Self Evaluation - Theories on Personality

From Theories on Personality 2020

Reaction Paper 1

Let me begin by communicating that I experience joy and inquisitiveness in studying human behavior and the mind therefore I believe this class is going to challenge me mentally and spark even more curiosity in me. I’m highly curious about my own personality both internally and externally and often question how each moment of my life has shaped me to be who I am and to possess my own unique personality. I regularly catch myself studying other people whether it be a coworker, a celebrity, or even a stranger and empirically observing who they are, why they are, and how they came to be as they are in their current state. I don’t want them to know I’m watching their behavior though because then they’ll act differently. For example, I notice a male coworker of mine that I find rather attractive is constantly cleaning up little messes on the server line since I work at Cheddar’s, and I believe it’s because he felt like he had no control when he was young so he controls what he can at the moment and that is cleaning up messes. He’s told me he has trust issues with his parents as well so that seems to validate my theory although I may be wrong. In a number of ways I’m similar. If someone is living life on the streets as a prostitute then they no doubt have had a traumatic, troubling past that damaged their perception on life, conception of self and absence of self-love, causing them to develop self-destructive tendencies. Maybe they feel it's their only way to find any 'power' or to provide for their family.

Studying the concept of personality and theories is important to better understand people in a nomothetic and ideographical way because shaping a personality also shapes people’s lifelong burdens and I feel like they go hand in hand in psychology. All the structures, systems, processes, traits and temperaments that come together to create an individual. A personality is similar to how one defines themselves with interests, desires, and wants but is far more intricate. We each have events that happen in our lives that consciously or subconsciously change our opinions or mindsets for a period of time or for the rest of our lives. Personality can be described like this but is much trickier because it’s less obvious and isn’t as easily described, which is why theories come in handy. It’s clear that one single personality theory cannot explain a whole person, however, it can help explain bits and pieces of the individual. Multiple personality theories are required to explain a person’s personality and even then still can’t do the full job because humans are far too complex. Just like multiple theories still can’t explain the existence of humans and how we got here. We’re always learning, growing, and trying to explain as an intelligent, curious species.

I would like to take a moment to try to interpret my own personality. In recent months I have intensely began psychoanalyzing myself and wondering what about my genetics and the environment I grew up in has molded me into being the complex creature I am today. I took a child psychology class my sophomore year that really emphasized the genes times environment or the nature and nurture theory rather than one weighing more heavily than the other. There is no way that personality could be credited to one or the other. I have my own system of distinctive beliefs, values, emotions, goals, skills and memories that has melded my personality into a sum of me. Parts of my personality are like all people, like some people, and like no persons. I’m rather reserved, a listener, private, closed-off, and I have trust issues, but deep down once I get to know someone and feel like I can be more myself, I glow with an energetic, talkative, goofy personality. I feel like I can come across as an uptight, serious girl but in reality I find it difficult to communicate to others or make personal connections. I personally wish I was outgoing and care-free, but unfortunately the circumstances I grew up in didn’t allow those parts of my brain or personality to be stimulated. I suppose I give off this persona layer in order to shield myself from the judgment of others even though no one likely cares as much about me as I think. I lived a very, very lonely childhood. My parents argued, separated, and caused my brother and I a whole lot of confusion and discomfort when we were young. They also worked often and travelled regularly to go to the casino or look at toys such as boats or cars. They had too much money to spend so when they weren’t trying to buy us toys and candy to make up for being gone for days they were buying their own toys. My older brother of three or so years was constantly locked in his room playing video games, pushing me away. I was left to play outside with animals and nature, which I adore to this day because they were all I could ever rely on. I’m a huge animal rights and earth’s health advocate these days. To make everything worse my parents have forced my brother and I to move into about fourteen houses I believe (lost count) and about five different schools. I never saw the rest of my family and I never made actual friends, which made it almost impossible to get any speech practice in. To this day, it is still almost impossible for me to communicate how I feel or even basic concepts. My verbal skills are almost nonexistent because I never received the practice or knowledge from my parents that I desperately needed, and it’s frustrating to have to live with that lack of patience and care given to me. Each time I moved my new school was in a different place in all my class subjects so I was lost and still feel like I missed out on a decent portion of basic education that I should know at twenty-one years old. I display neurotic qualities in my personality and I still don’t know who I am as a person because I didn’t receive the proper love, support, and encouragement to grow and be happy as who I am. I have a nervous attachment style in romantic relationships because my parents were neglectful, made me feel unsafe and unloved, and left me fearful of abandonment. Plus, they’ve lied to my brother and I our whole lives about themselves and each other. To this day they are still trying to have a romantic relationship while living in separate houses. I strive to be anything but how my parents are, nonetheless, I still love them. They’re just troubled individuals who have placed their hardships, problems, and expectations onto their children. This is obviously merely the surface of my own thoughts about my personality and a brief explanation of my personality within the space that I have. It honestly feels great to express my feelings on the matter.

The scientific study and collection of data on personality is a practical way to learn about people, their behaviors, and their personalities and allows researchers to gain more insight into psychopathology, and create more personality theories. With the numerous date collection methods, researchers should never have a problem with gathering info from people and developing connections or new discoveries. If I had to choose a research strategy that seems to be the optimal method, it would be case studies. This way, you can get into the nitty gritty of a person’s mind and within exploring that one person, I feel like you could learn a large deal more because you examine them in depth and are able to make inferences and elaborate theories on their behavior, where as correlational and experimental studies doesn’t allow for a true understanding of someone or an aspect of their personality. Although not every person will react the same way if put into the same situation as another, which is the advantage that experiments have, you still grasp a better understanding on that individual and you’re able to help them.

Freud’s psychodynamic theory on personality is quite interesting as it relies on automatic thoughts and/or implicit biases to reveal hidden parts of someone’s personality and sort of intertwines with his psychoanalytical theory. The unconscious is certainly a place that can reveal a number of personal afflictions, fear, or deep desires which are all ways to show someone’s personality. I think studying dreams is a fantastic way to discover a person’s true intentions and thoughts. I’ve always wanted to give my dreams a closer look because I know they can tell a lot about a person. I feel like there is some truth to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory but everyone’s id, ego, and superego are different and have their own level of power depending on the individual person. For me sometimes I notice my id is incredibly overpowering and I can be a little impulsive and other times my ego gains back control and advises my conscious once again.

Reaction Paper 2

In this section we focused a good deal on psychodynamic theories among Sigmund Freud’s perspective. Sigmund Freud and his development of many psychological phenomena including but not limited to psychoanalysis, attachment theory, defense mechanism and the complex relationship of the id, ego, and super-ego. He was a man far ahead of his time in his various specialties and he had a very unique perspective on humans and our inherent wants, fears, and desires, communications of love and so on that we acquired in our early stages of life. He could figure a person out to a T using his various psychodynamic theories and forms of treatment recommendations on many psychological disorders and/or issues.

The unconscious is a mysterious concept as we quite literally don’t know what it’s thinking or doing or why it does what it does unless we spend copious amount of time allowing someone to figure us out using psychodynamics. Sometimes I question why I decided to do something last minute only to regret it later and realize I was acting on impulse or wonder why I have such a strong natural affinity for animals and nature. The unconscious is a collection of all our past experiences, memories and feelings which now impact our own thoughts, emotions, interests, motivations, and overall behavior as Kihlstrom sort of explains “The Cognitive Unconscious.”

Similarly, I find it very intriguing how dreams really do reveal the thoughts, fears, urges, and more from the unconscious cognitive thought. The other night I actually experienced a number of odd, thought-provoking dreams. To give a little context, I unfortunately ended up pulling an all-nighter the previous night to study and I had been stressed out and lacking sleep that week. Well apparently, those two conditions make it likelier for sleep paralysis to occur where basically your mind awakes before your body. Well when I woke I realized I couldn’t move the rest of my body, only my eyes, so I knew I was experiencing sleep paralysis since it’s happened before, but this is the first time where my mind has actually imagined a dark figure in the corner of my room by the blinds. The figure was a silhouette of a skinny lady with long, ratted hair and within what seemed like 5 seconds, she had crawled on top of my body and tried to frighten me by rocking her head back and forth, but I remember being brave and I snapped out of it by forcing all of my might into trying to butt her in the head. Immediately she had disappeared when I fully awoke. I think my mind was showing me that I’m capable of overcoming almost anything and that I’m stronger and braver than I believe because I wasn’t scared at all during the dream. After falling back asleep, I dreamt of speaking to my mom, dad, and brother about how we weren’t able to bond and express like a regular family and that we needed to work with each other as a form of way of healing for all of us and we were all crying as I touched my family on the arms. I find it interesting how we weren’t hugging in the dream because we’re not a close family and we were crying because my parents have always been emotionally unavailable and so we never talk about our feelings with one another. It’s funny because the other day I stated to my family that we need to go to family counseling and my parents said “no we’re fine,” even though my brother refuses to talk to any of us about any personal problems or emotions. I fully believe that dreams give you insight into many aspects of your unconscious and are capable of therapeutically helping someone by allowing them to better understand and be more self-aware while giving information for a therapist to use, and can even show overtime how someone has improved from therapy as Eudell-Simmons and Hilsenroth proposed in their article on conceptual dream usages. Likewise the article about the medical student’s dreams shows us that we all dream about what’s bothering our minds, becoming better, understanding their studies more, frustrations, embarrassments, and so we practice life events in our dreams to better prepare us to succeed in our day to day life all while revealing our true worries and/or hopes. The main idea that this study revealed was that future physicians experience a change in their unconscious and emotional processes based on dream analyses. Dreams are fascinating revelations of the cognition processes of our unconscious.

Another major theme among the psychodynamic theories are defense mechanisms which was also another concept created by Freud. These are ego defenses that help someone avoid pain, shame, guilt, or any unwanted feelings. Homosexual men using repression, denial, and reactions formation is a fitting example of who may use self-deception and why. For me, I’ve noticed that I have displayed the mechanism projection where I take my own insecurities and frustrations and place them onto previous partners or at least I have in the past. This is because it was hard for me to deal with my own problems and learn to overcome my own intrusive thoughts. Self-deception is another complex idea that appears to have numerous different levels and characteristics to it. I was often self-deceptive in relationships in order to deceive myself and the person I was with about the person I wished I was. This was a way of protecting myself from emotional harm received from my inner thoughts. I wanted to feel loveable and only felt I was using certain forms of self-deceptive mechanisms, which may indeed lead us into the next theory, attachment theory.

Arguably one of the most important determinants of personality and how you behave in relationships is a person’s attachment style. Based on Freud’s theory on attachment, our initial parent(s)/caregiver(s) and how (in)attentive, or loving when were when you were in the earliest stages of development. If you’ve had a parent that was very loving, supportive, and attentive, then you will likely have developed a secure attachment. If you had a parent that skipped out on any major developmental needs, then you will likely develop some form of insecure/anxious attachment style. I think it’s very likely that caregivers like a mother and her own unconscious psychological problems can impact your own life relations like defense mechanisms, type of attachment, behavior issues, and emotional stability.

Your early caretakers are also determinants in who and what you like in a relationship. It’s sad to say but if we grew accustomed to receiving a specific type of love from a caretaker then odds are, even if it wasn’t healthy, we will desire that type of love in adult relationships whether it be from friends or romantic partners because it was we’re familiar with and what we’ve grown attached to. This is why in order for someone to maintain a healthy relationship, they must have achieved happiness within themselves and learned how to love and be loved properly before they can find someone who gives them the right sort of love. Many times, we search for qualities that may be negative in a partner that reminds us of our parents because it’s what we’ve grown used to and what we consider to be normal. Object relations theory is another theory that has a massive impact on how we behave with others in relationships because it’s how we’ve learned to handle relationships based on what we learned from caretakers or early experiences.

We hate to admit it, but to a degree, our parent’s own psychodynamic baggages end up influencing our own as it’s all we know growing up from infancy to adulthood. Babies are born an (almost) clean state where it’s primarily the environment we grow up in that determines many factors about ourselves including our personality, insecurities, mental representations, and much more. The caretakers have their own world with their own coping mechanisms, schematics, and attachment styles and they have much of the control as to how you’re going to view and navigate yourself and the world. It is up to the individual to acknowledge they have a deficit somewhere in their psychodynamic processes, and that they need to fix it using a method that can gradually weave out those deep-rooted anxieties.

Freud’s theories on human psychological development have been supported time and time again and alongside it, psychoanalysis therapy, which is directly what he has proposed is the solution to remediate many people’s deep, hidden unconscious tendencies or beliefs and maladaptive practices that they’ve developed to protect their ego.

Reaction Paper 3

The more we cover the various personality theories that are similar but also different in many ways, the more I feel like they are all intertwined and that one could use several theories to explain why a person has the personality and behavioral traits that they do. However, up to this point I believe Sigmund Freud has the most complex, deep, and supported understand of innateness and psychopathology among people. I believe that most of what people are is unconscious development and anxiety is what drives us to develop certain behavioral traits, or in other words our personalities. I didn’t know how intrinsically connected everything was including the main concepts within the major personality theories and the theories themselves. Humans are complex and need many complex, finalized ideas to describe them. I’m taking an abnormal psychology class where we’re learning about forms of therapy and how often, people require eclectic therapy or more than one form to fully treat them.

Adaptation is an interesting concept to me but in order to survive in this world, everyone has developed different forms of adaptation that affect their behavior, emotions, anxieties, coping mechanisms and more. Personally, I feel like it makes more sense for only the Id to be developed already at birth while the Ego comes along later after the Superego has developed so the Ego’s job is to balance the two, which the Superego like morality and conscience come into play in creating a person’s personality. I feel I have a high level of autonomy because I my parents were a little inattentive and neglectful and I had to grow more independent faster. I exhibited an unconscious autoplastic change to where I altered my internal self in order to gain their attention but also an alloplastic change because to this day I’m still highly controlling and organized with the environment around me and also people and I display a high level of perfectionism in my personality. It is evident there are missing pieces to my ego that didn’t didn’t properly or fully develop as I physically grew because of the inattentiveness, emotional disconnection, and my parent’s own personality thoughts and negative behaviors.

In my abnormal psychology course this semester where we learn about all the many different psychological disorders in people and thinking about the class’s material, makes me wonder if someone suffering from OCD may have had a very unstable, constantly changing environment when they were young with little to no control, which may have contributed in their obsessive, compulsive needs to fix things or act out things a specific way. Growing up a would have recurring thoughts about something specific or performing actions a certain way or even thinking about a pattern in my head the same way every time. For me, my high degree of control and perfectionism stem from the fact that I never knew when I was going to see my parents again, we were continuously moving, and I was never able to make decisions in the matter. My brother gave up and is very disorganized and messy but I was persistent and clearly hated the feelings it gave me so to this day, I’m controlling.

Defense mechanisms are a huge portion of psychoanalysis that I find extremely intriguing because everyone I know has at least one kind of mechanism they regularly use to protect themselves, and I know I have a number of them. It’s a sad fact, but I’ve realized I’m attracted to people who are in need of repair as well who have adapted to use unhealthy, negative defense mechanisms such as denial or projection but oddly enough I also would regularly act out these types of defense mechanisms. I had a semi-narcissistic father who hardly admitted when he was wrong or when he may have committed hurtful behavior and then he would get angry, lash out, and project his negative feelings for himself onto his family, and I’ve noticed I’m attracted to men who act similarly. Why would I find a level of comfort in this? I suppose it’s a level of familiarity and it’s a bad unconscious desire that I’m working on fixing. Since defense mechanisms help you defend against what creates that anxiety, you can think about it but you don’t want to emotionally feel it that pain. I deny and project my own insecurities on my partners because I grew up watching my parents do that to each other and their kids, and it was my way of coping. I realized that I had very immature, primitive defense mechanisms and embarrassingly would throw sort of like adult temper tantrums when I would act out in relationships.

In abnormal psychology I find it interesting how the higher up we go on the anxiety hierarchy, the more likely very severe defense mechanisms and mental disorders will develop, like schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder. I have a high amount of generalized anxiety

and rarely, in nervous situations, I experience psychosis where one registers nothing and no matter how hard I try to snap back to the present moment, my mind won’t let me until I calm down or leave the situation.

As for object relations, my brother and I experienced loss of object with our parents and had to fend for ourselves countless times while they were away. During this time, we became attached to certain objects that we can relate with that brought us comfort while our parents weren’t around. My brother grew very fond of cars and video games because he locked himself in his room all day with the toys that my parents bought us because they thought money was more important than quality time. I was outside playing a lot in the woods and with our outside dogs and cats so now I’m an avid animals rights and environmental activist.

In terms of Donald Winnicott, I never knew my true self until I started discovering it recently. I wondered if there was a theory on this for a couple months now. I realized I didn’t know who I was and I suspected it had to do with my parents never being available or encouraging me to do what makes me happy or help me pick up new interests or things I enjoy. I also realized I have an intense fear of people finding out who I really am or at least who I feel like I am. This may be my false self as an attempt to cover up who I actually am. I’m not as intelligent as what my parents think I am. I mean I’m an undergrad at the University of Tennessee but I’m not nearly as smart as what I wanted them to think growing up because it was one of the few ways to receive attention from them and get their praise when I performed well in school. This may also be a form of adaptation in order to receive more love and attention from them. They were always so proud of me so I kept up this false image or false self of myself. For years I found myself only caring about the grade and displaying an intense form of perfectionism in not only my grades but all areas of my life and I believe I thought that was the only way the other could love me.

These past several months I’ve made strides in gaining insight about my unhealthy coping mechanisms and I’ve picked up more helpful, beneficial mechanisms such as sublimation where I’ve been enjoying going to the gym and actual feel the desire to go when I’ve had a stressful day. I’ve been recognizing and identifying my faults and working through them by tons of reflection, in the end, gaining insight about my own motivational processes and

psychopathological issues. Me reenacting my relationships is a me displaying transference but I’m trying to gain insight by reflecting on myself daily and picking up healthier habits and corrective emotional experiences.

Reaction Paper 4

As we further delve into more personality theories, I further understand just how complex humans and how we behave as a person are and how every individual is different. To this point, it is my understanding that no single theory can really truly explain a reasoning for someone’s behavior, and certain behaviors or personality disorders can be better explained by different theories. For example, borderline and narcissism are related to the view of the self and others aligning with the mentalization and reflective functioning theories. In borderline, the individual failed to integrate their identity from the self and others. They also have a difficult time controlling emotions and impulses and have a damaged sense of internal representation which can stem from their attachment with their caregiver. In narcissists, they have a highly inflated, distorted view of their self because they have an extremely idealized view of themselves that can lead to anxiety if they don’t display this image they’ve conceived of themselves. They have failed to develop an interpersonal interpretive functioning.

Moving to the biological view of attachment theory in John Bowlby’s perspective, he explains an evolutionary-based reason for behavior through secure base, safe haven, and an internal working model. Attachment runs deep and begins from the moment a child is born. Those first stages of life with your caregiver(s) are the most crucial and if a child doesn’t receive adequate care and attention, there will be a deficit in their ability to perceive the world in a healthy way using positive internal working models or internal representations. When growing up, my brother and I had a major lack of attuned, sensitive parenting and were often neglected and sometimes abandoned as we could have been separated from each other or from a parent as my parents argued and split quite frequently. It could have been considered a very chaotic, disorder childhood as we moved houses, cities, and states regularly as well. My parents displayed a lack of interest in my own internal psyche. I had a hard time thinking emotionally and deeply of others about their motivations and experiences because I never fully understood myself, which also agrees with mentalization and reflective functioning theory. I developed serious generalized anxiety and social anxiety when it came to exploring the world or social situations which stems from a lack of a secure base and never having a true home or parent to run back to for a safe haven. My sense of trust, internal world, and relations with objects was inadequate and a little distorted until recently where I’ve began noticing my faulty internal representations I have of myself and the world around me and especially the way other people think of me. Internal representations of self-other relationships are key to character formation and functioning, can be a major determinator of adaptations and psychopathology. Relatedness is core of attachment theory. I was too preoccupied, anxious, scared, worried about caregiver and their whereabouts as opposed to figuring out myself. As we discussed in class, animals but particularly dogs can display anxious attachment. I have a little Pomeranian named Benji who displays separation anxiety as he cries and gets anxious while blocking the door when he knows I’m about to leave and he whimpers and tries standing on my legs immediately as I come home. Another example of separation anxiety and detachment issues I remember in my life is when I was about four or five, my mom was dropping me off for daycare. For whatever reason, I began screaming and balling, begging not to leave her as I gripped her arms tightly and another person had to grab me by my legs and try to pull me off of her. I believe in that moment I felt like I may not see her again.

In John Bowlby’s view, anxiety is genetic and serves as an evolutionary function so its purpose is to protect us of a real or perceived threat. For me, that threat happens to be rejection, abandonment, and judgment from other people as I believe this is a legitimate fear of mine due to the false internal working model I have of other people and my association of unpleasant social disapproval and myself which creates anxiety. In terms of a humanistic approach where my actual self and my ideal self are completely different which makes me very uncomfortable and is another reason for inducing anxiety.

I discovered a Netflix show called I Am A Killer where a woman murdered her boyfriend who she knew for roughly twenty-six days where she is a sociopath who hasn’t learned of the other and she doesn’t know they are capable of their own emotions and experiences. I’m going to assume that her sociopathic tendencies derive from her rough past with previous, abusive partners, and her own experience with her caregivers/attachment figures. Her caregivers never gave her the possibility to learn about the other and therefore she never learned how to connect or wonder about the other, which has in turn, likely created a sociopath. This is how I imagine most sociopaths/psychopaths are created.

One area I find fascinating is the intergenerational transmission of many characteristics like trauma, psychopathologies, and attachment. Relating to Mary Ainsworth and Main, although there is some variation from parents, many times infants for a similar attachments and personalities as their parents as this is all the infant experiences so it makes sense. The infant attachment pattern can be highly influenced by the parents who have their own attachment styles. My parents were rather insensitive and avoidant at times, with my dad already being a little anxious, therefore, I undoubtedly have an anxious-avoidant attachment style, most apparent in romantic relationships. I’ve been quite independent for as long as I can remember and have never really relied on any friends for emotional support as I don’t have any close friends. Today, I’m distrusting of others and avoid getting too close or putting myself in potentially embarrassing situations. I have a theory where neither of my parents fully learned who they were or how to love themselves therefore they weren’t capable of giving or helping prosper those gifts to another person, being their children. Another fun fact I learned is that traumas can be passed down from generation to generation so you will have these representations in your brain from ancestors.

Relating to a class discussion where a fellow student asked what sort of attachment styles “spoiled brats” develop, it made me think about my own life where my brother and I were considered spoiled and like we had everything when in reality we had very little emotional, meaningful attachment with our parents. We both possess several deficits in our personalities, abilities, identities, and potential of loving ourselves as people because we felt abandoned and neglected growing up. Sure, my parents bought us toys and candy frequently, but it all means nothing if we never had true affection from our parents. To this day we hate how little our parents valued quality time with us. We still developed insecure attachments or at least I did. I have vowed to my future self that if and when I plan to have children, I will not merely throw “fun” objects at them and rather love them with all my heart and do my best to guide them into being a decent human being themselves. Speaking of contempt, deep down I know I have anger issues because I believe I have a deep hatred for my parents who were incapable of giving my brother and I everything we needed, along with my two half siblings from my dad’s previous marriage. You can receive everything but still have nothing.

The Phenomenology perspective with Carl Rogers discusses unconditional positive regard. I met a girl recently who told me she struggled with being herself around people to where she would almost adopt their ideas and values while she’s around them in order to be liked which sounds like she is searching for positive regard from others. Her parents likely didn’t provide her with unconditional love for doing what she wants and being who she wants, where mine weren’t involved enough for me to freely do so. I experienced subception and a distorted view of others in my relationships where I try to integrate the meaning of my experience with myself to reduce anxiety. I used to have a poor sense of self and would experience introjection to feel more relatable which is the core of attachments and relationships. Needing to be approved by others is in our species DNA and serves as a survival mechanism from Bowlby’s view.

Culture really impacts personality. Western societies value separation, uniqueness, and self-sufficiency. Here in America we can value certain qualities that are apparent in narcissists like an egoist and self-righteous attitude as sometimes this gets you higher on the career chain with this type of mentality. Another example of culture’s impact on personality is our view on dependency in Western societies who believe this trait is considered to be weak and frowned upon while valued in other cultures. I’ve been watching a show on Netflix called ‘The Queen’s Gambit” and on there they play competitive chess games, the board game. There was a scene where one of the characters mentioned that Russian players are much better and much more skillful than American players because they rely on each other and share all their strategies and tips with each other to collectively improve as a group while Americans are extremely competitive. Maybe we should open up to the idea of dependency because it helps everyone involved. Maybe that is another reason why Americans are more lonely than other countries because we’re constantly seeking complete independence and separateness from others while other cultures have a better sense of belongingness, empathy, and reciprocity.

In my abnormal psychology class, we are learning about mental disorders and as mentioned in some of the readings for the sociocultural context of personality, some places accept or expect different behaviors from people where some are perceived as normal and others abnormal depending on where you live. For example, when analyzing schizophrenia or other paranoid/delusional disorders, many small spiritual tribes, such as Indian or South American, believe it is normal and a good sign when you experience hallucinations, especially ones where you can “see” or “hear” passed ancestors or Gods. Whereas in America or a European country, odds are we would think the individual is crazy and admit them to a psychiatric facility due to their psychosis which is intriguingly all an opinion.

I truly check all the marks but I don't fit into any of the boxes.