MENTAL HEALTH EXAM 1 Mental health & Mental illness (2) (CHAPTER 2)  Theories of Mental health (4)  Personality is defined as “the characteristic way in which a person thinks, feels, and behaves; the ind pattern of behavior that each person evolves, both consciously and unconsciously, as his or her style of life or way of being.” • Life-cycle developmentalists believe that people continue to develop and change throughout life, thereby suggesting the possibility for renewal and growth in adults. • Stages are identified by age. However, personality is influenced by temperament (inborn personality characteristics) and the environment. • It is possible for behaviors from an unsuccessfully completed stage to be modified and corrected in a later stage. • Stages overlap, and individuals may be working on tasks from more than one stage at a time. • Individuals may become fixed in a certain stage and remain developmentally delayed. • Personality disorders occur when personality traits become inflexible and personality functioning becomes individually and interpersonally impaired. o Psychoanalytic Theory  Sigmund Freud, who has been called the father of psychiatry, is credited as the first to identify development by stages. He considered the first 5 years of a child's life to be the most important, because he believed that an individual's basic character had been formed by the age of 5. 2  Freud's personality theory can be conceptualized according to structure and dynamics of the personality, topography of the mind, and stages of personality development.  Freud organized the structure of the personality into three major components: the id, ego, and superego. They are distinguished by their unique functions and different characteristics