Warm-up

1
Warm-up

• Why would it be important for therapists and
  clinicians to have a well developed view of
  personality theory to do their job well?

2
Today we will

• Define personality and examine the different
  personality theories

3
What is Personality???

• Contemporary theory
• Each person attempts to control and predict
  events
• We continually evaluate our experiences and use
  our interpretations of reality to understand and
  control the world around us.
• According to this viewpoint, each of us has our
  own theory of human personality, because people
  form a major part of the reality that we attempt
  to understand and control.

4
What is your personal theory of personality???

• Please complete part I of the worksheet, A
  Personal Appraisal.
• Think about each concept/item and check the three
  items that are most important regarding your view
  of human personality.
• Next, explain why you chose the three items that
  you checked.

5
Part III

• Each of the concepts are associated with one of
  the five major approaches to personality
• psychoanalytic (childhood experiences,
  unconscious motives, sexual instincts)
• humanistic (conscious awareness, the self,
  subjective feelings)
• cognitive (interpretations of experience,
  organization of reality, expectations)
• trait (temperament, abilities, enduring
  characteristics)
• and learning (external environment, rewards and
  punishments, observable behavior).

6
Summary

• Working in your groups, please discuss and
  evaluate the questions to help you formulate your
  own opinion on personality development.
• What is personality?
• What is a personality theory?
• Why have psychologists proposed so many different
  personality theories?
• Is one theory correct and the others wrong?
• What functions are served by personality theories
  in psychology?
• What functions are served by personal theories of
  human behavior? Are there good reasons why each
  of us should evaluate our own view of human
  personality?