PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT – FREUD’S THEORY WHAT IS PERSONALITY? The first and the foremost objective of this lesson is to understand the exact meaning of the word personality. The word personality originated from the Latin word ‘persona’ meaning ‘mask’. This mask referred to the theatrical mask of performers projecting various roles by disguising their identity. As personality does not have one final definition, it could be defined in various ways. But now let us see how the term personality is defined in relation to its focus – whether the focus is on an individual on human beings as a whole. When the focus is on human beings as a whole the term personality is defined as observable psychological variations among the individuals. It would include appearance and build in physical terms and socio-emotional and behavioural characteristics in psychological terms. However, when the focus is on an individual, then it is defi