Personality is a person who builds and controls his own life, a person as a responsible subject of will. Let’s decipher:
Personality is one who is not equal to his natural inclinations, who may not be their slave, be above them. Normal children, having gone through the crisis of three years, can already subordinate their immediate impulses to social norms: to what is needed.
A person is one who is capable of consciously directing his own behavior. Obedient children have “spontaneous morality”: a person, especially a child, may not be aware of what exactly made him act in a certain way, nevertheless, act completely morally. This is how he was brought up, these are his habits. But it was not he who acted, but his habits guided him.
Personality is the one who has his own Self. A large number of people live mechanically, following the inclinations of their body and thoughtlessly, according to patterns, reacting to external requirements. If the body is well disposed, the external requirements are reasonable and the social habits are adequate, we will have a quite decent socialized person. But not a person. He has no self.
Personality is the one who declares his I, his desires and orders, who is able to do his own. Personality presupposes inner freedom — the freedom to either use social patterns or not to use them, the freedom to both fulfill external demands and make one’s own decision, the freedom to both feed one’s body and turn away from food to what is now more important. The more this freedom, the more a person is a person. To be a person is to be alive and free, to do your own thing.
But a person is not just a subject of will, but a responsible subject. Will creates personality, responsibility creates growth and height of personality. A child, when he strongly insists on his needs, is already a little personality; but when a child does not just scream, but offers something of his own, he is more of a personality. The child has learned to tie his own shoelaces and says: “I myself!” — the personality grows up, the young man began to support himself, became independent — the next step. An adult who left a trace of his life in the memory of many is a great personality.
The understanding of a person as a self, as one who chooses, builds and controls his life, is close to the following authors: K. Jung, A.N. Leontiev (see →), existential psychologists, N.I. Kozlov (see →). According to James, this is the «spiritual self» or source of personal activity. Article «Ontological status of personality» by A.L. Anisina — about the same.
Personal
“Personal”, as a commonly used concept, is defined by the following keywords: deep, life orientation, self. See →