User:Sanjanamahtani/sandbox

Measuring[edit]
Personality can be determined through a variety of tests. Due to the fact that personality is a complex idea, the dimensions of personality and scales of personality tests vary and often are poorly defined. Two main tools to measure personality are objective tests and projective measures. Examples of such tests are the: Big Five Inventory (BFI), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2), Rorschach Inkblot test, Neurotic Personality Questionnaire KON-2006, Enneagram test, or Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R). All of these tests are beneficial because they have both reliability and validity, two factors that make a test accurate. "Each item should be influenced to a degree by the underlying trait construct, giving rise to a pattern of positive intercorrelations so long as all items are oriented (worded) in the same direction." A recent, but not well-known, measuring tool that psychologists use is the 16 PF. It measures personality based on Cattell's 16 factor theory of personality. Psychologists also use it as a clinical measuring tool to diagnose psychiatric disorders and help with prognosis and therapy planning. The Big Five Inventory is the most used measuring tool because it has criterion that expands across different factors in personality, allowing psychologists to have the most accurate information they can garner.

Historical development of concept[edit]
The modern sense of individual personality is a result of the shifts in culture originating in the Renaissance, an essential element in modernity. In contrast, the Medieval European's sense of self was linked to a network of social roles: "the household, the kinship network, the guild, the corporation – these were the building blocks of personhood". Stephen Greenblatt observes, in recounting the recovery (1417) and career of Lucretius' poem De rerum natura: "at the core of the poem lay key principles of a modern understanding of the world." "Dependent on the family, the individual alone was nothing," Jacques Gélis observes. "The characteristic mark of the modern man has two parts: one internal, the other external; one dealing with his environment, the other with his attitudes, values, and feelings." Rather than being linked to a network of social roles, the modern man is largely influenced by the environmental factors such as: "urbanization, education, mass communication, industrialization, and politicization."

Personology[edit]
Personology confers a multidimensional, complex, and comprehensive approach to personality. According to Henry A. Murray, personology is "The branch of psychology which concerns itself with the study of human lives and the factors that influence their course which investigates individual differences and types of personality… the science of men, taken as gross units… encompassing “psychoanalysis” (Freud), “analytical psychology” (Jung), “individual psychology” (Adler) and other terms that stand for methods of inquiry or doctrines rather than realms of knowledge." From a holistic perspective, personology studies personality as a whole, as a system, but in the same time through all its components, levels and spheres.

Psychiatry[edit]
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of mental disorders. High neuroticism is an independent prospective predictor for the development of the common mental disorders. Interest in the history of psychiatry continues to grow, with an increasing emphasis on topics of current interest such as the history of psychopharmacology, electroconvulsive therapy, and the interplay between psychiatry and society.