Personality Assessment and Theories

Personality Assessment and Theories

There are several different theories and assessments that can be used to determine an individuals’ personality type. The first thing that must be known when testing an individuals’ personality is what personality theory is going to be applied. The testing can become meaningless without understanding this to begin with.

The first theory we look at is Freud’s theory of psychodynamic theory.   This theory shows behaviour as a product of psychological impressions caused by unconscious thoughts, feelings, and repressed issues from early childhood. An example of this is a person that smokes or habitually chews gum is linked as a suppressed deprivation of the oral needs during infancy.   According to this theory, the personality grows out of the resolution of unconscious conflicts and developmental needs. Freud’s different developmental stages can explain this theory best. Personality assessments that are used to correspond to this theory include projective tests, personal observation and personal interviews.

The Humanistic Theory relies on the belief in the basic goodness and respect of humankind.   An understanding and acceptance of a person’s own existence and responsibility is the basis in this theory. Maslow and Carl Rogers are famous for this theory. The personality assessment according to this theory uses higher objective tests and personal interviews.

The next theory we look at is the trait theory. The trait theory is concerned with an individual’s traits. A person’s traits are what make that person the individual that they are. Traits are relatively permanent aspects of every individual as shown by the consistency in an individual’s actions and reactions in their daily situations and interactions. Assessment of personality under this theory uses objective tests.

The test I took at http://similarminds.com/jung_word.html is an objective type test. Objective tests are the most commonly used tools for assessing personality but they do have...