Basis of Personality on account of Childhood

Competencies acquired through interactions with parents are reflected in children's interactions with peers. In laboratory studies, children who show more self-reliance and control are found to have parents who are nurturing. In contrast, children who are less autonomous are found to have parents who are more permissive (Prager, 1995, p. 89). In nursery school and kindergarten, children who had developed a secure attachment bond during infancy are described by their teachers as more socially competent and popular. They are observed to show more dominance and initiative (McAdams, 1989, p. 143).

Such peer interactions characterized by autonomy, sensitivity, empathetic concern, and ability to verbalize emotions reflect the formation of intimate friendships later on (Prager, 1995, p. 87). It is thus apparent that behavioral patterns resulting from relationships formed during infancy are reflected in peer interactions. In turn, these interactions serve as a basis for relationships that develop in the next stage of life.

Intimate interactions from early life serve as the basis upon which relationships later in life are formed. Environmental contingencies to which individuals must adapt are rooted in these relationships; interpersonal interactions and relationships shape individual personality and coping styles. Psychological maturity involves integrating intimacy into a life framework that encompasses all parts of the self.

As an adolescent undergoes physical and emotional changes, he or she seeks out relationships that enhance efforts to adapt to new needs and stresses. Adolescents seek to share their thoughts and feelings with those who are experiencing similar changes. Intimate interactions increase between friends during this stage in life because they provide teens with opportunities for self-clarification. The ability of an individual to combine his or her multiple selves and to create a well-articulated life story results in the ability to guide one's actions, emotions, and personality traits.

Cardillo's assertion that intimate relationships formed during the early stages of life ultimately gives rise to an individual's personality development is an insightful and well-supported theory. The author asserts that, "Neither intimacy nor individual development can exist alone." Her theory goes on to prove this point by identifying the effects of an individual's social environment on his or her adaptation to each stage of life.

An individual's personality is the complex of mental characteristics that makes them unique from other people. It includes all of the patterns of thought and emotions that cause us to do and say things in particular ways. At a basic level, personality is expressed through our temperament or emotional tone. However, personality also colors our values, beliefs, and expectations. There are many potential factors that are involved in shaping a personality. These factors are usually seen as coming from heredity and the environment. It is not clear which of these two influences is more significant in shaping personality. Research by psychologists over the last several decades has increasingly pointed to hereditary factors being more important, especially for basic personality traits such as emotional tone. However, the acquisition of values, beliefs, and expectations seem to be due more to socialization and unique experiences, especially during childhood.

Some hereditary factors that contribute to personality development do so as a result of interactions with the particular social environment in which people live. For instance, your genetically inherited physical and mental capabilities have an impact on how others see you and, subsequently, how you see yourself. If you have such poor motor skills that you cannot throw a ball straight and if you regularly get bad grades in school, you will very likely be labeled by your teachers, friends, and relatives as someone who is inadequate or a failure to some degree. This can become a self-fulfilling prophesy as you increasingly perceive yourself in this way and become more pessimistic about your future. Likewise, your health and physical appearance are likely to be very important in your personality development. You may be frail or robust. You may have a learning disability. You may be slender in a culture that considers obesity attractive or vice versa. These largely hereditary factors are likely to cause you to feel that you are nice-looking, ugly, or just adequate. Likewise, skin color, gender, and sexual orientation are likely to have a major impact on how you perceive yourself. Whether you are accepted by others as being normal or abnormal can lead you to think and act in a socially acceptable or marginal and even deviant way.

There are many potential environmental influences that help to shape personality. Child rearing practices are especially critical. In North America, children are usually raised in ways that encourage them to become self-reliant and independent. Children are often allowed to act somewhat like equals to their parents. For instance, they are included in making decisions about what type of food and entertainment the family will have on a night out. Children are given allowances and small jobs around the house to teach them how to be responsible for themselves. In contrast, children in China are usually encouraged to think and act as a member of their family and to suppress there own wishes when they are in conflict with the needs of the family. Independence and self-reliance are viewed as an indication of family failure and are discouraged. It is not surprising that traditionally Chinese children have not been allowed to act as equals to their parents.

Despite significant differences in child rearing practices around the world, there are some similarities. Boys and girls are socialized differently to some extent in all societies. They receive different messages from their parents and other adults as to what is appropriate for them to do in life. They are encouraged to prepare for their future in jobs fitting their gender. Boys are more often allowed freedom to experiment and to participate in physically risky activities. Girls are encouraged to learn how to do domestic chores and to participate in child rearing by baby-sitting. If children do not follow these traditional paths, they are often labeled as marginal or even deviant--girls may be called "tomboys" and boys may be ridiculed for being "effeminate."

There are always unique situations and interpersonal events that help to shape our personalities. Such things as having alcoholic parents, being seriously injured in a car accident or being raped can leave mental scars that make us fearful and less trusting. If you are an only child, you don't have to learn how to compromise as much as children who have several siblings. Chance meetings and actions may have a major impact on the rest of our lives and affect our personalities. For instance, being accepted for admission to a prestigious university or being in the right place at the right time to meet the person who will become your spouse or life partner can significantly alter the course of the rest of your life. Similarly, being drafted into the military during wartime, learning that you were adopted, or personally witnessing a tragic event, such as the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in New York, can change your basic perspective.

We often share personality traits with others, especially members of our own family and community. This is probably due largely to being socialized in much the same way. It is normal for us to acquire personality traits as a result of enculturation. Most people adopt the traditions, rules, manners, and biases of their culture. Given this fact, it is not surprising that some researchers have claimed that there are common national personality types, especially in the more culturally homogenous societies.

The concept of national personality types primarily had its origins in anthropology with the research of Ruth Benedict beginning in the 1920's. She believed that personality was almost entirely learned. She said that normal people acquire a distinct ethos, or culturally specific personality pattern, during the process of being enculturated as children. Benedict went on to say that our cultural personality patterns are assumed to be "natural" by us and other personality patterns are viewed as being "unnatural" and deviant. She said that such feelings are characteristic of all people in all cultures because we are ethnocentric. Benedict compared the typical personalities of the 19th century North American Plains Indians with those of the farming Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest. She said that the buffalo hunting Plains Indians had personalities that could be typified as being aggressive, prone to violence, and seeking extreme emotional states. In contrast, she said that the typical Pueblo Indian was just the opposite--non-aggressive, peaceful, and sober in personality.

In our early years we are all brought up in a way which largely decides what we are to become. Our adult personality shows the effects of the kind of things that happen to us as children.

For example, it does not surprise us when we learn that a criminal has come from a broken home. We assume that books have played a part in the childhood experience of a man who becomes a famous scholar. When a film star divorces husband after husband we naturally wonder whether her own mother was divorced.

That the impressions of early childhood have a lasting influence is true in more senses than one. It helps us to understand not only the differences between individuals but also the differences between nations. English and Americans, Germans and Russians, Chinese and Africans have difference personalities because each nation brings up its children in different ways. These characteristic differences in methods of child-rearing are reflected in different forms of social organization (culture-patterns) - and consequently in differences of adult personality from one nation to another.

In other words, what strikes us as unique in any particular society is the outcome of the personality traits acquired by the members of that society in childhood.

For example, we are agreed that the child’s relationship with his mother is a decisive factor in the development of his personality. In societies where that relationship is a warmly affectionate one, we would expect the children to grow up into kindly, mature adults. Conversely, in societies where mothers tend to be unloving towards their children, we look for the effects of this in some distortion of the child’s personality.

This is, in fact, what we find. Take the case of the American mother. As with us, it is normal for American mothers to love their children, and the more the child shines the more the mother loves him and is proud of him. In fact, some observers have seen this as a danger and have condemned the over-affection that some American ‘Mom’ lavish on their children. However, the fact that the American child receives affection in generous measure teaches him the virtue of generosity. In his adult personality the American is noted for his generosity. This is reflected not only in the hospitality which the individual American displays but also in the lavish aid which his nation has given to other nations.

The Sioux American Indian personality also lays great emphasis on generosity. The most depised person among the Sioux is the rich man who is mean. In their culture pattern generosity may be carried to extremes. For example, the idea of saving against a rainy day is foreign to them. A man will consume his food today without thought for tomorrow because he knows that he can rely upon the generosity of his friends and relatives in case of need.

How is this related to the way in which the Sioux bring up their children? The answer is that systematic weaning is practically unknown among the Sioux. In their society it I not the mother who weans the child: the child weans himself by naturally taking to solid food when he is ready. Until then he is allowed unrestricted access to his mother’s breast, and when not sucking it is allowed to play freely with it. This generous giving of the mother to the child is reflected in the ability of the adult Sioux to be generous to others.

Let us compare a primitive society with an advanced one. In the Admoralty Islands north-east of New Guinea lives a primitive people called the Manus. Their methods of child-rearing are similar to the methods normally adopted in American and European societies. That is, the child is given a wholesome, balanced affectioj, is taught the difference between right and wrong, and is expected to develop his abilities in a permissive, loving atmosphere. The Manus, approve and punish them for behavior which they consider wrong. Thus they teach the children, as we do, to accept responsibility for their conduct, and they also encourage them to learn to master the world around them, associating effect with cause, as our own schools and homes strive to teach.

The Manus show striking similarities in their adult personalities with the adult personality of the average Westerner. These people are skilled at mastering the details of the mechanical civilization of Europeans. They develop a good understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships which are important to us. They show a pre-occupation, as we do, with sex taboos, with their digestions and with capitalistic ideas like producing and exchanging goods for the least cost and the highest profit.

Now let us contrast the above type of personality with the type that results from childhood experiences which we should regard as abnormal. For example, on the Indonesian island of Bali children learn to expect love but not to receive it. A Balinese mother encourages her child to turn to her for affection, but when the child does do th mother turns away and bestows it on another child. The mother disciplines the child by pretending to be afraid of some ‘bogeyman’, and this sense of fear is communicated to the child.

Repeated experiences of this kind teach the Balinese child that the surest way of being rejected is to seek affection; consequently he doesn’t seek it. The Balinese personality is reserved and withdrawn; the individual turns inwardly upon himself and is unable to form warm human relationships with other people.

Here is another interesting example of the effect of a mother’s hostility upon the personality of her child. Among the Marquesas, who live on a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, a mother feed her child in the following way. A handful of gruel is taken and smeared over the child’s fact. The child swallows what he can and the rest is wiped off. Then the process is repeated. It is not surprising that, whereas with us feeding is associated with loving the child, among the Marquesas it is associated with showing hostility towards him.

These childhood experiences teach the Marquesas to become hostile when they grow up. They become, in fact, cannibals who dislike children and who believe in evil spirits.

On the New Guinea island of Dobu lives a tribe where the mothers treat the children in a similar fashion. They teach them to be afraid by making them think that they are surrounded on all sides by dreadful ‘bogeymen’. If the Dobuan is subjected to unkindness as a child, we are not inclined to look for kindness in him as an adult. The adult Dobuan personality is, in fact, hostile, treacherous, and anxiety-ridden. He considers kindness to be a form of insanity.

Another society of island-dwellers in Indonesia is the Alorese. They, too, are full of anxiety, showing little trust or interest in the welfare of others. This development of personality is again the outcome of their childhood experiences. In childhood the Alorese are neglected by their mothers, who go off into the fields to work when the children are only a fortnight old. The infants are fed by the old people, who first chew the food themselves and then stuff it in the child’s mouth.

The Alorese leave their children to learn to walk by themselves without bothering to help them. The children grow up with a strongly developed sense of inferiority because of constant teasing which they receive. As adults they find themselves unable to develop effective relationships with other people, and they try to compensate themselves for their sense of inferiority by engaging in elaborate business transactions in pigs. The ownership of pigs is a sign of prestige in their culture, just as the ownership of cars and houses is in ours.

In our own society the family is a fairly close-knit structure. Father, mother and children are regarded as a unit separate from other family units. Elsewhere, however, this type of family organization does not always prevail, and where it does not, we naturally expect to find a different type of adult personality from our own.

An illustration of this is provided by the Samoans. In Samoa children are not brought up by one father and one mother, but by several adult male members of the family and several adult female members. All of them live together in a large loosely-knit household which is not a family group in our sense of the term. Children learn to recognize the authority of all the adults who have a hand in their upbringing rather than merely that of their actual physical parents.

This leads to the children acquiring a sense of being protected by the community as a whole and of actively participating in its joys and sorrows. From an early age they witness natural events like birth and death, and they come to accept these as normal and inevitable. The ‘facts of life’ are not withheld from them and so they have no feelings of guilt about sex.

This casual form of social organization is reflected in certain casualness in the Samoan adult personality. In Samoa a man who can’t get on with the people around him simply moves elsewhere. People are not expected to singularize themselves too prominently. Competitiveness is frowned upon in Samoan society as much as it is encouraged in, say, American society.

Why should this be different in America? Simply because the keynote of American child-rearing is anything but casualness. In America competitiveness is taken for granted among both adults and children. The American child as soon as he goes to school begins to learn the prestige value of good ‘grades’. To ‘make the grade’ is, in fact, expected of him in all things from an early age.

In Samoa, however, this is not so. The Samoan child who does not ‘make the grade’ in one household moves to another, and his acceptance by other people does not depend upon his ability. As a result the less able do not develop a sense of social inferiority, as they are apt to do in the Western competitive form of society.

Dicks and Gorer have respectively tried to understand the adult personalities of typical Germans and Russians in terms of their childhood experiences. Let us see what light they have been able to throw on these two ‘difficult’ nations.

The research of Dicks was carried out by studying German prisoners in World War II. He found that the typical German is a curious blend of the desire to dominate and the desire to be dominated. The events of recent history confirm, one supposes, that Germans are submissive in defeat but tyrannical in authority.

Dick relates this to the typical German family set-up. The father is the dominating influence, while the milder one is the mother, though she supports the father. The result is that the child models himself on the father while resenting him and learns to admire the mother while secretly despising her.

Therefore, when he dominates the German is identifying himself with the overbearing father-figure. But at the same time he wishes to be dominated by authoritarian figures who symbolize the mother he admires.

Gorer has attempted to relate certain characteristics of the Russians to their infantile experiences of swaddling, which is a common practice in the U.S.S.R. He considers that being tightly wrapped in swaddling clothes makes the Russian infant feel strongly aggressive. Although the child is obliged to submit to being tightly bound, he also experiences the freedom of periods when the swaddling clothes are unwrapped. These alternating experiences of being bound and released throw light, says Gorer, on contradictory elements in the personality of the typical Russian.

An attempt to explain the equally contradictory features in the typical Japanese personality has been made by Ruth Benedict. She points out that in the Japanese method of rearing children a period of complete freedom is followed by one of complete restriction of freedom. Up to the age of six the Japanese child is allowed a great deal of indulgence by his mother; after that age the child is rigidly disciplined to respect parental authority.

This contrast is reflected in the adult Japanese personality. The average Japanese is very rigid, formal, polite and obedient to authority, but can at times show a hostile, cruel streak which betrays the powerful emotions he is holding in check. The tension thus created can have a physical effect upon his personality, for whereas insanity is not common in Japan, psychosomatic disorders are fairly common, especially high blood pressure, one in ten deaths in Tokyo resulting from apoplexy.

The culture-pattern of a nation is transmitted by parents via the way they treat their children. In fact, motherhood plays vital role in the future development of the race. A warm relationship between mother and child lays the foundation for maturity of personality in the adult. Education should be directed towards impressing this fact upon the nation’s mothers-to-be, and our social legislators should bear it constantly in mind when introducing changes in the structure of the welfare state.

All children wish to possess the qualities that their culture regards as good. Some of these qualities are the product of identification with each parent.

All children wish to possess the qualities that their culture regards as good. Some of these qualities are the product of identification with each parent. All children wish to possess the qualities that their culture regards as good. Some of these qualities are the product of identification with each parent. Of the four important influences on personality--identification, ordinal position, social class, and parental socialization--identification is the most important. By six years of age, children assume that some of the characteristics of their parents belong to them and they experience vicariously the emotion that is appropriate to the parent's experience. A six-year-old girl identified with her mother will experience pride should mother win a prize or be praised by a friend. However, she will experience shame or anxiety if her mother is criticized or is rejected by friends. The process of identification has great relevance to personality development.

The child's ordinal position in the family has its most important influence on receptivity to accepting or rejecting the requests and ideas of legitimate authority. First-born children in most families are most willing than later-borns to conform to the requests of authority. They are more strongly motivated to achieve in school, more conscientious, and less aggressive.

The child's social class affects the preparation and motivation for academic achievement. Children from middle-class families typically obtain higher grades in school than children of working or lower-class families because different value systems and practices are promoted by families from varied social class backgrounds.

The patterns of socialization used by parents also influence the child's personality. Baumrind suggests that parents could be classified as authoritative, authoritarian, or permissive. More competent and mature preschool children usually have authoritative parents who were nurturant but made maturity demands. Moderately self-reliant children who were a bit withdrawn have authoritarian parents who more often relied on coercive discipline. The least mature children have overly permissive parents who are nurturant but lack discipline.

According to Sigmund Freud, what we do and why we do it, who we are and how we became this way are all related to our sexual drive. Differences in personalities originate in differences in childhood sexual experiences. In the Freudian psychoanalytical model, child personality development is discussed in terms of "psychosexual stages". In his "Three Essays on Sexuality" (1915), Freud outlined five stages of manifestations of the sexual drive: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. At each stage, different areas of the child's body become the focus of his pleasure and the dominant source of sexual arousal. Differences in satisfying the sexual urges at each stage will inevitably lead to differences in adult personalities. Conflicts between the sex drive and rules of society are present at every stage. A proper resolution of the conflicts will lead the child to progress past one stage and move on to the next. Failure to achieve a proper resolution, however, will make the child fixated in the present stage. The latter is believed to be the cause of many personality and behavioral disorders.

Gratifying Activities: Nursing - eating, as well as mouth movement, including sucking, gumming, biting and swallowing.

Interaction with the Environment: To the infant, the mother's breast not only is the source of food and drink, but also represents her love. Because the child's personality is controlled by the id and therefore demands immediate gratification, responsive nurturing is key. Both insufficient and forceful feeding can result in fixation in this stage.

· Sarcasm ("the biting personality") and verbal hostility
2. Anal Stage (Age 1.5 - 3)

Interaction with the Environment: The major event at this stage is toilet training, a process through which children are taught when, where, and how excretion is deemed appropriate by society. Children at this stage start to notice the pleasure and displeasure associated with bowel movements. Through toilet training, they also discover their own ability to control such movements. Along with it comes the realization that this ability gives them power over their parents. That is, by exercising control over the retention and expulsion of feces, a child can choose to either grant or resist parents' wishes.

· Anal-Expulsive Personality: If the parents are too lenient and fail to instill the society's rules about bowel movement control, the child will derive pleasure and success from the expulsion. Individuals with a fixation on this mode of gratification are excessively sloppy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant.

· Anal-Retentive Personality: If a child receives excessive pressure and punishment from parents during toilet training, he will experience anxiety over bowl movements and take pleasure in being able to withhold such functions. Individuals who fail to progress pass this stage are obsessively clean and orderly, and intolerant of those who aren't. They may also be very careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, conforming and passive-aggressive

Interaction with the Environment: This is probably the most challenging stage in a person's psychosexual development. The key event at this stage, according to Freud, is the child's feeling of attraction toward the parent of the opposite sex, together with envy and fear of the same-sex parent. In boys, this situation is called the "Oedipus Complex" ,named after the young man in a Greek myth who killed his father and married his mother, unaware of their true identities. In girls, it is called the "Electra Complex".

Boys, in the midst of their Oedipus Complex, often experience intense "castration anxiety", which comes from the fear of punishment from the fathers for their desire for the mothers. Girls' Electra Complex involves "penis envy". That is, according to Freud, the girl believes that she once had a penis but that it was removed. In order to compensate for its loss, the girl wants to have a child by her father. Success or failure in the Oedipus conflict is at the core of either normal psychological development or psychological disorder. If a child is able to successfully resolve the conflict, he or she will have learnt to control their envy and hostility and begin to identify with and model after the parent of their own sex, and are ready to move on to the next developmental stage.

· For men: Anxiety and guilty feelings about sex, fear of castration, and narcissistic personality.

· For women: It is implied that women never progress past this stage fully and will always maintain a sense of envy and inferiority, although Freud asserted no certainty regarding women's possible fixations resulting from this stage. Similarly, Freud admitted uncertainty on the females' situation when he constructed the "penis envy" theory in the first place.

Interactions with the Environment: This is a period during which sexual feelings are suppressed to allow children to focus their energy on other aspects of life. This is a time of learning, adjusting to the social environment outside of home, absorbing the culture, forming beliefs and values, developing same-sex friendships, engaging in sports, etc. This period of sexual latency lasts five to six years, until puberty, upon which children become capable of reproduction, and their sexuality is re-awakened.

Interaction with the Environment: This stage is marked by a renewed sexual interest and desire, and the pursuit of relationships.

Fixations: This stage does not cause any fixation. According to Freud, if people experience difficulties at this stage, and many people do, the damage was done in earlier oral, anal, and phallic stages. These people come into this last stage of development with fixations from earlier stages. For example, attractions to the opposite sex can be a source of anxiety at this stage if the person has not successfully resolved the Oedipal (or Electra) conflict at the phallic stage.