding. Deep respect for the individual position of the individual is the only rule of therapy. The client in such a situation feels that all his internal experiences and sensations are perceived with interest and approval, this helps to discover new aspects of his experience, sometimes for the first time to realize the meaning of certain of his experiences.

6. Personality theory by A. Maslow. According to him, the basic human need is self-actualization, the desire for self-improvement and self-expression. To the main question of his theory - What is self-actualization? – Maslow answers: “Self-actualizing people are all, without exception, involved in some kind of work... They are devoted to this work, it is something very valuable to them - it is a kind of calling.” All people of this type strive for the realization of higher values, which, as a rule, cannot be reduced to something even higher. These values (among them - goodness, truth, decency, beauty, justice, perfection, etc.) act as vital needs for them. Existence for a self-actualizing personality appears as a process of constant choice, as a constant solution to Hamlet’s problem “to be or not to be.” At every moment of life, an individual has a choice: moving forward, overcoming obstacles that inevitably arise on the path to a high goal, or retreat, giving up the fight and giving up positions.

7. Janet's theory of personality. Speaking about various personality theories, we cannot fail to say a few words about the French psychological school and its most outstanding representative, P. Jean. Janet expressed the opinion that various mental processes are phenomena that prepare actions. Feelings and thinking are processes that regulate actions. The basis for the development of personality is the doctrine of behavior. But Janet does not use the concept of behavior in the behaviorist sense. It is considered as including not only the externally observable activity of the individual, but also the internal mental content, which becomes an integral part of behavior, its regulating link.

Janet's position that the structure of mental processes includes the process of regulation is extremely important. Essentially, here the idea is already anticipated, which found its further development in the works of Russian psychologists L. S. Vygotsky, S. L. Rubinstein, A. N. Leontiev, L. I. Bozhovich and others, namely, the transformation of an individual into a person is determined by the fact that there is an opportunity for regulation and self-regulation. Janet says that the human psyche develops in cooperation with other people. First, a person cooperates with others and only then, on the basis of this, can he regulate his own behavior. The structure of the behavioral act proposed by Janet seems interesting. In accordance with it, three stages are distinguished in a behavioral act: internal preparation for action, execution of action and completion of action. As we see, this description of the behavioral act already includes an idea of the purpose of the action.

8. D. Watson's concept of personality. All human behavior can be described schematically using the terms “stimulus” (S) and “response” (R). Watson believed that a person is initially endowed with some simple reactions and reflexes, but the number of these hereditary reactions is small. Almost all human behavior is the result of learning through conditioning. The formation of skills, according to Watson, begins at the earliest stages of life. The systems of basic skills or habits are as follows:

1) visceral, or emotional;

2) manual;

3) laryngeal, or verbal.

Watson defined personality as a derivative of systems of habits. Personality can be described as the sum of actions that can be detected through the practical study of behavior over a sufficiently long period of time. Personality problems and mental health disorders for behaviorists are not problems of consciousness, but behavioral disorders and habit conflicts that should be “treated” through conditioning and deconditioning. All subsequent studies following Watson's work were aimed at studying the stimulus-response relationship. Another famous American scientist B.F. Skinner tried to go beyond this formula to take into account the effects of the environment on the body after the reaction has occurred. He created the theory of operant conditioning.

Sources used:

https://psychologist.tips/733-teorii-lichnosti-otechestvennye-i-zarubezhnye.html
https://studopedia.ru/2_57316_osnovnie-zarubezhnie-teorii-lichnosti.html

Cognitive theory

There are only two questions in the cognitive theory of personality:

What's happening now?
What does the future hold?

It is these two dilemmas that torment a person all his life, according to the founder J. Kelly. A person perceives the world according to an individual internal model of behavior, which is called a constructor and is interpreted through the influence of intellectual processes. To put it briefly, according to the psychologist, only similar constructors are able to interact normally with each other.

Individual theory according to Alfred Adler

Psychologist A. Adler believed that human life strives for superiority and improvement, the individual tries to overcome childhood fears, complexes and feelings of inferiority. Within the framework of this scientific theory, the individual develops his own, original lifestyle, which is focused on the desire to be first, to be the best. At the same time, the individual has only three main tasks - friendship, love and work. Depending on the importance of each of them, the level of activity and the typology of the individual are manifested - the controlling, receiving, avoiding and socially useful type.

Analytical theory K.G. Cabin boy.

The theory of personality traits according to K.G. Jung contains the main and main psychological factor, which is based on innate aspects transmitted genetically from parents, i.e. Primary character templates or “archetypes” are inherent in a person from birth. Subsequently, the scientist developed the theory, highlighting three conceptual directions in the structure:

The collective unconscious contains all the accumulated human experience or innate cultural heritage. This structure reflects thoughts and feelings that are characteristic of all humanity.
The individual unconscious implies the presence of complexes and experiences that were forgotten or suppressed, but subsequently become the driving force of the individual for life.
Individual conscious – regulates a person’s conscious activity through self-awareness, memories and sensations.

Also K.G. Jung described the main orientations of the ego - extraversion (direction to the external world) and introversion (the individual's focus on the internal).

Concepts of personality structure in Russian psychology

Rubinstein's concept: Personality consists of the following four components:
Character is a set of individual properties of a person, determined by his relationship to the world and to himself and manifested in forms of behavior typical for a given person.
Temperament is a set of formal-dynamic personality properties.
Abilities are individual personality properties that determine the success of a person’s activities.
Platonov's concept: Personality consists of the following components, which can be considered as levels:
Individual social experience (knowledge, skills, abilities and habits acquired by a person) is formed mainly in the learning process and has a social character.
Individual characteristics of mental processes (individual manifestations of memory, perception, sensations, thinking, abilities) depend both on innate factors and on training, development, and improvement of these qualities.
Biologically determined personality properties (temperament, gender and age characteristics) are the lowest level of personality structure.
Ananyev's concept
Character
Social status Social roles
Focus
Features of social behavior The nature of communications and relationships with other people
Temperament

Character
Social status	Social roles
Focus
Features of social behavior	The nature of communications and relationships with other people
Temperament