A mask is used to cover a person's face; their expressions and features. The Latin word for personality, persona, refers to a mask worn by actors in a play. This makes me lean towards the question: Is our personality a mask of who we really are or the perspective we give on how we want others to perceive us? Personality is used to describe a person who possesses many unique traits that trace back to genetics, influences, and experiences combined for both internal and external aspects of our character. Who am I? Describing who a person is isn't answered in a single sentence, it's an accumulation of theories. My personality derives from traits of psychodynamic and humanistic theory. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Sigmund Freud's approach to psychodynamic theory explains that our interactions among the three parts of the mind (the id, ego, and superego) drive behavior. Personality develops from childhood and accompanies the person over the years. The first part of the mind that develops is the Id, it lives in our unconscious mind which craves immediate gratification, it demands that we drink water and eat food when we are thirsty or hungry. The second part of the mind that develops, the superego, is the one that acts like the angel and the devil on our shoulders, it sends messages of guilt or pride. Finally, according to Freud, the Ego is the mediator between the two, the more rational part and finds the best path between the Id and the Superego living in the conscious mind. The way a person is raised has a lot to do with their character today. Someone can develop their character traits, but the way people treat others, what we see, and how they choose to handle certain situations are tied to the person's history, their past. With that, I'm sure I had an amazing experience during my early years, but not everything was perfect. Psychodynamic theory is strongly determined by unconscious factors over which we have no control, the id, the ego and the superego. Defense mechanisms, such as sublimation, denial, displacement, can arise when stress begins to build and anxiety forms. Freud believed that children go through five stages during their development; oral, anal, phalic, latency and genital. These stages of development have an immense impact on our personality. Just like in the example of the pacifier and an infant, once the pacifier is removed, the infant will use their thumb instead to satisfy themselves. If it doesn't adjust to reality, it can create anxious habits like nail biting. As a child, my parents were very strict and I was always thinking about doing anything and overanalyzing situations because I was thinking about the consequences. I bit my nails until I was 14, when I started caring more about my appearance and knew that short, stubby nails weren't very feminine. Freud spoke of the anal stage, from one to three years. My mother always talks about how I was potty trained and started walking on my first birthday, she wanted me to learn quickly. Knowing how very pushy, sweet and demanding my mother is, I can only imagine myself at 1 year old training myself every day to walk and not pee myself. I also happen to have a Type A personality and suffer from compulsive disorders. I tend to bevery organized, but if something goes wrong or something doesn't turn out the way I want, I get anxious and agitated, even today. The Electra complex is the result of the phallic stage. As we begin to age, we tend to feel jealous. towards their parent. When I was six, my father remarried and as I was his only daughter for a while, this led to an attachment. Noticing that the attention was no longer on me, I did things to get his attention. For example, I would pretend to have a stomach ache so he could stay home with me, play games, and make me soup. At some point I reached the latency stage where my identity focuses my attention on other things like dance classes and spending more time with my mother and close friends to distract me from the idea that my father's attention was not primarily on me. Later I moved to the genital stage where I began to find the opposite sex attractive and focus my attention on that. I started asking if I could invite boys to my birthday parties and my friends and I would talk about the cute boy at school. Even today I can relate to these milestones, they had a big impact on my life. When you first meet someone, you can't say that their personality has been influenced by all those experiences. However, being able to understand the steps and concepts leads you to better understand why a person acts in a certain way or what certain behaviors they do. decisions are based on. Childhood experiences shape personality (Corr & Matthews, 2009). The influence between parent and infant represents child development. Vulnerability and defenses such as blame, impulsive actions, and shame regulate emotional distance between family members that protect themselves from intolerable experiences (Strolorow, 1992). Strolorow's (1992) research proved that the experience and organization of a child's development is based on the relationship between caregivers and the child. My father remarried and I had the privilege of having a half-sister, we are seven years apart. I adored my sister, even though my family claimed she was an intolerable child. My half-sister and I were different from the rest of my 22 cousins, I had divorced parents and the rest of my aunts and uncles were high school sweethearts. This can make you feel excluded and different from the rest of the family. My father and my stepmother did not get along, I remember that in the middle of the arguments, shouting and insulting comments, I would bring my sister into the room and put on cartoons with the volume turned up, to make her prevent you from listening to what was happening. It has become a weekly, even almost daily, habit, and in a child's mind it can be traumatic. The relationship began to deteriorate, leading to divorce. The situation at my father's house was sad. I always wanted to be at home with my mother to avoid conflicts, but I didn't know my father had become depressed. At that point, when things started to get murky for our family, I started looking for satisfaction elsewhere and keeping busy, but also ignoring the fact that my father was depressed and mentally ill. Four months later, I received the worst news during my freshman year of high school: my father committed suicide. It has impacted my life in many ways, but especially in the area of ​​my personality, I feel like I have become a slightly different person, still carrying the traits of psychodynamics because these experiences of childhood follows you throughout life. Although humanist theory.