The concept of personality.
Posted in Fall
Titu Barua
Watsuthivararam.
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.
Whereas the concept "human being" emphasises man's biosocial, body-mind origin, the concept "personality" is connected mainly with his social and psychological aspects, such as his sense of dignity, his self-appraisal, his value orientations, beliefs, the principles by which he lives, his moral, aesthetic, socio-political and other social positions, his convictions and ideals, and also the character, the special features of his intellect, the style and independence of his thinking, the specific nature of his emotional make-up, his willpower, cast of mind and feelings, his social status.
One cannot conceive of a personality as something separate from the human being, or even from his external and general physical appearance. The personality (Lat. persona= mask) is the face that confronts us. When in their later years, people have plastic operations and face-lifts, they change their external appearance, which, as psychological observations have shown, also changes something in their mentality. Everything in a person is "interconnected" and affects the personality as a whole. What a person looks like is the outward expression of his inner world.
A personality is a socially developed person, one who is part of a certain specific historical and natural context, one or another social group, a person possessing a relatively stable system of socially significant personal features and performing corresponding social roles. The personality's intellectual framework is formed by his requirements, interests, frame of reference, peculiarities of temperament, emotion, willpower, motivation, value orientations, independence of thought, consciousness and self-consciousness. The central feature of the personality is world outlook. A person cannot become a personality without evolving what is known as a world outlook or world-view, which includes his philosophical view of the world.
A knowledge of philosophy is an inseparable attribute of a person's higher education and culture. Because a world-view is the privilege of modern man and its core is philosophy, one must know a person's philosophy in order to understand him. Even those who deny and make fun of philosophy possess a philosophy. Only the animal has no world-view whatever. It does not meditate upon things in the world, the meaning of life and other problems. A world-view is the privilege of the personality, that is to say, a human being uplifted by culture. Both historically and ontogenetically, man becomes a personality to the extent that he assimilates culture and contributes to its creation. Our distant ancestor, in the conditions of the primitive horde and the initial stages of the formation of society, was not yet a personality, although he was already a person, a human being. A child, particularly in his earliest years, is, of course, a human being, but not yet a personality. He has yet to become one in the course of his development, education and upbringing. A human being may or may not become a personality. The child who is isolated from people and surrounded by animals does not. Personality may or may not take shape, and it may also disintegrate, be deformed, or broken up altogether either by pathological processes in the organism, mental disorders, alcoholism, and so on, or by certain extremely unfavourable, tragic circumstances.
So, the term "personality" implies an integrating principle that unites the biological and social in a single whole, and also all the psychological processes, qualities and states that regulate behaviour, giving it a certain consistency and stability in relation to the rest of the world, to other people and itself. The personality is a socially historical, naturally conditioned and individually expressed being. A human being is a personality inasmuch as he consciously distinguishes himself from everything that surrounds him, and his relation to the world exists in his consciousness as a certain standpoint in life. The personality is a human being who possesses self-consciousness and a world-view, and who has achieved an understanding of his social functions, his place in the world, who has comprehended himself as a subject of historical creativity, a maker of history. The essence of personality is not its physical nature but its socio-psychological properties and the mechanism of its mental life and behaviour. The personality is an individual concentration or expression of social relationships and functions, a subject of cognition and transformation of the world, of rights and duties, of ethical, aesthetic and all other social standards. When we speak of a personality, we have in mind its social, moral, psychological and aesthetic qualities crystallised in a human being's intellectual world.
In each of his essential relations a person appears in an especial quality, in his specific social function, as the subject of material or spiritual production, the vehicle of certain production relations, as a member of a certain social group, of class, the representative of a certain nation, as a husband or wife, father or mother, in short, as the creator of family relations.
The social functions which man has to perform in society are many and various, but personality cannot be reduced to these functions, even taken as an integral whole. The thing is that the personal is what belongs to a given person and distinguishes him from others. In a certain sense one can agree with the view of those who find it difficult to draw a line between what a person calls "himself" and what he calls "his own". Personality is the sum-total of everything that a person may call his own. How does a person describe himself as a personality when he is asked what he is? He does this by relating himself to what he does or has done, by telling us with whom he is associated. Hence the principle: "Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are." In addition, he tells us what belongs to him, what he has mastered, what he has made his own, and in what way he has fulfilled himself, to what context of life he belongs—labour, social, age, family, education, and so on. What belongs to the personality is not only his physical and intellectual qualities, but his clothing, the roof over his head, husband and children, ancestors and friends, social status and reputation, first name and family name. The structure of the personality also includes what it has given its strength to and also the powers that have been embodied in it. It is a personal manifestation of embodied labour.
Take, for example, a person's name. It is not something purely extraneous in relation to the personality. A name grows together, as it were, with the personality, becomes affixed to the face and forms something inseparable from the given personality. And only if he is playing someone else on stage, or works as an intelligence agent, or has adopted a different faith does a person change his name, and everyone knows how difficult that is both for the person himself and for others. The whole physical existence of the personality is confined to the framework of a person's life, to the limits of his complex biography. But does this account for the existence of personality in general? Of course, not. Particular ly if we consider historical personalities, whose existence extends far beyond the framework of their bio-physical lives; they live on through the centuries and not only live but "work" actively through the hands and heads of subsequent generations.
Thus, the limits of the personality are far broader than those of the human body and its inner intellectual world. These limits may be compared to circles spreading over water; the nearest circles are the fruit of creative activity, then come the circles of one's family, one's personal property and friendships. The far-out circles merge with the seas and oceans of all social life, its history and prospects.
The fullness of the personality is expressed in its individual ity, in its uniqueness, its irrepeatability. Personality in general is an abstraction, which is concretised in real individuals, in separate, single rational beings with all the inimitable proper ties of their mentality and physique, the colour of their skin, hair, eyes, and so on. The personality is a unique representative of the human race, always particular and unlike any other personality in the fullness of his spiritual and material, physical life: every "ego" is unique.
Take, for example, a striking personality like Socrates. He attracted the attention of literally everyone he met both by his outward appearance and by his way of life, his beliefs, his activities, his teachings, and everything connected with his unique individuality. Socrates was rather stocky, with thick lips, a paunchy stomach, a short neck and a large bald head with a huge bulging brow. He had a habit of going about barefoot, both winter and summer, and looking around him with prominent eyes from under lowered brows. Marvelling at the individuality of Socrates, Alcibiades stressed the exceptional originality of his intellectual personality, in which something incomprehensible, mysterious, elusive seemed to be hidden. The most surprising thing was that he was quite unlike anyone else. In his manner and conversation Socrates was so original that we search in vain for anyone remotely resembling him either among the ancients or among the people of today.
One could similarly describe the appearance and personalities of other great men and eminent individuals, and each of them would be unique in some way.
A personality is an individual rational being. In the broader sense the individual is not only a person but a synonym for a separate specific being. This also applies to the concept of "individuality", which includes the personality's spiritual features as well as his physical peculiarities.
There is nothing more individualised in the world than the human being, the person, nothing in creation is more diverse than people. At the human level diversity achieves its highest peak, the world contains as many individuals as there are people. This is due entirely to the complexity of human organisation, whose dynamics would appear to have no limits. Human individuality is expressed in its having different opinions, in abilities, level of knowledge, experience, degree of competence, in temperament and character. Personality is individual to the extent that it has independence in its judgements, beliefs and views, that is to say, when the brain is not "stereotyped" and possesses unique "patterns". In every person, regardless of the general structure of his individuality, there are specific features of contemplation, observation, attention, various types of memory, of orientation, and so on. The level of individual thinking varies, for example, from the heights of genius to the worst cases of mental retardation.
The principle of individualisation has its limits, its proportion. Beyond this borderline we come to complete relativism, which maintains that if every person has his own soul, then every person must also have his own world, and hence there are as many worlds as there are people. But the actual dialectics of existence tells us that the uniqueness both of outward appearance and a person's spiritual world is relative. It is derived from the universal, to which it belongs and from which it has sprung. The personality has a general origin, position, culture, language, certain standards, a world-view, and so on, that it shares with others. The more fully it represents, individually, the universal human principle, the more significant the personality becomes. Every person is a unique individuality in the whole complex of his physical and spiritual peculiarities, but at the same time he embodies the essence of the race and also certain general features of his class and nation.
People may be divided into various types, depending on the predominance of certain elements in the structure of their personalities. A person may be inclined to practical or theoretical thinking, to rational or intuitive understanding of reality, to operating with sensuous images, or he may possess an analytical cast of mind. There are people who are largely governed by their emotions. For example, sensuous types have an exceptionally highly developed perception of reality. For them the sensation is the concrete expression of the fullness of their life. A person of the intellectual-intuitive type constantly strives for new opportunities. He cannot be satisfied with a commitment to generally recognised values but is always seeking new ideas. People of this type are the driving force of culture, the initiators and inspirers of new enterprises. The types of personality may also be classified according to behaviour orientation. A person may be classified as extrovert or introvert according to whether his orientation is on objective reality or his own inner world. Introverts are often reticent, and rarely, or with difficulty, open their hearts to those around them. As a rule, their temperament is melancholic and they rarely stand out or come to the fore. Outwardly calm, even indifferent, they never try to compel anyone else to do anything. Their true motives usually remain hidden.
In psychology and sociology a person is usually characterised by his individual peculiarities. Qualities connected with a certain manner of perception or judgement and also with the way a person is influenced by his environment are singled out. Attention is focussed on originality, on the features that make a person stand out in society, on the functions he performs, on the degree of influence he exercises or the impression that he makes on other people: "aggressive", "submissive", "hard", and so on.
Independence, decisive judgement, willpower, determination, passion, intellect and wisdom are regarded as highly important.
Watsuthivararam.
Yannawa,sathorn.
Bangkok,10120.
Thailand.
Whereas the concept "human being" emphasises man's biosocial, body-mind origin, the concept "personality" is connected mainly with his social and psychological aspects, such as his sense of dignity, his self-appraisal, his value orientations, beliefs, the principles by which he lives, his moral, aesthetic, socio-political and other social positions, his convictions and ideals, and also the character, the special features of his intellect, the style and independence of his thinking, the specific nature of his emotional make-up, his willpower, cast of mind and feelings, his social status.
One cannot conceive of a personality as something separate from the human being, or even from his external and general physical appearance. The personality (Lat. persona= mask) is the face that confronts us. When in their later years, people have plastic operations and face-lifts, they change their external appearance, which, as psychological observations have shown, also changes something in their mentality. Everything in a person is "interconnected" and affects the personality as a whole. What a person looks like is the outward expression of his inner world.
A personality is a socially developed person, one who is part of a certain specific historical and natural context, one or another social group, a person possessing a relatively stable system of socially significant personal features and performing corresponding social roles. The personality's intellectual framework is formed by his requirements, interests, frame of reference, peculiarities of temperament, emotion, willpower, motivation, value orientations, independence of thought, consciousness and self-consciousness. The central feature of the personality is world outlook. A person cannot become a personality without evolving what is known as a world outlook or world-view, which includes his philosophical view of the world.
A knowledge of philosophy is an inseparable attribute of a person's higher education and culture. Because a world-view is the privilege of modern man and its core is philosophy, one must know a person's philosophy in order to understand him. Even those who deny and make fun of philosophy possess a philosophy. Only the animal has no world-view whatever. It does not meditate upon things in the world, the meaning of life and other problems. A world-view is the privilege of the personality, that is to say, a human being uplifted by culture. Both historically and ontogenetically, man becomes a personality to the extent that he assimilates culture and contributes to its creation. Our distant ancestor, in the conditions of the primitive horde and the initial stages of the formation of society, was not yet a personality, although he was already a person, a human being. A child, particularly in his earliest years, is, of course, a human being, but not yet a personality. He has yet to become one in the course of his development, education and upbringing. A human being may or may not become a personality. The child who is isolated from people and surrounded by animals does not. Personality may or may not take shape, and it may also disintegrate, be deformed, or broken up altogether either by pathological processes in the organism, mental disorders, alcoholism, and so on, or by certain extremely unfavourable, tragic circumstances.
So, the term "personality" implies an integrating principle that unites the biological and social in a single whole, and also all the psychological processes, qualities and states that regulate behaviour, giving it a certain consistency and stability in relation to the rest of the world, to other people and itself. The personality is a socially historical, naturally conditioned and individually expressed being. A human being is a personality inasmuch as he consciously distinguishes himself from everything that surrounds him, and his relation to the world exists in his consciousness as a certain standpoint in life. The personality is a human being who possesses self-consciousness and a world-view, and who has achieved an understanding of his social functions, his place in the world, who has comprehended himself as a subject of historical creativity, a maker of history. The essence of personality is not its physical nature but its socio-psychological properties and the mechanism of its mental life and behaviour. The personality is an individual concentration or expression of social relationships and functions, a subject of cognition and transformation of the world, of rights and duties, of ethical, aesthetic and all other social standards. When we speak of a personality, we have in mind its social, moral, psychological and aesthetic qualities crystallised in a human being's intellectual world.
In each of his essential relations a person appears in an especial quality, in his specific social function, as the subject of material or spiritual production, the vehicle of certain production relations, as a member of a certain social group, of class, the representative of a certain nation, as a husband or wife, father or mother, in short, as the creator of family relations.
The social functions which man has to perform in society are many and various, but personality cannot be reduced to these functions, even taken as an integral whole. The thing is that the personal is what belongs to a given person and distinguishes him from others. In a certain sense one can agree with the view of those who find it difficult to draw a line between what a person calls "himself" and what he calls "his own". Personality is the sum-total of everything that a person may call his own. How does a person describe himself as a personality when he is asked what he is? He does this by relating himself to what he does or has done, by telling us with whom he is associated. Hence the principle: "Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are." In addition, he tells us what belongs to him, what he has mastered, what he has made his own, and in what way he has fulfilled himself, to what context of life he belongs—labour, social, age, family, education, and so on. What belongs to the personality is not only his physical and intellectual qualities, but his clothing, the roof over his head, husband and children, ancestors and friends, social status and reputation, first name and family name. The structure of the personality also includes what it has given its strength to and also the powers that have been embodied in it. It is a personal manifestation of embodied labour.
Take, for example, a person's name. It is not something purely extraneous in relation to the personality. A name grows together, as it were, with the personality, becomes affixed to the face and forms something inseparable from the given personality. And only if he is playing someone else on stage, or works as an intelligence agent, or has adopted a different faith does a person change his name, and everyone knows how difficult that is both for the person himself and for others. The whole physical existence of the personality is confined to the framework of a person's life, to the limits of his complex biography. But does this account for the existence of personality in general? Of course, not. Particular ly if we consider historical personalities, whose existence extends far beyond the framework of their bio-physical lives; they live on through the centuries and not only live but "work" actively through the hands and heads of subsequent generations.
Thus, the limits of the personality are far broader than those of the human body and its inner intellectual world. These limits may be compared to circles spreading over water; the nearest circles are the fruit of creative activity, then come the circles of one's family, one's personal property and friendships. The far-out circles merge with the seas and oceans of all social life, its history and prospects.
The fullness of the personality is expressed in its individual ity, in its uniqueness, its irrepeatability. Personality in general is an abstraction, which is concretised in real individuals, in separate, single rational beings with all the inimitable proper ties of their mentality and physique, the colour of their skin, hair, eyes, and so on. The personality is a unique representative of the human race, always particular and unlike any other personality in the fullness of his spiritual and material, physical life: every "ego" is unique.
Take, for example, a striking personality like Socrates. He attracted the attention of literally everyone he met both by his outward appearance and by his way of life, his beliefs, his activities, his teachings, and everything connected with his unique individuality. Socrates was rather stocky, with thick lips, a paunchy stomach, a short neck and a large bald head with a huge bulging brow. He had a habit of going about barefoot, both winter and summer, and looking around him with prominent eyes from under lowered brows. Marvelling at the individuality of Socrates, Alcibiades stressed the exceptional originality of his intellectual personality, in which something incomprehensible, mysterious, elusive seemed to be hidden. The most surprising thing was that he was quite unlike anyone else. In his manner and conversation Socrates was so original that we search in vain for anyone remotely resembling him either among the ancients or among the people of today.
One could similarly describe the appearance and personalities of other great men and eminent individuals, and each of them would be unique in some way.
A personality is an individual rational being. In the broader sense the individual is not only a person but a synonym for a separate specific being. This also applies to the concept of "individuality", which includes the personality's spiritual features as well as his physical peculiarities.
There is nothing more individualised in the world than the human being, the person, nothing in creation is more diverse than people. At the human level diversity achieves its highest peak, the world contains as many individuals as there are people. This is due entirely to the complexity of human organisation, whose dynamics would appear to have no limits. Human individuality is expressed in its having different opinions, in abilities, level of knowledge, experience, degree of competence, in temperament and character. Personality is individual to the extent that it has independence in its judgements, beliefs and views, that is to say, when the brain is not "stereotyped" and possesses unique "patterns". In every person, regardless of the general structure of his individuality, there are specific features of contemplation, observation, attention, various types of memory, of orientation, and so on. The level of individual thinking varies, for example, from the heights of genius to the worst cases of mental retardation.
The principle of individualisation has its limits, its proportion. Beyond this borderline we come to complete relativism, which maintains that if every person has his own soul, then every person must also have his own world, and hence there are as many worlds as there are people. But the actual dialectics of existence tells us that the uniqueness both of outward appearance and a person's spiritual world is relative. It is derived from the universal, to which it belongs and from which it has sprung. The personality has a general origin, position, culture, language, certain standards, a world-view, and so on, that it shares with others. The more fully it represents, individually, the universal human principle, the more significant the personality becomes. Every person is a unique individuality in the whole complex of his physical and spiritual peculiarities, but at the same time he embodies the essence of the race and also certain general features of his class and nation.
People may be divided into various types, depending on the predominance of certain elements in the structure of their personalities. A person may be inclined to practical or theoretical thinking, to rational or intuitive understanding of reality, to operating with sensuous images, or he may possess an analytical cast of mind. There are people who are largely governed by their emotions. For example, sensuous types have an exceptionally highly developed perception of reality. For them the sensation is the concrete expression of the fullness of their life. A person of the intellectual-intuitive type constantly strives for new opportunities. He cannot be satisfied with a commitment to generally recognised values but is always seeking new ideas. People of this type are the driving force of culture, the initiators and inspirers of new enterprises. The types of personality may also be classified according to behaviour orientation. A person may be classified as extrovert or introvert according to whether his orientation is on objective reality or his own inner world. Introverts are often reticent, and rarely, or with difficulty, open their hearts to those around them. As a rule, their temperament is melancholic and they rarely stand out or come to the fore. Outwardly calm, even indifferent, they never try to compel anyone else to do anything. Their true motives usually remain hidden.
In psychology and sociology a person is usually characterised by his individual peculiarities. Qualities connected with a certain manner of perception or judgement and also with the way a person is influenced by his environment are singled out. Attention is focussed on originality, on the features that make a person stand out in society, on the functions he performs, on the degree of influence he exercises or the impression that he makes on other people: "aggressive", "submissive", "hard", and so on.
Independence, decisive judgement, willpower, determination, passion, intellect and wisdom are regarded as highly important.
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