Amy Sherman Paladino's Gilmore Girls

Personality can have many definitions and interpretations depending on who one asks. A personality is made up of emotions, feelings, and behaviors. An individual’s personality depends on what they are thinking or feeling a certain situation. What is most interesting about personalities is that it is different for every individual, and can change at any moment. In Amy Sherman Paladino’s, Gilmore Girls, the main character Lorelai Gilmore is witty, full spirited and, her personality makes her stand out in a crowd. She was raised in a rigid household her however one would never be able to tell based on her personality. Her childhood, adolescent years, and young adult years can all be analyzed through the concepts of both Carl Jung and Erik Erikson

One individual in particular, Carl Jung, created the concept of analytic psychology (Engler, 2014). Analytic psychology focuses on the importance of psychological thought processes such as thoughts, feelings, sensations, and wishes, as well as a person’s determination to find themselves. Jung was able to describe a person’s psychological type by emphasizing his focus on how a person views the world and how they react in different situations. Jung categorizes these perceptions and actions by attitudes and functions. The two basic attitudes were extraversion and introversion, and the four functions were sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. These became the basis for one of the most popular tools for non-psychiatric populations in the area of clinical, counseling, and personality assessment known as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. In this assessment, there are four different categories: extroversion or introversion, thinking or feeling, sensation or intuition, and lastly judgment or perception. Extroversion is when the psyche is focused on the outside world and how the person relates to the society, whereas introversion is when the psyche is focused on themselves. Thinking refers to a person using logic in a situation, but feeling is when a person uses their own personal values or beliefs. Sensation is when a person uses their five senses and real

Erikson looked at the developmental stages throughout a person's entire life, and how each stage influenced the other stages as they got older. As for Lorelai Gilmore, each stage during her child and adolescent years influenced how she was as an adult. In the industry versus inferiority stage which takes place around the ages of six to eleven, children are challenged to do new things. They should conform to the expectations of their parents when they are home, and educators when they are at school. At this stage, kids are at risk for feeling inadequate or inferior to others unless they are able to build a sense of confidence and competence in themselves. For Lorelai Gilmore, it was hard for her to conform to her parents. She was a rebel at a young age and the fact that her parents scolded her for it did not stop her (Sherman-Palladino, A. 2000). At times her mother did make her feel as though she was weird, like when Emily would constantly tell Lorelai that she had an unusually large head. Lorelai felt so bad about that part of herself that she thought burning all her baby and childhood photos would make her mother stop making fun of her big head. The ego identity versus role confusion stage is during a very crucial time, ages twelve to eighteen, when adolescents begin to identify their own ego