HEALTHY PERSONALITIES

People with healthy personalities are those who are judged to be well adjusted. They are so jugged because they are able to function efficiently in the world of people. They experience a kind of “Inner Harmony” in the sense that they are at peace with others as well as themselves.

“The core of a healthy personality is any image of the self that the individual can accept and live with, without feeling too guilty, anxious or hostile, without being self-defeated or destructive of others.”

Jourard has defined a person with a healthy personality as one who “is able to gratify his needs through behavior that conforms with both the norms of his society and the requirements of his conscience.”

Characteristics of Healthy Personalities:
Of the many characteristics of healthy personalities, the following are the most common:
1. Realistic self-appraisals
2. Realistic appraisal of situations
3. Realistic evaluation of achievements
4. Acceptance of reality
5. Acceptance of responsibility
6. Autonomy
7. Acceptable emotional control
8. Goal orientation
9. Outer orientation
10. Social acceptance
11. Philosophy-of-life-directed
12. Happiness

1. Realistic self-appraisals: The well adjusted person sees himself as he is, not as he would like to be. The gap between the real and the ideal self-concept, is very much smaller among the well-adjusted. Since the well-adjusted person can appraise himself, his abilities and his achievements realistically, he does not need to use defense mechanisms to try to convince himself and others that his failure to come up to his expectations is the fault of others or of environmental conditions over which he has no control. He accepts adverse evaluations as a form of constructive criticism and tries to improve qualities that others judge unfavorably. He is ready and willing to change, regard himself as worthy, even if not perfect.

2. Realistic appraisal of situations: He approaches situations with a realistic attitude, accepting the bad with the good. He realizes that there must be rules of conduct which protects the rights of others and himself, and he is willing to abide by them even when they are not entirely to his liking. He finds that it pays to be a law-abiding citizen rather than a troublemaker or law-breaker. He recognizes that success comes only with hard work, the willingness to make personal sacrifices and pass up immediate pleasures in favor of the long term gains he is striving for.

3. Realistic evaluation of achievements: A well-adjusted person is able to evaluate his achievements realistically and to react to them in a rational way. This contrasts with the maladjusted person who regards his successes as a personal triumph which shows others his superiority over them. The maladjusted person allows himself to develop a superiority complex which he expresses in boasting, bragging and derogatory comments about those whose achievements fall below this.
A well-adjusted person evaluates his failures realistically to see if they were actually failure for him or whether they were due to competition with persons whose abilities were greater than his. He also considers whether he tried hard enough and if he did not; whether his lack of effort was due to laziness, fear of failure, or some other cause. In addition, he assesses his aspirations to see if they were realistic and if not, he profits by his failure, setting his future aspirations at a more realistic level.

4. Acceptance of reality: The person must learn to accept his limitations, either physical or psychological, if he cannot change them and to do what he can with what he has. He can also compensate for his limitations by improving those characteristics in which he is strongest.
The poorly adjusted person, by contrast, develops a martyr complex, feeling sorry for himself or blaming himself or others for his limitations.

5. Acceptance of responsibility: The well adjusted person is enough of a realist to recognize that he should not accept responsibilities that he is unprepared to carry out successfully. He knows that by doing so he will not only win social disapproval for his failures but will undermine his self confidence to the point where he will be hesitant to accept future responsibilities. He accepts responsibility for himself and for his behavior. If things go wrong and if he is criticized, he accepts the blame and is willing to admit that he made a mistake. Acceptance of responsibility means that the well adjusted person is dependable.

6. Autonomy: Autonomy shows itself in independence. An autonomous person does not depend on others when he is capable of being independent. The well-adjusted person shows his autonomy in several ways. In decision making, he is able to make important decisions with a minimum of worry, conflict, advice seeking and other types of running away behavior. After making a choice, he abides by it, until new factors of crucial importance enter into the picture.

7. Acceptable emotional control: The person must assume the responsibility for keeping his emotions under control so that they will not hurt others or himself. A well adjusted person can live comfortably with his emotions. This is possible because he had developed, over a period, a degree of stress tolerance, anxiety tolerance, depression tolerance and pain tolerance.

8. Goal orientation: The well adjusted person set realistic goals while those who are poorly adjusted set more unrealistic goals. The second major difference between well and poorly adjusted people in goal setting is that the well adjusted make it their business to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to reach their goals. The result is that a well adjusted person is a well organized one. He integrates his various functions and roles in life according to a consistent, harmonious pattern. He is thus able to make the best use of his time and effort and this increases his chances of reaching his goals.

9. Outer orientation: The well adjusted person’s interest in others is revealed in a number of ways. He is unselfish about his time, effort and material possessions. He is willing to respond in any way he can to the needs of others and does not regard it as an imposition. The ability to empathize with others, to understand and to sympathize with them in happiness and sorrow without feeling envious of their successes or scornful of their failures.

10. Social acceptance: The well adjusted persons see themselves as adequate to meet social challenges, demands and expectations and so they are willing to participate in social activities and are highly capable of identifying with other people. He can be natural, at ease and friendly in his relationships with others and all this increases his social acceptance. Even though he may have little in common with those with whom he is associated, he makes it his business to get along with them if circumstances make it impossible for him to seek the companionship of persons whose interests are more similar to his and who would meet his needs better.

11. Philosophy-of-life-directed: As well adjusted people are goal-oriented, so do they direct their lives by a philosophy which helps them to formulate plans to meet their goals in a socially approved way. This philosophy of life may be based on religious beliefs, it may be based mainly on what they believe is right because it is best for all concerned or it may be based on personal experiences.

12. Happiness: One of the outstanding characteristics of the well adjusted person is happiness. This means that in the well adjusted person happiness outways unhappiness and the person is an essentially happy person. Three conditions contribute to the happiness of the well adjusted person. All enhance the person’s self-concept and lead to reasonable self satisfaction. These conditions have been called the “Three A’s of Happiness”:
- Achievement
- Acceptance
- Affection

Dr. Nahida M.Mulla M.D.MACH
Principal,
A M Shaikh Homoeopathic Medical College, Nehru Nagar, BELGAUM

CHILD PSYCHOLOGY:
Is a curious thing that the scientific study of child behavior is only of recent origin. Philosophers had talked about the importance of childhood in determining the nature of the adult and poets had written about it.

The childhood shows the man,
As the meaning shows the day.
__ Milton in Paradise Regained

The child is father of the man
__ Wordsworth in My Heart Leaps Up

Two parents including Charles Darwin (1877) published infant biographies. But the first comprehensive study of child development did not appear until 1882. This was Prayer’s, “The Mind of the Child.” It also, was written by a father and observation was limited to one child. Although restricted in these ways, this was a careful study, dealing e.g. with reflexes, sensory ability, emotional development and thought processes. It is infact, a landmark in the history of child psychology.

Evolutionary Influences: One idea which played an important part in evolutionary biology also gave an impetus to child psychology. This was the concept of recapitulation, which supposed that, in their early growth, organisms exhibit, for a time, certain traits possessed by animals lower in the evolutionary scale. Some structural evidence for this came from the fact that human foctuses have structures resembling gill slits. These later become a part of the ear. Likewise, each human being has tail, which, except, in rare instances, disappears before birth.

Impressed by evidences for structural recapitulation, some early child psychologists looked for behavioral evidence. It was suggested, e.g. that “the child after birth recapitulates and uses for a time various phases of its prehuman ancestral behavior.” Offered in evidence were the monkey-like antics of children and the tendency of many to walk on all fours. One of the early leaders in child psychology, G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, even claimed that the cultural history of man’s behavior is mirrored in the activities of children and especially in play. He believed that, “The best index and guide to the stated activities of adults in past ages is found in the instinctive, in taught and non-initiative plays of children.” But the recapitulation concept, although it served for a time to focus psychological attention on children, received little support from observations of child behavior.

Developmental Schedules: When child psychology got under way, there soon developed an interest in such questions as: What reactions are usual or normal, or to be expected at given age levels? Research designed to answer such questions is often referred to as normative, a search for norms. Intelligence tests such as those, which originated in France, were normative but confined largely to memory and reasoning. They were, of course, designed for school children. They did not tell how a baby of three or six months or of two or four years should be reacting. Nor did they deal, in any direct way, with sensory, perceptual and motor development. The first extensive development schedules designed to tell parents what children usually do at various age levels from birth, up grew out of research conducted by Arnold Gessell and his associates at Yale University. Various test situations, involving response to such objects as dangling rings, cubes and mirrors were used at the early age levels. At later ages, the tests involved observations of language and social behavior. Large numbers of children were tested. Movies of their reactions were made and analyzed frame by frame to discover age changes in behavior. The chief outcome of this research was a detailed catalogue of the responses to be expected at successive age levels. Over and beyond its scientific value, information like this is of obvious value to pediatricians, educators and parents.

The Influence of Psychoanalysis: Like the poets quoted above, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and later psychoanalysts claimed that childhood experiences leave an indelible impression in adult personality. Freud emphasized experiences associated with sexual development. Others stressed the importance of frustration and insecurity in childhood, with or without sexual overtones. Regardless of such differences among them, these men helped to turn the spotlight on childhood and more specifically on parent-child relationships and other aspects of family life. This approach supplemented and as it were, rounded out the approaches to child psychology that we have already considered. Moreover, the influence of childhood on adult personality became an interdisciplinary problem, bringing about cooperative studies among psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists. The later were led to investigate how methods of child rearing characteristics of different cultures influence the personality of adults.

The principles of child psychology are based on research findings and theories about children’s behavior and development from the time of conception to the beginning of adolescence. The onset of pubescence, which typically occurs between twelve and fifteen years of age, marks the transition to a period of life which psychologists have considered sufficiently different from earlier childhood to merit separate treatment as the psychology of adolescence.

Psychologists have found it convenient to identify the following chronological age groupings:
Germinal: first 2 weeks after conception
Embryo: 2-6 weeks after conception
Foetus: 6 weeks after conception until birth
Neonate: First 2 weeks after birth
Infant: First 2 years of life
Preschool child: 2-6 years of age
Primary-school child: 6-9 years of age
Intermediate school child: 9-12 years of age
Junior-High school child: 12-15 years of age (the onset of adolescence occurs during this period)

This classificatory schema is arbitrary and has no theoretical value. Based on more-or-less general usage, it merely provides a convenient framework for discussion and easy appellation.

A study of the psychology of childhood, of conscientiously and intelligently pursued, provides a rich background of information about children’s behavior and psychological growth under a variety of environmental conditions. It provides information about psychological scales for appraising a child’s developmental status; provides certain “norms” of behavior and growth for comparative purposes; provides understanding of basic psychological processes like learning, motivation, maturation and socialization; supplies knowledge of general principles of development with which to evaluate critically new trends and “fads” in child care and training and offers practical suggestions for guiding the psychological growth of children who experience difficulties in adjusting to adults, children and other personal and natural components of their culture. Furthermore, extended study in this scientific area promotes a better understanding of adolescent and adult behavior. Familiar aphorisms such as “The child is father of the man” and “As the twig is bent so grows the tree” document man’s belief in the major contributions of childhood experiences to the personality and behavior of the individual.

While the present research and theoretical status of child psychology may appear to have emerged “full blown” in the twentieth century, closer examination reveals its deep and tenuous roots extending far into the past.


Dr. Nahida M.Mulla M.D.MACH
Principal,
A M Shaikh Homoeopathic Medical College, Nehru Nagar, BELGAUM

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