Personality

Cause you got Personality,
Walk, Personality
Talk, Personality
Smile, Personality
Charm, Personality
Love, Personality
And of 'cause you've got
A great big heart
So over and over
Oh, I'll be a fool to you
Now over and over
What more can I do?[41]

Personality describes our interactions with the world; our perceptions about, and our relationship to, others; and how we react to worldly situations (our behaviour).

As we each have different biology (genes), upbringing, experiences and knowledge, these perceptions, interactions and responses are extremely complex. Thanks to Kinsey[42] we know that there are as many personalities as there are people. But this does not discourage psychologists and psychiatrists from attempting to classify us into standard types nor does it prevent social engineers and demagogues (Fascists, Islamists, Communists, Christians etc) from attempting to proscribe certain personality characteristics or extol others.

Huxley makes the point that in different cultures different personality types are held to be ideal. He suggests that personality types go in and out of fashion. We see this today in fashions for 'Sensitive New Age Guys (SNAGS)' and 'Metrosexuals'; who might have had a hard time of it in the court of Genghis Khan; or even fifty years ago in Sydney.

Sigmund Freud and CG Jung developed the common psychiatric classifications: Libido (innate sexual drives and the will to live); Ego (social self-awareness); Super ego (socially endorsed ways of thinking and behaving); and the subconscious (or Id).

An erotic neurotic named Sid
Got his Ego confused with his Id
His errant libido
Was like a torpedo
And that's why he done what he did

Some analysts believe that they understand personality simply by classifying it. This is like thinking that reorganising your books alphabetically or by author's name or by title or by subject matter adds anything the collection, their meaning or the ideas they represent. Such classification may help us find a book but is only adding to knowledge if it leads to new insights about the content.

Freudian analysis is opposed by the more scientific approach of 'behaviourism' (proposed by people like Watson and Skinner). Behaviourism is famous for experiments like ringing a bell every time a dog gets food, so that eventually ringing the bell alone makes the dog dribble saliva.

As discussed above, our brains incorporate a complex neural network. In neural networks things happen as a result of other things. Effect follows from cause. Reward reinforces behaviour and lack of reward discourages it. On the basis of success we build up patterns of thinking and ways of acting; habits. Behaviourism makes the point, which now seems obvious, that much of our behaviour is learned by experience (consequences).

But behaviourism fails to take into proper account the variations people are born with or how much our personalities are changed by the sharing of ideas. Quite often the relationship between all these factors is very complex.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are interested in the balance of how these influences are reflected in our behaviour and abilities and how these differ from one person to the next.

Throughout the twentieth century people debated the role of nature (our genes) and nurture (our upbringing) in the development of our personality and our abilities; with many taking extreme positions on prejudice alone.  More recently behavioural scientists have attempted to put this on a more scientific basis by studying fraternal and identical twins who have been separated at birth, compared to those brought up together; and now by identifying genes that confer certain traits, abilities and behaviours. 

Our personality is formed in three main ways:

1. Perhaps the most important of these is what we are conceived with; the physical structure of our body as formed by our genetic code. We inherit a mix of genes from our parents and grandparents. They determine that we will be human and not a cat or a worm. They also determine many human characteristics. Which are inherited characteristics are most obvious in identical twins. This determines the starting structure of our brain and our organs; including how we appear physically to others and our basic abilities (like how quick or healthy or smart or sexual we are).
2. Next are the things that happen to us; how others treat us (what happened in the womb, parents, brothers and sisters, place in the family, school, friends etc), what we eat, what we observe and experience directly, the consequences of our actions and, importantly, accidents.
3. Finally are the ideas and abilities we learn by communicating, the passed-on experiences of others (ideas, memes, words, images, etc).

Personalities also evolve through survival of the fittest. To succeed in the country or in health care or as teachers people need special types of personality. Society rewards some types of personality and punishes others (child molesters, thieves etc). We call this complex process education, experience and even wisdom. Most of our innate behaviour has evolved to support humans being tribal, family and achievement oriented. It also gives us a sense of purpose that can provide a reason for living.

Society encourages and rewards us for certain ways of thinking and behaving. Deconstructionists and post-modernists (mentioned elsewhere) often represent the person as a blank slate upon which culture works (ideas words etc) but this too is naïve, humans are just as driven by their inherited animal needs and innate behaviours as by ideas or learned behaviours. Society rewards beauty and ability and it might be argued that fashions in appearance or ability are ideas imposed by society but there is considerable evidence that beneath this veneer of fashion is an underlying animal appreciation of reproductive, physical or intellectual capability.

We should try to understand all the influences that constrain or direct our behaviour and not be distracted by a doctrinaire focus on just one.

For example forming habits is how our brain works and is essential to learning so we sometimes have trouble with unwanted habits. Genes are an important influence but so is conditioning. The seven deadly sins are all common habits. Some of us are overly acquisitive (wanting to own or control things) some eat too much and others get addicted to drugs.

Personality changes under these many influences and governs how we learn to think. Once set it is very hard for us to think any other way. Edward de Bono makes lots of money by finding ways to change our set ways of thinking. Like books, every personality is different. There may be some broad commonalities but we defy easy classification.