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The below mentioned article provide a short note on personality of an individual.
According to Kimball Young, “personality is a patterned body of habits, traits attitudes and ideas of an individual, as these are organised externally into roles and statuses, and as they relate internally to motivation, goals and various aspects of selfhood”.
By personality we, therefore, mean “the integration of the social-psychological behaviour of the human being, represented by habits of action and feeling, attitudes and opinions”. It may be noted that this behaviour contrasts with physiological behaviour, although the two are related.
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It may further be noted that personality, is developed in social situations and is expressed in interaction with other people. In order to bring out the various dimensions of personality, we may consider the views of two psychologists, viz. Allport and Watson.
Allport defined personality thus:
“Personality is the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychological systems which determine his unique adjustments to his environment”.
Watson gave the following definition of personality:
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“Our personality is the result of what we start with and what we have lived through. It is the ‘reaction mass’ as a whole”. An analysis of these two definitions would bring out the characteristic features of personality.
To begin with, self-consciousness is one of the most important characteristics of personality. Whenever an individual becomes conscious of his ‘self he is said to be endowed with a personality. We do not ascribe personality to a child. The reason is simple. There is no integration in the thinking, reflection and the behaviour pattern of a child.
Such integration takes place only in the case of an adult individual. Animals lack personality, while men possess personality. This is one of the distinctions between men and animals. The second characteristic of personality is that it is ‘social’ in origin.
It has been established beyond all controversy that no individual can develop his personality if he is denied the company of men since birth all throughout the impressionable years of his life.
“In 1938, a girl about six years of age called Anna was found by social workers in an attic like room in her grand-father’s house where she had been kept since she was five and one- half months old. Her clothing and bedding were filthy. She was unable to walk, talk, or use gestures. She could not feed herself when food was placed before her. She was emaciated and undernourished, with skeleton-like legs and bloated abdomen. She had been fed virtually nothing but cow’s milk by her mother, who was a moron. Anna was an illegitimate child and was presumably isolated because her grand-father, a widowed farmer, in whose house the mother lived, was hostile and opposed to having the child in the house. The mother, we were told, was engaged in heavy work on the farm and had little time for Anna. After she was found by the social worker, Anna was removed to a country home where she stayed about a year and half, and where she learned to walk, feed herself, and understand simple commands, but not to talk. Finally, she was moved to a private home for retarded children, where she lived for three years until her death from hemorrhagic jaundicing in 1942. Before her death, Anna could bead strings, identify a few colours, build with blocks. She was clean about her clothing, habitually washed her hands and brushed her teeth, and walked well. She had a pleasant disposition and tried to help other children. She talked mainly in phrases”.
This example brings home to us most dramatically the consequences of extreme social isolation of a child. For this reason, Fichte observed: “Man becomes man only among men”.
The third characteristic of personality is that its nature cannot be properly understood without reference to the goal or goals that the individual concerned keeps before him. Apart from simple biological needs, man has also various kinds of needs derived from social living itself.
Pursuit of goals designed to meet these needs affects personality. A man having one kind of goal is likely to behave differently from a man having a different kind of goal.
The fourth characteristic of personality is that it is an integrated whole in which the biological, psychological and social elements are all integrated into a complex whole. All these elements cannot be separated from the individuality of man. During the early years of childhood, one is guided by various biological and psychological drives such as hunger, emotion, etc.
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With the passage of time, the judgment begins to play its part and integration is sought to be established among various elements. The greater the integration among these various elements, the greater is the chance that an integrated personality would grow.