1. How have contemporary research findings evaluated the validity of the humanistic perspective on personality?

2. How does the psychodynamic perspective explain personality?

● Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was the first comprehensive personality theory. Freud believed that an individual’s personality emerges from tensions generated by unconscious motives and unresolved childhood conflicts. Personality results from the interaction of three forces: id, ego, and superego.

● Freud used various techniques, like free association, to reveal unacceptable thoughts, wishes, feelings, and memories held in the unconscious mind. Freud explained many of our thoughts and behaviors as defense mechanisms, protective methods of reducing anxiety by unconsciously distorting reality.

● The Freudian perspective held that personality forms during the first 5 or 6 years of life and is influenced by development through five psychosexual stages.