Personality Theories

This is Lesson 7 of the Free Online Psychology Course.

There are 6 billion people in the world. How can psychology understand each of us if we are unique?

How can a psychologist serve a person well in the office if there are millions and millions of people different from each other?

Really, this is an interesting question that few people ask. The solution is provided by each approach to psychology, each line of research with a theory of personality.

“What is personality theory?”

Despite the huge differences we have with others around us, we share characteristics, personality traits, ways of thinking and feeling that are similar.

In other words, you can now think of two people – who even though they were raised in different environments – are very similar in some ways, isn’t it?

Putting people into certain groups is creating a theory of personality.

In the Faculty of Psychology, and in the books of theorists in the area, we find different ways of seeing the human being, each one making a certain classification of certain types or traits.

In the next posts we will talk about the different theories of personality.

Personality Theory: Freud,
Personality Theory: Jung,
Personality Theory: Erich From

Soon, we will talk about how Reich, behavioral psychology and cognitive psychology developed a way of thinking about the human being.

We will also include texts on how other cultures think about personality: among them Buddhism, Hinduism and Hippocrates’ ancient medical classification of the 4 temperaments. Click here and learn more about Personality before Psychology.