Sigmund Freud's Eight Stages Of Personality Development

Each person’s mind is made up of complex emotions, experiences, and processes. All of these elements of the human mind make up one’s personality. Personality is defined as the unique and relatively stable ways in which people think, feel, and behave. Everyone experiences the world in different ways and these experiences shape a person’s personality both instantly and in the future. Sometimes they unknowing can cause problems later in life and this can be proven with many personality theories that have been founded in psychology’s history.
Sigmund Freud was founder of the psychosexual theory which stems from his research regarding the unconscious mind. This theory explains how different stages of personality development effect the sexual development …show more content…
These eight stages go through the entire lifespan of a person. Each stage focuses on conflicts that a person will face during development and their ability to overcome these crises or failure to do so. The first stage is during the first year of life and this has to do with trust. The possible negative outcome would be having fear and not being able to be hopeful. The next stage is during the second year of life. The conflict in this stage would be autonomy vs. doubt. If a child doesn’t overcome this crisis, this can lead to a feeling of shame. Next, during ages three to five, a child searches for a purpose which leads to the conflict of initiative vs. guilt. Failure to overcome this stage leads to a child feeling inadequate. During ages six to twelve a child struggles with industry vs. inferiority. The child feels a need to prove themselves and a failure to do so can lead to feelings of inadequacy. The fifth stage is identity vs. role confusion and this occurs during ages twelve through eighteen. A child’s conflict at this stage has to do with expectations and the feeling of the need to live up to those standards. Next, the sixth stage, during ages eighteen through forty, dealing with intimacy vs. isolation which is simply the feeling of urgency to find a life partner. The seventh stage deals with generatively vs. stagnation which at forty through mid-sixties means …show more content…
Founded by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Myers, the MBTI theory focuses on the differences between humans and their behaviors. This theory is broken down into four categories and each category has an either/or result. This result is shown by letters and each category contains two different letters representing opposite ends of behavior. The first category, represented by E and I, is extraversion vs. introversion. Extroverts are people who outwardly project their energy and opposite of that would be introverts who tend to be more focused inward and direct their energy as such. Next is sensing vs. intuition represented by S and I. If a person is S then they focus on the here and now, they are very attentive and practical. Opposing that would be intuition which focuses on the possibilities and big picture views. The third category is the contradiction of thinking vs. feeling. Thinking is very logic based and people of this behavior often are problem solvers. On the other hand, feeling focuses on more intimate exchanges between people which means that these people are more personable and caring. Lastly the last set of behaviors would be judging and perception. The behaviors associated with judging would be being very decisive and thought out processes. Opposite of that would be perception which is being spontaneous and sometimes means people of this result tend to