by Severio Costello

Created on: June 07, 2010

                                                                    Genetic and Environmental Influence on Personality

After a semester of Personality theories - Freud and Jung, Rogers, Bandura and so on, students often ask, once again,” isn't there one theory we can trust and use with confidence? Can't we narrow it down a bit? Tell us, what is right and what is not!

Well, unfortunately, Personality is not yet consdered to be a science, at least not in the sense that Biology or Chemistry are. In those fields, although there is disagreement about details and the latest findings, there is a common body of knowledge that few people in the field argue about. Not so obviously, in Personality.

However, there are slowly emerging ideas that seem to pop up again and again in different theories, often with different names, but there none-the-less.  Sometimes they occur in theories that are otherwise quite different, or that come from a different perspective, such as clinical versus experimental versus factor analysis versus phenomenological.  Perhaps the field will indeed become a science, perhaps not too far in the future!

Here, I help to bring forth the various theories, views, and components currently being used in order to help describe how Personality is created and influenced through both Genetic and Environmental factors.  Here we go.

Consciousness and the Unconscious

This, of course, is Freud's greatest contribution.awhile he didn't originate the terms, he certainly was responsible for popularizing them!  Many theories postulate some sort of unconscious, not as a place where our worst fears bubble and boil, but as a way of accounting for the many things that influence us without our full awareness. This concept was discussed and elaborated further by Jung’s “Collective Unconscious.”

Three aspects of the Unconscious

First, is biological. We come into this life with something like Freud's id or Jung's collective unconscious in place.  It is likely composed of whatever instincts remain a part of our human nature, plus our temperament or inborn personality, and perhaps the preprogramming

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