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Chapter 1 Conceptions of Personality Development in Adulthood
Thirty years ago the assumption held by most psychologists, as well as by society in general, was that
once people passed through the traumas of adolescence, completed their formal schooling, entered
the world of work, got married, and “settled down”, nothing much new happened to them until the
inevitability of their death. But now all of us—psychologists and laypersons alike—recognize that
things are not that straightforward, that adulthood is not a prolonged period of predictable sameness
and constancy.
The phenomenon of the “midlife crisis” exploded into our consciousness in the middle of the 1970s.
First, an early formation approach that assumes personality structure is established—and then
remains essentially unchanged—in the first years of childhood; second, a stage theory of
development, as represented in the concepts of Erik Erikson, Daniel Levinson, and Roger Gould; and
third, a dialectical analysis that poses ongoing irreconcilable tensions between basic needs, meaning
that development never ends.
Early formation theories
It has been a staple of folklore for a long time that “as the twig is bent the tree is formed,” that
experiences during childhood structure one's orientation to life as an adult. An extreme reflection of
this view proposes that you now are what you were, only bigger and more; whatever occurs later is
just an elaboration or refinement of an early orientation. In this section several approaches relevant
to an assumption of “early formation” are introduced.
Personal construct theory
Our behavior is influenced by our perceptions. Given the same stimulus—the same painting, the
same song—each of us is likely to perceive it as somewhat different. In personal construct theory,
interpretation thus results from cognitive determinants (in contrast to psychoanalytic theory, which
emphasizes motivations). Interpretation is inevitable, so this theory says, because the world is too
complex to be perceived straightforwardly.
George Kelly (1955) developed personal construct theory as an effort to systematize these
assumptions. As we attempt to superimpose some order on the complex world, we develop
constructs, or organizing labels, that help us distinguish between and classify events (Jankowicz,
1987).
How does a construct develop? First, we notice general features or similarities in stimuli—whether in
people, in events, in sounds, in tastes, in any broad type of stimulus. We note those that are alike;
those that are different.
Kelly proposed that our assessment of individual people is based on the distinctive collection of
constructs each of us has in our repertoire. Although we all apply order to the mass of individual
differences—the variations in looks, age, gender, personality, interests, and so on—by applying
constructs, each of us has developed a unique set of constructs.
,Central to Kelly's conception of human nature is the proposal that each of us is like a scientist,
constantly developing, testing, and revising our constructs as we seek to predict and understand (and
sometimes control) the behavior of important people in our lives.
I stated earlier that early formation theories usually relied on a psychoanalytic conception of
development and that Kelly's personal construct theory does not. In fact, he adamantly rejected
revered psychoanalytic concepts, such as unconscious, drives, and emotion. So, does Kelly fit as an
early-formation theorist? Yes and no. Yes, in the sense that one of his messages is that some
simplification is necessity; he wrote that without the creation of constructs, the world would appear
to be an “undifferentiated homogeneity” (1963, p. 9). And once we form constructs, they have a
tendency to become so internalized and self-perpetuating that we are not even aware that we are
using them to generate decisions about behaving toward others. But Kelly would have dismissed my
labeling him as an early formation theorist, because he believed that people can create alternative
explanations of their world.
Psychoanalytic theory
why I categorize psychoanalytic theory as an early formation theory. The reason is simple: Classic
psychoanalytic theory, despite all its modifications, assumes that personality is largely formed during
the first 5 years of life. The structure that is established then influences behavior for the rest of life.
If fixations (see Chapter 2) occur at these tender ages, they have ramifications on our behavior as
adults.
The life script approach
Probably the most extreme variant of a psychoanalytic approach, with respect to the assumption of a
premature resolution of personality dynamics, is the life script approach. A life script presupposes
that the young child embraces a consistent orientation to others and to the social environment that
is relentlessly “played out” throughout the rest of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. As such,
life script theory rests on the basic tenet of psychoanalytic theory that the sense of identity is
established in childhood and that it produces a consistency in all behavior thereafter.
Absolutely fundamental to life script theory is this assumption that people develop a characteristic
interpersonal strategy in childhood, and that this strategy inexorably influences and makes
understandable their interactions with others for the rest of their lives.
As noted previously, life scripts are developed early. Steiner (1974) proposes that the content of a life
script is based on a decision by the child, who, with all the information at his or her disposal at the
time, decides that a certain life course is a reasonable solution to an existential predicament; a
dilemma results from the behavior of parents and family. Thus it is a seemingly healthy reaction that
actually has unhealthy outcomes.
To summarize the life script conception, development is seen as playing only a limited role, because
the content and structure of orientations toward others are formed early in life. Although the
dominant script can be changed (through the therapeutic benefits of transactional analysis, of
course!), Berne believed that some kind of intervention like this was required for the change to
happen.
Stage theories of adult development
The second major conceptualization of adult personality development is the stage theory
formulation. Erik Erikson (1959, 1963) gave impetus to a stage-oriented explanation that extended
,development throughout the life span by building on Freud's theory of psychosexual development
and by generating a theory of eight stages of development. Erikson's theory serves in major ways as a
prototype of a stage theory, in that each successive stage or period is not only qualitatively different,
but is discontinuous with the previous stage. A crisis, or critical choice in each, leads eventually to a
relatively abrupt termination of each period, even though transition to the next stage or period may
take several months or even years. The stages build on each other, and the way in which each crisis is
resolved affects the person's ability to attack successfully the conflicts of the next stages. Each new
stage is seen as a wholly new level of structural integration. According to Erikson, then, personality
development proceeds by “critical steps—critical being a characteristic of turning points, of moments
of decision between progress and regression, integration and retardation”.
As an example of a stage theory conception, Erikson's approach reflects at least three major
differences from the early formation viewpoint reflected by life script theory. First, the mold is
formed less concretely in childhood, although certainly all future development is affected by the way
that the initial trust-versus-mistrust conflict (described in Chapter 4) is resolved. Second, stage
theories propose tasks that we feel pressured to do at various ages. Third, Erikson acknowledges that
the determinants of personality development extend beyond biological and family ones; the nature
of society and its institutions are intrinsically intertwined with the stages of development; for
example, parents and peers pressure us to form an identity in adolescence and to institute intimacy
in young adulthood.
Erikson's writings can be interpreted as saying that the conflict or dilemma at each stage must be
settled in one way or another before consideration of the task at the next stage—and, ideally, growth
—can occur.
A number of other stage theories bear both resemblances to and differences with Erikson's
approach. One type, developed by Marjorie Fiske Lowenthal and her colleagues (Lowenthal,
Thurnher, Chiriboga, & Associates, 1975), focuses on those transitions during adolescence and
adulthood recognized by society as “major,” such as graduation from school, marriage, parenthood,
grandparenthood, and retirement.
Dialectical approach to personality development
A dialectical conception of human behavior has had a long history, but a short life within psychology.
Among the subfields within psychology, its greatest impact has been on developmental psychology;
there, interest in a dialectical approach has advanced along with the recent focus on life-span
development.
The following assumptions are basic in this approach:
1. Personality can be described as a collection of pairs of characteristics struggling for control
within the individual.
2. Personality development reflects a striving toward the satisfaction or achievement of each of
these forces, independently (perhaps even at the same time).
3. These characteristics that are in opposition do not simply reflect a presence versus an
absence, but rather each is an entity that has a quality of its own; the tug is between two
different poles representing, for example, affiliation and privacy, rather than a
presence/absence state of being hungry or not hungry.
4. These contending characteristics are always in a state of tension; their relationship is cyclical
and changing rather than stable. No matter how strong the pull from one motive or need at a
given moment, some amount of the other oppositional force still exists and exerts an
, influence; thus—and perhaps this is the most important credo of the dialectical approach—
the characteristic nature of the system is a never-ending struggle (Kimmel, 1980).
5. In a dialectical analysis, a concept of balance or homeostasis is of no permanent value,
because it is the nature of behavior always to be changing. In contrast to the two previous
approaches that assume the resolution of a conflict, a dialectical analysis would propose (to
paraphrase Gail Sheehy, 1976) that the whole idea behind the nature of psychosocial
development in adulthood is that things can never be settled once and for all. The dialectical
view also contrasts with a biological conception that values homeostasis, or the return to a
state of equilibrium after any crisis, as a fundamental survival mechanism.
6. Change, in a dialectical analysis, can be assumed to be a cumulative process; that is, the long-
term effects of conflicting forces may lead to a synthesis of opposites in the form of a new
structural integration (Altman et al., 1981). Adler (1952) proposes that this new synthesis can
lead to changes that incorporate the original opposites but also yield something distinctively
new.
What are some examples of the oppositional bipolarities so central to a dialectical analysis? Altman
and his colleagues (1981) were primarily interested in interpersonal relationships; with respect to the
ongoing relationships between two people, they proposed the dialectical concepts of openness-
closedness and stability-change as most central. They also note that within social psychology,
opposites include harmony and conflict, altruism and aggression, and competition and cooperation.
But these authors note that social psychological research has mostly chosen to study one pole at a
time, rather than the two in relationship with each other.
A conflict between individualism and being dominated by one's roles in life may reflect another
dialectical issue. Again, the back-and-forth tasks of Levinson's theory are relevant. In certain periods,
finding one's niche in the world of work or becoming an acceptable parent tug hardest at us; the role
controls our behavior. But at other times not only must we escape the role or label, but our needs to
be a unique individual take control.
Such pushes and pulls are certainly not foreign to life script and stage theories, either. What makes
the dialectical conception different is its assumption that no stability is ever achieved.
Summary
The task of explaining why we, as adults, have the personality characteristics we do is a challenging
one. Although both society in general and academic psychology in particular have recently increased
their interest in adult personality, no one explanation of its causes is accepted by all.
Three alternative conceptions were introduced in this chapter. Early formation theories assume that
our character as adults is determined largely by what happens in the first 5 years of childhood. The
predominant example of an early formation theory is psychoanalysis; perhaps its most extreme
extension, relevant to personality in adulthood, is the life script approach, which proposes that a
child develops a characteristic way of responding to others. This life script is generated to protect the
child from hurt, but in the long run the playing out of the life script is detrimental to mature
adjustment.
A second type of approach is the stage theory, which proposes that development is reflected in
reactions to a series of conflicts between choices of life goals. The choice at each stage, or resolution
of the conflict, affects how the subsequent conflicts are approached and resolved. A prototype of this
approach is Erik Erikson's conception of eight stages from infancy through late adulthood.
,The third approach, the dialectical one, proposes that development can be conceptualized by an
ongoing tension between pairs of goals. Central to this approach is the idea that no goal is ever fully
achieved, because a tension always exists, pulling the person toward the oppositional goal.
Chapter 2: Psychoanalysis as an Early Formation Theory
Basic concepts in psychoanalytic theory
One of the tasks for Freud, as for any personality theorist, was explaining the structure of
personality. What are the basic building blocks in describing personality? How is it put together?
Personality structure
Freud proposed that three systems within the person reflect different drives or motivations and
these compete with each other for control of the person's behavior. It is important to recognize that
these systems are concepts, not things or little people inside our heads; they are abstractions
extracted from commonalities in behavior and inner experience.
Furthermore, they operate largely without our awareness; that is, the innate drives were seen as
unconscious. Freud assumed that if the person is doing something that he or she cannot report or
explain, then the mental processes necessary to “fill in the gaps”—the drives or motives—must be
unconscious.
Freud could not escape the conviction that within every person exists an aspect of untamed, animal-
like motivation. He conceived it to be there at birth—an instinctual set of demanding, selfish urges.
This innate system he termed the id; he saw it as the reservoir of psychic energy and believed that it
furnished all the power for the operation of the other two systems that developed later.
In young children, the id seems to rule, according to Freud's view. Young children, without restraint
or regret, seek their pleasures and vent their unintentionally destructive impulses on the world. The
id cannot tolerate tension; it seeks to discharge this tension immediately. This quest for immediate
gratification is called the “pleasure principle.”
But, in time, controls develop and restrain the operation of this primary process. At first, immoral
and asocial behavior is inhibited only when disapproving and punishing adults are present. Later on,
the individual internalizes these external controls. That is, they become his or her own and exert
influence even when adults are not around to disapprove or punish. This system of controls Freud
called the “superego,” a construct that he defined as the moral principle, the conscience. Right versus
wrong is the only concern of the superego.
In Freudian theory two subsystems exist as part of the superego. In addition to the moralistic
component, or conscience, the superego maintains an ego-ideal, a set of characteristics that the
person seeks to attain for himself or herself.
The third basic system that seemed necessary to Freud to account for the behavior he saw is the ego.
He found in his patients, as we have just noted, an array of primitive and unreasoning urges on the
one hand, and rigid and sometimes equally unreasoning controls on the other. But he also saw the
capacity to deal intelligently and rationally with reality. This reality principle is reflected in the actions
of the ego.
Three principal elements, then, participate in the lifelong drama that Freud saw enacted within every
person. The three components of personality are: the selfish, now-centered id that constantly
,threatens to spew forth its instinctual energies (Haan, 1989); the rigid, uncompromising voice of
morality, the superego; and the sometimes weak but sometimes clever compromiser and arranger,
the ego. The central goal of the game is control, and the central theme of the play is conflict; in fact,
originally, Freud explained pathology and mental illness as caused by these structural conflicts. In
general, he portrayed an everlasting and irreconcilable conflict between good and evil, between
superego and id.
The opportunity for the ego to grow strong is rooted both in hereditary factors and in the
experiences of the child. As noted in Chapter 1, in Freud's view, personality is largely formed by the
end of the 5th year, and late growth consists mainly of elaborating the structure (Hall & Lindzey,
1970, p. 50). Thus the opportunities for the ego to develop control are tested by challenges to the
young child as a result of biological changes during the early years.
Stages of psychological development
The previous section reflected Freud's assumption that certain inborn motives propel humans and
determine the direction that behavior will take (Freud, 1917/1963, 1933). Attempts to satisfy these
motives formed the groundwork for the emergence of personality characteristics that, according to
Freud, would continue into adulthood. The energy expended in satisfying motives is a psychological
or psychic energy called “libido.” This can be thought of as much like physical energy in that we have
only a certain amount of it at any given time. Freud saw normal development as a process of
redirecting the libido toward different goals as the person matures.
According to Freud, as children grow older they go through predictable and clear-cut stages of
personality development.
Each of Freud's stages is centered on that part of the body that occupies the child's thoughts most at
a particular developmental period. The first stage, which occurs during the child's first year, is the
oral stage. The mouth during this stage is the center of the infant's universe, for it is used to ingest
food and to express displeasure. Thus the infant's libido is directed toward the satisfaction of its oral
needs (sucking, then swallowing, then biting). If these needs are satisfied, the child can shift his or
her psychic energy toward a concern appropriate for the next stage. (That is, weaning is successful
not only functionally, but also psychologically.) If oral needs are not fully satisfied, fixation occurs.
This can result from improper weaning, an unsatisfactory feeding schedule, oral over-indulgence,
fears and anxieties, or other reasons. In fixation a certain amount of psychic energy remains devoted
to the satisfying of an earlier need even though the child has moved on to confront the tasks of a
later stage of development.
If fixation has occurred, the adult's personality and behavior reflect the continued lack of satisfaction
of this need. For example, if a man became fixated at the oral stage, he might be very talkative, chew
gum constantly, or smoke.
The second stage in Freud's theory of personality development is the anal stage; here the 2-year-old
or 3-year-old child, going through the self-discipline of toilet training, is learning self-control. The
conflict emerges between the child's developmental awareness that the anus can be a source of
pleasurable excitation and the efforts by parents or other caregivers to force compliance over toilet
training.
The next stage of development, the phallic stage, usually occurs when the child is 3, 4, or 5 years of
age. At this time, interests in one's genital organs come into prominence. The child may develop
feelings of jealously toward the parent of the same sex and feelings of affection for the parent of the
,other sex. During this period a boy, according to Freud, “rather naively wishes to use his new-found
source of pleasure, his penis, to please his oldest source of pleasure, the mother” (Schaeffer, 1971, p.
12). He envies his father, who is occupying the position he craves and is doing the thing he wishes to
do. Freud called this the Oedipus complex, after Oedipus, the mythical king of Thebes who killed his
father and married his mother.
According to Freud, after the girl's original identification with her mother, she comes to blame her
mother for the fact that she lacks the genitals of boys. She wishes she had a penis; she feels ashamed
that she does not, and she feels inferior. Her feeling of deficiency extends to her whole self-concept.
She concludes that she has already lost her penis, and she blames her mother for depriving her of
this organ. In the process she comes to devalue her mother. This state, called penis envy, generates a
shift in attraction to her father, called the Electra complex.
Freudian theory has difficulty in explaining female development in biological terms. Perhaps that is
one of the reasons why the examples Freud used were usually male-oriented, even though the vast
majority of his patients were females.
The next of Freud's stages is the latency period. Between the ages of about 5 and the onset of
puberty, the child's libido is tame, partly because the child represses unacceptable desires for the
parent of the other sex. Sexual interests are replaced by interests in school, sports, and friends. In
effect, the young person learns acceptable ways to sublimate sexual and aggressive drives. Freud felt
that it was biologically determined that not much was to happen developmentally during these
years, so he had little to say about them.
After the uneventful latency period, a person moves into the genital stage. The adolescent develops
overt sexual interests. Concern is directed toward the biological goal of reproduction, and that part
of the libido that is not still being devoted to earlier selfish needs may be channeled into love and
into a genuine concern for others. Only those people who have most of the libidinal energy available
for this stage can become realistic, well-socialized adults.
But many adults, said Freud, have so much of their limited psychic energy still being allocated to the
satisfaction of the earlier needs that they have little left for the development of altruistic motives.
They remain narcissistic or self-loving. Their “love of others” may be based on the ways others
remind them of themselves.
Validation of Freud’s theory
The “reliable observations” on which Freud based his theory were, of course, the statements and
nonverbal behavior of patients undergoing psychological treatment. Marie Jahoda (1977) has,
instead, suggested that the proper way to deal with limitations in one's method is to supplement it
with other methods that possess other kinds of limitations or impurities. And many leading
psychoanalysts welcome testing based on experimental research.
But that was not Freud's position. He carried out no experiments or controlled observations; he gave
no personality tests and used no quantitative measures. But Freud did check for internal consistency;
he did bring a critical attitude to his data; and he made an intensive study of single cases.
Freud proposed specific childhood experiences that were related to specific adult character patterns.
Most psychologists would agree that maternal actions contribute to the child's development. For
example, if a mother is protective and responsive, the infant will be more likely to explore novel
environments (Buss, 1987). But psychoanalysts propose that these effects extend into adulthood,
that, for example, physical abuse as a child raises the risk of aggressive behavior as an adult.
,Runyan (1988) concludes there is evidence “about clusters of traits consistent with Freud's
conception of oral character and substantial evidence about orderliness, obstinacy, and parsimony
clustering together as Freud suggested in the anal or obsessive character”. In a more general sense,
empirical verification exists for a psychoanalytic assumption that the kind of attachment that people
form with their parents during childhood colors the nature of romantic relationships they have as
adults (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). And the proposition that there exists a process known as the
unconscious—a completely revolutionary idea when Freud proposed it—and that it can influence
conscious thought and behavior is well accepted by psychologists of varying perspectives.
But a contemporary viewpoint moves away from a search for a direct relationship between childhood
limitations and adult personality. Thus the shift—and it is a pervasive one—is toward a life-span
interactionist position that emphasizes how early experience plays only one part in a cycle of
unfolding events, with influences continuing throughout the person’s life.
The problem with predicting behavior is not the only challenge to the validity of psychoanalytic
theory. Critics complain that Freudian theory is so general that it cannot be pinned down enough to
be empirically tested.
Karen Horney’s modification of psychoanalytic theory
Karen Horney (1950) proposed that neurosis resulted from a person's losing the thread of his or her
guiding direction. Becoming too concerned with pleasing others, neurotic persons forget their own
deepest satisfactions and needs. Horney's perspective is reminiscent of the life script approach
described in Chapter 1; these two conceptions are similar in their assumption that the child forms a
long-lasting style of responding to others, as a result of anxiety.
Basic anxiety, for Horney (1937), is the feeling the child has of being isolated and helpless in a
potentially hostile world. Anything that disturbs the security of children in relation to their parents
produces basic anxiety. A person can become neurotic, and hence anxious, if he or she is raised in a
home that lacks security, trust, love, respect, tolerance, and warmth. Conflict, then, is not inevitable,
not built into human nature (as Freud believed); rather, conflict arises out of social conditions.
Horney theorized that people develop strategies by which to cope with the feeling of isolation and
helplessness; this is done to minimize the anxiety of coping with others. One possible style or
orientation toward others she called “moving toward people.” This is the self-effacing solution to
basic anxiety, in which the person shows dependency on others and seeks love from them. The
person may become undemanding and be content with very little. Out of the desire to minimize the
anxiety of coping with others, such persons may let others tread on them; afraid of being deserted
and left alone, they avoid conflict.
“Moving away from people,” a second type of strategy, is quite different. Here, the person becomes
coldly aloof and withdrawn from any genuine interaction with significant others. A “lone wolf,” such
a person may reflect either resignation or rebelliousness. Whichever, there is a lack of commitment
to others; the credo seems to be, “If I withdraw, nothing can hurt me.”
The last type of strategy, “moving against people,” reflects an orientation toward mastery and
power. Hostility is a stronger component here, and this hostility may lead to a need to exploit others.
The person seems to believe, “If I have power, no one can hurt me” (Horney, 1937, p. 98).
Horney believed that normal people integrate these three styles, but that neurotic persons, because
of their greater degrees of anxiety, must use artificial or irrational solutions. Thus they consciously
,recognize only one of the tendencies and deny or repress the other two; that is, like the follower of a
life script, the neurotic person is locked into a rigidly unshakable coping technique.
Carl Jung’s analytical psychology
Jung proposed that in the late thirties or early forties a radical transvaluation occurs. Youthful
interests and pursuits lose their value and are replaced by new interests that are more cultural and
less biological. The middle-aged person becomes more introverted and less impulsive; wisdom takes
the place of physical and mental vigor. Jung believed that this shift was the most decisive in the
person's life, that this was a time of “immense growth and development, particularly for personal
introspection, reevaluation, and spiritual discovery”.
In introducing the concepts of the animus and the anima, Jung emphasized that there is both a
masculine and a feminine side to personality, regardless of which sex you are. In most men, the
anima is suppressed, and in women, the animus is less expressed. But recognition of the presence of
both, and release of these values, gives the person completeness. The opposition of conscious and
unconscious forces, as viewed by Jung, formed a kind of dialectic. Jung's conception of anima and
animus in competition for expression was a significant recognition of polarities in personality
development and expression.
Summary
Psychoanalytic theory can serve as a prototype of an early formation theory because it assumes a
structure that leads to personality formation early in life. Freud hypothesized that three systems—
which have come to be called the id, the ego, and the superego—within the person reflect different
motivations that compete with each other to determine behavior. These formed the groundwork for
the emergence of personality characteristics that, in Freud's theory, continued into adulthood.
Freud used libido, or psychic energy, as a central concept in that shifts in its focus explained
developmental task solution. The child was assumed to move through several stages—oral, anal,
phallic, and genital—but if the satisfaction of the requisite motives was not achieved, fixation would
occur. Empirical evidence for adult manifestations of fixations is mixed; recent thought tends to
emphasize an interaction between early childhood events and other factors that occur later in the
life course.
Chapter 3 Theorists’ Lives: Do They Determine Their Theories?
Theories as human constructions
Thus the theories and constructs represented in this book are human constructions. For example, as
pointed out by St. Clair (1986), “The components of personality—the id, ego, and superego—are
conceptualizations that exist only in writings about personality and are distant from people's
experience of themselves”. The degree to which theories receive acceptance by others is partly
determined by whether the theoretician's subjectivity reflects the orientation of others.
The term personal reality in the above quotation reflects George Kelly's assumption that each of us
construes the world through idiosyncratic constructs. Furthermore, Stolorow and Atwood note that
these views of the world develop prior to theorists' theories. Reading this quotation, George Kelly
would have noted that theorists only do what all of us do, with two important exceptions: (1) They
, systematize their view of people in general, and (2) they seek to apply their construct system beyond
just themselves, to people in general.
Where do theorists' constructs come from? Largely from their own experience. Although Freud
certainly based his theories on the reports of his patients, his fundamental structure came before,
and came from his quest to fathom his own nature. Stolorow and Atwood (1979) conclude that
“personality theorists tend to rely upon their own lives as a primary source of empirical material….
No theorist offers definitive statements on the meaning of being human unless he feels those
statements constitute a framework within which he can comprehend his own experience”.
Theorists whose theories do not jibe with the ways that their audiences construe the world will not
find acceptance for their theories. A person's “eventual attitudes toward the material will be
profoundly affected by its degree of compatibility with his own personal reality”.
Freud’s life and his theory
Every theory has to make decisions about the locus of causation in regard to psychological
development. Stolorow and Atwood (1979) note that in Freud's theory of psychosexual development
“the sources of evil were located not in the parents (in particular, the mother), but in the child
himself, in his own sexual and aggressive impulses, which emerge according to an innate biologically
predetermined sequence in relative independence of environmental influence” (p. 63). According to
Fine (1973), this emphasis reflected Freud's wish to exonerate his parents, especially his mother.
That is, by his choice to locate “badness” within the child, Freud “absolved his mother from blame for
her betrayals of him and safeguarded her idealized image from invasions by his unconscious
ambivalence” (Stolorow & Atwood, 1979, p. 63). Thus did he ward off his unconscious hatred of his
mother.
Carl Jung’s life and theory
Those, and other religious dreams with frightening connotations, doubtless contributed to the
emergence of his concept of the two-sided nature of God. In fact, this splitting process—dividing
objects into positive and negative components—became a generalized feature of not just Jung's
worldview, but also his conception of the nature of personality. Stolorow and Atwood (1979) state,
“The world had been revealed in his mind as a polarized tension between above Given this
perspective, it is quite understandable that one of Jung's major contributions to personality theory
would be his emphasis on the bipolar nature of self-images. and below, omnipotent good and
omnipotent evil…. We can therefore discern in these images an early source of Jung's later obsession
with the reconciliation of opposites, the problem of wholeness, and integration”.
As Schultz (1992) notes, his isolated nature as a child is manifested in his theory of personality, which
emphasizes developments within the individual rather than relationships with other people. He came
to see himself as possessing two separate personalities: “Personality No. 1,” as he called one of these
components, was the outer self which was known to his parents and other persons. “‘Personality No.
2,’ on the other hand, was a hidden self which was unknown to others and which entertained secret
fantasies about the ultimate mysteries of the cosmos”.
Jung's entire adulthood was obsessed with the competitions and contradictions between the two
sides of his personality. His choice of psychiatry as a career was a compromise between these two
self-images. Given this perspective, it is quite understandable that one of Jung's major contributions
to personality theory would be his emphasis on the bipolar nature of self-images.
