Personality Psychology Self-Analysis

Cwinn Febus

Personality Psychology

Dr. Shpancer

Self-Analysis

        We have discussed multiple theorists in class from Freud, Adler to Allport, and all of them have different ideas how one’s personality is formed. Different situations, environments, biological differences, or simply the order of which you were born could simply be the reason for how you portray to others. All three of these men have come up with theories as to why I am how I am today, and I am going to explain how what they theorized is true and relatable.

        Freud talked a lot about how if the ID threatens to overwhelm the ego, then there is an increase in anxiety, so this causes you to unconsciously use defense mechanisms to calm yourself down. There are multiple different defense mechanisms, some of them include: displacement, denial, rationalization, regression, etc. Some of these I use myself, the ones I use most frequently would be rationalization, humor, and displacement. I use these when I start to have my anxiety uproars, which happen frequently, they don’t necessarily always help but they do help and decrease the anxiety at least a little bit to a more manageable level. All three of these defense mechanisms are different in helping my anxiety though, displacement means that what ever emotions I am feeling I will direct them towards something else, like if I am angry I will punch a pillow and scream into it instead of the person my anger is directed at. Humor is simply I will just try and make jokes and laugh about the situation I am in, instead of just dwelling on those emotions. Finally, rationalization would be me trying to find reason as to why I am feeling the way I am and making sense of the situation instead of panicking, there is a reason for the panic.

        Next up on the list of theorists is Adler, and the one concept that I really picked up from him is his idea about birth order. Birth order according to him has a huge impact on how your personality is formed, because based on which order you and your siblings were born, your traits will usually be different. Personally, I have three brothers, one younger and two older, so I am one of two middle children. What I have realized after learning about Adler’s theories is that I take a lot of the traits as the “Second-Born”. I think that because I am in competition with my second oldest brother all the time, and with everything he has done in his life, especially when it comes to track goals. He ran track in high school and college, so I have always been in competition with him in that aspect, but I also definitely use him as a “pacer” and see what he does right and wrong, so I can use those as examples as to what not to do or what to do.