Articles & Links: Library of Personality Development

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Site Updated : 3 April, 2008

Da Vinci's Ginevra de' Benci, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

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Of Interest~

Personality Development

According to the National Gallery of Art, the reverse side of Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait of Ginevra de' Benci is inscribed with the words, "Beauty adorns Virtue." This statement runs along the same lines as our mothers' reminder that, "Pretty is as pretty does." We know what they meant—it's the inside rather than the outside that should begin the process of self-improvement. To a great degree the development of our ethical standards affects the development of our personality, and vice versa.

Personality affects our individual approach to nearly all aspects of our lives. Its impact on our relationships, education, responsibilities and environment is profound. When there are problems in our personalities, we get unpleasant responses from others and this may perpetuate our problems, causing a cycle of self-destruction. We get stuck in that cycle when we blame others for our problems.  Experts say we should beware if we regularly think, "They shouldn't have done that," or "They don't treat me well," or "People are unfair to me," or "No one understands me."   The only way to stop the cycle is to take an honest look at our personalities, changing those manifestations of our personality traits that bring the wrong kind of attention and cause us problems in our approach to life.

When someone treats us in a way we don't like, we could ask ourselves, "What could I have done differently to elicit a better response?"  Sometimes we can honestly say we did the best we could yet still received a negative response. Most of the time though, we are forced to admit there really was a better way for us to have expressed our personality. Although none of us really believes we are the literal center of the universe, we understand that it's the tendency of all people (including ourselves) to behave as though we are. 

In one way, however, we are the center of our understanding, in that we view everything we learn through lenses that are unique to us. These lenses are made up of our "personality," among other things.  Because of this, it can be very helpful to our personal development to understand the nature of the lenses we're looking through, and to get to know ourselves and our motivations better. This helps us see ourselves and the world around us more clearly, so we can accurately assess what can and should be changed.  But how do we get an objective evaluation of our personality, so we can trust our assessment of what we could change?  And what standard do we use in that assessment?  Some people might accept a religious moral code such as Islam's Q'uran or Christianity's Bible as a standard, but certainly not everyone one would do so.

Psychologists aren't necessarily interested in setting standards for personality as much as they are in classifying them. Even so they have found it hard to agree on a standard approach to classification.  There has always been controversy over whether personality tests really tell us anything accurately.  Most personality tests have no real scientific basis or proof of accuracy, but this has not prevented individuals and corporations from embracing them and basing some very important decisions on their outcome.  Such personality typing is usually based on accepted variations of Carl Jung's four categories of psychological types, a theory which he first published in 1921 (although it wasn't translated into English until a couple of years later). Since that time Jung's classifications have been popularly expanded by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Cook Briggs into sixteen distinct "MBTI" (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) categories.

In the Library of Personality Development we will explore articles and links related to personality.  Even though it is unlikely we can really pin down a "personality box" to file ourselves away in, we will certainly recognise some of our most dominant personality characteristics and may consider whether some of our characteristics can or should be changed, and if so, how it can best be accomplished.