Psychometric Testing
According to Jung in the Online Etymology Dictionary (2011) personality was defined as “the supreme realization of the innate idiosyncrasy of a living being. It is an act of courage flung in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence, coupled with the greatest possible freedom of self-determination.”
According to Cherry (2005), individuals in everyday life that try to explain and measure the personalities of other people around them perform very similar tasks that are performed by psychologists. These psychologists attempt to decipher the reasoning for individuals behaviour in their everyday life. This can be achieved by theorists through the use of various behaviour and personality assessments, approaches and theories
This report attempts to allow the reader to gain a clearer and greater insight into the various theoretical frameworks of both personality and behaviour which forms the foundations of psychological assessment. The approaches/theories used to assess personality and behaviour that will be looked at in greater detail in this report includes Psychodynamic Theories, which will focus on Freuds Psychoanalytic theory and Jungs analytical theory. Dimensional theories have been looked and defined with special reference to Sheldons constitutional typology and Cattells factor-analytical model of personality. Behaviouristic and learning theories have also been focused on in this report and greater insight has been provided into Burrhus Frederic Skinners Radical Learning theory. Gordon Allports Trait Theory and Hans Eysencks three Dimensions of Personality has been looked at in the text to describe and give the reader better insight into the trait theory of personality. The extremely important and in-depth theories of the humanistic approach have been explained in the report,