Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12
This class is one of my favorite courses I have ever taken at salt lake community
college.
When we first started to dig deep into our personalities and find our inner
character I saw a man who was free, happy, and ready to take on the world. I saw
someone with a bright future, someone who was free and ready to take on life. All of
these thoughts added together created my image. The image I created was a four leaf
clover. It was supposed to mean I was full of joy and was ready to explore and find
meanings in the world. I chose the four-leaf clover because it was unique and hard to
find. It also represented freedom to me and was the only image that spoke to me. If we
were to look at the four-leaf clover we can see that it has four particular sides and is put
together by a single stem. It is green which to me represents the color of life. Each side
has a part of my personality and together it makes me. So below I will explain each side
and connect tie them together.
So the first side of my clover will have to be “Free will”. I say free-will because I want to
be in complete charge of my life. I have such a conflict searching out what I love to do
and finding out my true purpose. I like to be free; I like to make my own decisions and
choices. I feel threaten when someone personally does something that will infringed on
my freedom. For example, I have a really hard time connecting with my family, because
they like to infringe on my freedom. They do this by not letting me make my own
decisions. For example, they would try to choose my major for me, by telling me “I have
Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12
to become a doctor or a business man.” Another example would be, when they wouldn’t
let me move out. My family has always stepped in and controlled my decisions. This
can be related to the Humanistic psychologist who talks about the concept of free will.
My family is reactance; they tend to threaten my freedom.
Second, the next part will have to do with Ideal self and actual self. The ideal self is about
the kind of person you want to be, in this case it would have to be a mixture of my father
and this other perspective I want to be. The other perspective I want to be is a charismatic
leader. I want to be special and positive. All I want is to be happy and make others happy.
I want to be the coolest, nicest, and best looking guy there is. Now the actual self is what
you really think you are. I personally believe that at times I am like the ideal self I
described, but when I hear other people’s perspective of me, I tend to forget the image I
created and see a different one. I see what they describe and sometimes it can be good or
it can be really bad. I have an incongruity between the actual self and the self I want to
be.
Third side would be my self-esteem. Self-esteem basically means the refection of
someone’s emotional value overall. It’s basically a judgment of you. I put this is on my
clover because a part of my personality is how I view myself. I tend to see myself in a
good view, but when I think of my small physic, I tend to get sad that I’m not the size I
want to be. When people pick on me, it also affects my self-esteem. It gets to me on a
deeper level. I don’t like when they make fun of my cultural or how I look, because all of
the time it gets to me, but I try not to think about it. I think I’m great just how I am. That
Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12
usually makes me feel good about myself. In the book Rogers talks about, how we distort
perceptions or keep them out of awareness so they don’t harm our self-esteem. I do make
excuses to stay away from my problems, especially when it comes to school, work, and
my social life.
The last piece to my clover is my dreams and goals. I make goals that are going to better
my life in the future. This can be related to the concept self-concordant. I set and pursue
goals that will contribute to my well-being. My goals currently are to become a
psychology/philosophy teacher. I also want to travel the world and live a successful life.
These all add up to the self-concordance. When you have self-concordance goals you try
harder and get more of a satisfying experience. So my goals make my personality
because they are like a motivation for me to keep functioning and succeeding.
Now that you know each part of my clover, let me show you have it has to tie into the
phenomenological perspective. “The phenomenological perspective is that people can
determine for themselves what their lives are to be like.” In my image analysis above, I
summed up who I am and how I am like that. I also explained my free will and self
concordance which both determine how I want my life to be like. My clover can be
related to the flower example that was provided in the book. It basically said that “human
beings are an opening flower or a growing tree which evolves naturally toward greater
beauty and completeness.” That is how I see my four leaf clover. My four-leaf clover is
growing clover that will evolve into great beauty and completeness. It has my personality
on each side and as it grows so does my personality.
Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12
So now I’m going swift gears from my image to a little more about the other theories. I
will be just discussing certain things I learned about myself and how some of these
theories relate to my life.
I realized that besides my humanistic view and my phenomenological perspective there
is also an existential view I have. I believe that every individual is alone in the world and
we all die alone. Basically according to the book, “I had the phenomenological
orientation in emphasizing the importance of the individual’s experience of reality.”
Now, at the moment this is very accurate, but can I say this will still be relevant ten or
fifteen years down the road? I don’t know. But I currently truly believe this is closest to
my personality. This theory really speaks to me. The moment I read this chapter I was
blown away about how accurate of an interpretation it gave. So let me go through and
explain why I say I have an existential view.
First and foremost, in my past PA’s I’ve went on rants about how life is meaningless and
that we are just ponds to this game. I would get really emotionally and talk about
meaningless things to the class. To some it appeared as if I had troubles of finding out my
true identity in the world. This was accurate on some point. I think I came to discover I
had an existential view because of my passion about life and seeing the bigger picture. I
do believe in the existential dilemma, which is basically that life is inevitably and it ends
in death. I find this to be true, probably because it is. I want to live my life to the full
extend and that is by answering philosophical questions I have generated in my head.
Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12
Now tracking back to my roots, I was born in Afghanistan with a very cultured family.
When I was born, my mother wasn’t in any condition to raise me, so my grandma did
instead. This lead me to believe that my grandmother to be my mother and my birth
mother as some lady. I wouldn’t convince myself that my birth mother was my mom
because of the embarrassment and harassment my uncles and aunts gave me. This sounds
a little weird and I know, but the best way I can explain it is that my uncles and aunts
teased me about calling my true mother, Mom. They were my grandmother’s kids, so
they thought of me as a brother/sister given that their mother raised me. Whenever I
called my birth mom, mom they would ridicule me and laugh at me. This was an anxiety
I dealt with all my life, to this day. I get anxious to reach out to my true mother, but the
childhood memories haunted me for it. This can go back to Ego psychology, assessment
of lifestyles. It’s because Adler’s theory of identifying a person’s lifestyle. He talks about
how a lifestyle can be identified by looking at the person’s earliest childhood memories.
Earlier I was talking about my childhood memory of my mother and such, which leads
me to my actual present day lifestyle. In my lifestyle right now, I and my mother’s
relationship isn’t what I wanted to be. We are much distanced, she feels it’s my fault for
not admitting or appreciating her as my mother and I do accept some of the
responsibility. At the same time, I’m distanced from her because she never really
reached out to me.
Moving on, after losing my hero (my dad), I found myself to carry this burden of being
the best person in the world because of how great of a man my father was. All I ever
wanted to do was to impress him, even though he wasn’t there. My family would
Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12
constantly compare me to him and whether he would be proud of me or not. Whenever I
made a mistake, they would be really disappointed and point out that my father would
too. This caused a huge problem for my self-esteem. I viewed myself as a shitty son. I
thought I was just nothing, but a disgrace. This caused me to feel depression, frustration,
and just a lower level of a being. I thought I was completely worthless for failing tests
and getting bad grades because it’s “something my father would be disappointed in.” This
can also be related to Alders theme.
So moving back to the existential psychology, the emptiness part really is pin point
accurate on my personality. I am very concerned that people have lost faith in values. On
the first day of PA’s I went up and ranted about how we lost sight of life’s true happiness.
That we let corrupt businesses succeed and let starving children die. I talked about the
emptiness of life, and I didn’t even read that chapter yet. That’s what really amazes me is
that everything I talked about and thought about was already studied and explained. It’s
really awesome to read and discover yourself. I have really got to know myself a lot
better by this class.
In which I would like to thank you. For helping me come a step closer to my true
identity. You have given me the knowledge and power to truly discover more about
myself. I feel better about my life and personally me. It’s really an amazing gift.
Thank you, Mr. Highland.
Final Paper
Ali Rahimi
Personality Theory
12/10/12