Personality and Essence

Theorists agree that people have an internal “essence” that determines who
they are and that guides their behavior, but the nature of that essence differs
from theory to theory. Psychoanalytic theory such as Sigmund Freud’s see
the essence of personality as arising from conflict among internal psychic
processes. For Freud, the conflict is viewed as occurring among the urges for
instinctual gratification (called the id), the urges for perfection (the superego),
and the demands of reality (the ego).
Humanistic theories such as those of Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow
also see people as often engaged in conflict. For these theorists, however,
the conflicts are between an internal self, which is striving for positive expression,
and the constraints of a restrictive external social world. In general,
the humanists have a much more optimistic outlook on human nature
than do psychoanalytic theorists.
Still other theorists are more neutral with respect to human nature.
George A. Kelly’s cognitive personality theory, for example, views people as
scientists, developing and testing hypotheses to understand themselves
better and to predict events in their world. Social learning theorists such as
Walter Mischel, Albert Bandura, and Julian Rotter see people as developing
expectations and behavioral tendencies based on their histories of rewards
and punishments and their observations of others.
To some extent, the question of “essence” is also the question of motivation.
Psychoanalytic theorists view people as trying to achieve a balance between
instinctual urges and the demands of reality. In contrast, humanistic
theorists view people as motivated toward personal growth rather than
homeostatic balance. Social learning theorists view people as motivated to
avoid punishments and obtain rewards.
Related to the question of the “essence” of personality is the notion of
whether part, or all, of the personality can be hidden from the individual.
Psychoanalytic theorists believe that the driving forces of the personality are
in the unconscious and thus are not directly accessible to the person except
under exceptional circumstances such as those which arise in therapy. Humanists
are much more optimistic about the possibility of people coming to
know their inner selves. According to Rogers, parts of the self which were
once hidden can, when the individual receives acceptance from others, become
expressed and incorporated into self-awareness. Social learning theories
do not place much weight on hidden personality dynamics. From the social
learning perspective, people are viewed as unable to verbalize easily
some of their expectations, but no special unconscious processes are hypothesized.
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