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.
