Method
Trait theory
Overview
approach to the study of human personality
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Their primary interest in the excretory function, its organs and products, is changed in the course of their growth into a group of traits that we know well—thriftiness, orderliness and cleanliness—valuable and welcome qualities in themselves, which, however, may be intensified till they visibly dominate the personality and produce what we call the anal character. How this happens we do not know; but there is no…
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its discontents
Close in meaning to Trait theory; the term itself is not named.
Recent works on the psychology of character have had much to say upon this point.(88) Some persons are born with an inner constitution which is harmonious and well balanced from the outset. Their impulses are consistent with one another, their will follows without trouble the guidance of their intellect, their passions are not excessive, and their lives are little haunted by regrets. Others are oppositely…
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
Close in meaning to Trait theory; the term itself is not named.
What is noteworthy is that this material always serves at first as a resistance and comes forward in a guise which is inimical to the treatment. Again it may be said that they are character-traits, individual attitudes of the Ego, which are thus mobilized to oppose the attempted alterations. One learns then how these character-traits have been developed in connection with the conditions of the neurosis and in…
Sigmund Freud, Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis
Close in meaning to Trait theory; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Trait theory
Related ideas
- Emotion
- Genetics
- Limbic system
- Mental state
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging
- Psychology
- Thought
- Brain
- Intellect
- Orbitofrontal cortex
- Antonio Damasio
- Biology
- Descartes' Error
Place in the tradition
Part of Agnosticism.