Personality Theories appear to
have existed as long as we have. As humans we appear to have a
great need to know who we are, what our innate personality is.
Astrology, the oldest system I know of, began because people
noticed that there was a correlation between what was
happening in the sky and here on earth. Hence Astrologers say,
"As Above so Below".
All of
Religion comes from this thirst to know who we are, and all
religions are built on personality theories but unfortunately
a great deal of religion disintegrated into cult activities
and control, rather than the Self Knowledge most of their
founders worked on.
Philosophy
is enormously interested in who we are. Psychiatry presently
tries to label us into some particular niche or other.
What is
true is that any theory on who we are comes greatly from the
experience of the person who created it. Milton Friedman for
example, believed that we are all little Robinson Crusoe's ,
living on our own separate island caring only for ourselves?!
Obviously people who also experience life in this way will
believe he has got it right!
The
Articles in this section are all on answers to the question
"Who Am I". The hope is that they will lead you a little more
towards your own inner feeling self. The answers are within
you. We look at Freud
and his discovery of the Unconscious. We give an introduction
to Jung and his search for an answer to the question of
who we are and his understanding of Self and Ego. We also look
at Carl
Rogers and how he discovered that provided certain
conditions were met, the client themselves was the person who
had the answers inside themselves. To Rogers' our inner
feeling self was our genuine self and the aim of counselling
was to get us in touch with this and with our own inner
resources.
We also
look at Buddhism
and how it answers the question of who we are, comparing
it to the work of Jung and Carl Rogers and question whether Astrology
the earliest known system can tell us who we are.
