Traditional Psychodynamic Theories
Jay Owen
Lynn Hagan
December 7, 2015

Over time, many famous theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung compiled theories comprised of their theories of personalities. Traditional psychodynamic theories of personalities played a major role in contemporary psychodynamic theories of today. Each of these famous theorists, Freud, Adler, and Jung, contributed with their tenets of the psychodynamic theories of personality to explain how their theory explains how an individual’s personality is form. While each of these theories is an explanation of how an individual’s personality is form, each theory has its strengths as well as its weaknesses in its explanation.
Each theorists, Freud, Adler, and Jung, have alternative theories of personality based on their “personal backgrounds, childhood experiences, philosophy of life, interpersonal relationships, and unique manner of looking at the world” (Feist, 2013, p. 7). Because of the different “experiences,” of these theorists, they used different data sets and their observations possibly skewed because of their personal experiences. Therefore, each theorist’s definition of personality could differ because of their personal characteristics, cognitive processes, and their belief in the nature of humanity (Feist, 2013, "What is Personality").
In order to understand Freud’s, Adler’s and Jung’s psychodynamic theories of personality, an individual needs to understand the definition of personality. According to Feist (2013), “personality is a pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person’s behavior” (p. 7). This general definition of personality has been in disagreement among many theorists. Many believe that due to the fact that each theorists defines the nature of humanity and used their