Psychology Psychology became linked to personal development in the early 20th century starting with the research efforts of
Alfred Adler (1870–1937) and
Carl Jung (1875–1961). Adler refused to limit psychology to analysis alone. He made the important point that aspirations focus on looking forward and do not limit themselves to unconscious drives or to childhood experiences. He also originated the concepts of lifestyle (1929—he defined "lifestyle" as an individual's characteristic approach to life, in facing problems) and of
self-image, Carl Gustav Jung made contributions to personal development with his concept of
individuation, which he saw as the drive of the individual to achieve the wholeness and balance of the
Self.
Daniel Levinson (1920–1994) developed Jung's early concept of "
life stages" and included a sociological perspective. Levinson proposed that personal development comes under the influence—throughout
life—of aspirations, which he called "the Dream": Research on success in reaching goals, as undertaken by
Albert Bandura (1925–2021), suggested that
self-efficacy best explains why people with the same level of knowledge and skills get very different results. Having self-efficacy leads to an increased likelihood of success. According to Bandura
self-confidence functions as a powerful predictor of success because: • It causes you to expect to succeed • It allows you take risks and set challenging goals • It helps you keep trying if at first you do not succeed • It helps you control emotions and fears when life may throw more difficult things your way In 1998
Martin Seligman won election to a one-year term as President of the
American Psychological Association and proposed a new focus: on healthy individuals rather than on pathology (he created the "positive psychology" current)
Carl Rogers proposed a theory about humanistic psychology called Self Concept. This concept consisted of two ideas of the self. The first idea is the ideal self which describes the person we want to be. The second one is the real self which is the objective view of one self and who we really are. Rogers emphasized that healthy development is when the real self and the ideal self are accurate. Incongruence is what Rogers described to be when the real self and the ideal self are not accurate in their viewings. The ideal self is not lowered in order to compensate for the real self, but the real self is lifted by the ideal self in order to achieve healthy development. It is important to note that real lasting personal development is only achieved through meaningful and lasting accomplishments.
Viktor Frankl emphasized this by stating "Genuine and lasting well-being is the result of a "life well-lived". In an article written by Ugur, H., Constantinescu, P.M., & Stevens, M.J. (2015) they described that society has taught us to create positive illusions that give the appearance of positive development but are only effective in the short term. Additionally, they give two examples of personal development. The first is hedonic well-being which is the pursuit of pleasurable experiences that lead to increased personal happiness. The second is eudaimonic well-being which is living life by making choices that are congruent with authentic being.
Social psychology Social psychology heavily emphasizes and focuses on human behavior and how individuals interact with others in society. Infants develop socially by creating trusting and dependent relationships with others—namely parental figures. They learn how to act and treat other people based on the example of parental figures and other adults they interact with often. Toddlers further develop social skills. Additionally, they begin to gain a desire for autonomy and grow more and more independent as they grow older. The balance of social involvement and autonomy varies per person, but normally autonomous behavior increases with age. Some studies suggest that selfishness begins to diminish, and
prosocial behaviors increase, between the ages of six years old to twelve years old. Additionally, the years of adulthood are times of development—self-actualization, relational and occupational development, loss, and coping skills development, etc.—affected by those around us: parents, co-workers, romantic partners, and children. Social psychology draws from many other psychological theories and principles yet views them through a lens of social interaction.
Psychodynamic psychology The
psychodynamic view of personal development varies from other perspectives. Namely, that the development of our traits, personalities, and thinking patterns are predominantly subconscious. Psychodynamic theory suggests these subconscious changes—which emerge as external actions—are formed from suppressed sexual and aggressive urges and other internalized conflicts.
Sigmund Freud and other notable psychodynamic theorists postulate that these repressed cognitions form during childhood and adolescence. Conscious development would then be "digging up" these repressed memories and feelings. Once repressed memories and emotions are discovered, an individual can sift through them and receive healthy closure. Much, if not all, of conscious development occurs with the aid of a trained psychodynamic therapist.
Cognitive-behavioral psychology Cognitive-behavioral views on personal development follow traditional patterns of personal development:
behavior modification, cognitive reframing, and successive approximation being some of the more notable techniques. An individual is seen as in control of their actions and their thoughts, though self-mastery is required. With behavior modification, individuals will develop personal skills and traits by altering their behavior independent of their emotions.
Cognitive-behavioral psychologists believe that how we view events is more important than the event itself. Thus, if one can view negative events in beneficial ways, they can progress and develop with fewer setbacks. Successive approximation—or
shaping—most closely aligns with personal development. Successive approximation is when one desires a final result but takes incremental steps to achieve the result. Normally, each successful step towards the final goal is rewarded until the goal is achieved. Personal development, if it is to be long-lasting, is achieved incrementally. Educational psychology seeks to further personal development by increasing one's ability to learn, retain information, and apply knowledge to real-world experiences. If one is able to increase efficacious learning, they are better equipped for personal development.
Early education Education offers children the opportunity to begin personal development at a young age. The curriculum taught at school must be carefully planned and managed in order to successfully promote personal development.
Higher education During the 1960s a large increase in the number of students on American campuses led to research on the personal development needs of undergraduate students.
Arthur Chickering defined
seven vectors of personal development for young adults during their undergraduate years: • Developing competence • Managing
emotions • Achieving
autonomy and
interdependence • Developing mature
interpersonal relationships • Establishing
personal identity • Developing purpose • Developing
integrity In the UK, personal development took a central place in university policy in 1997 when the
Dearing Report declared that universities should go beyond academic teaching to provide students with personal development. In 2001 a Quality Assessment Agency for UK universities produced guidelines for universities to enhance personal development as: • a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development; • objectives related explicitly to student development; to improve the capacity of students to understand what and how they are learning, and to review, plan and take responsibility for their own learning In the 1990s,
business schools began to set up specific personal-development programs for
leadership and career orientation and in 1998 the
European Foundation for Management Development set up the
EQUIS accreditation system which specified that personal development must form part of the learning process through internships, working on team projects and going abroad for work or exchange programs. The first personal development certification required for business school graduation originated in 2002 as a partnership between Metizo, a personal-development consulting firm, and the Euromed Management School in Marseilles: students must not only complete assignments but also demonstrate self-awareness and achievement of personal-development competencies. As an academic department, personal development as a specific discipline is often associated with business schools. As an area of research, personal development draws on links to other academic disciplines: •
Education for questions of learning and assessment • Psychology for motivation and personality •
Sociology for identity and social networks •
Economics for human capital and economic value • Philosophy for ethics and self-reflection
Developmental activities Personal development can include gaining self-awareness of the course of one's lifespan. It includes multiple definitions but is different from self knowledge. Self-awareness is more in depth and explores the conscious and unconscious aspects of ourselves. We are able to gain self-awareness through socializing and communicating according to the social behaviorism view. Self-awareness can also be a positive intrapersonal experience where one is able to reflect during a moment of action or past actions. Becoming more self aware can help us to increase our emotional intelligence, leadership skills, and performance.
The workplace Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), proposed a
hierarchy of needs with
self actualization at the top, defined as "the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming". In other words, self actualization is the ambition to become a better version of oneself, to become everything one is capable of being. Since Maslow himself believed that only a small minority of people
self-actualize—he estimated one percent—his hierarchy of needs had the consequence that organizations came to regard self-actualization or personal development as occurring at the top of the organizational pyramid, while openness and job security in the workplace would fulfill the needs of the mass of employees. As organizations and labor markets became more global,
responsibility for development shifted from the company to the individual. In 1999 management thinker
Peter Drucker wrote in the
Harvard Business Review: Management professors
Sumantra Ghoshal of the London Business School and
Christopher Bartlett of the Harvard Business School wrote in 1997 that companies must manage people individually and establish a new work contract. On the one hand, the company must allegedly recognize that personal development creates economic value: "market performance flows not from the omnipotent wisdom of top managers but from the initiative, creativity and skills of all employees". On the other hand, employees should recognize that their work includes personal development and "embrace the invigorating force of continuous learning and personal development". The 1997 publication of Ghoshal's and Bartlett's
Individualized Corporation corresponded to a change in
career development from a system of predefined paths defined by companies, to a strategy defined by the individual and matched to the needs of organizations in an open landscape of possibilities. Another contribution to the study of career development came with the recognition that women's careers show specific personal needs and different development paths from men. The 2007 study of women's careers by Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Off-Ramps and On-Ramps had a major impact on the way companies view careers. Further work on the career as a personal development process came from study by Herminia Ibarra in her
Working Identity on the relationship with career change and identity change, indicating that priorities of
work and lifestyle continually develop through life. Personal development programs in companies fall into two categories: the provision of
employee benefits and the fostering of development strategies. Employee surveys may help organizations find out personal-development needs, preferences and problems, and they use the results to design benefits programs. Typical programs in this category include: Employees gain access to these investment-oriented programs by selection according to the value and future potential of the employee, usually defined in a
talent management architecture including populations such as new hires, perceived high-potential employees, perceived key employees, sales staff, research staff and perceived future leaders. surrounding personal development programs is that they are often treated as an arbitrary performance management tool to pay lip service to, but ultimately ignored. As such, many companies have decided to replace personal development programs with SMART Personal Development Objectives, which are regularly reviewed and updated. Personal Development Objectives help employees achieve career goals and improve overall performance.
Criticism Scholars have targeted self-help claims as misleading and incorrect. In 2005,
Steve Salerno portrayed the American self-help movement—he uses the acronym "SHAM": the "Self-Help and Actualization Movement"—not only as ineffective in achieving its goals but also as socially harmful, and that self-help customers keep investing money in these services regardless of their effectiveness. Others similarly point out that with self-help books "supply increases the demand ... The more people read them, the more they think they need them ... more like an
addiction than an alliance". Self-help writers have been described as working "in the area of the
ideological, the
imagined, the narrativized. ... although a veneer of
scientism permeates the[ir] work, there is also an underlying armature of
moralizing". == See also ==