It might be nice to start off with a definition of theories of personality. First, theory: A theory is a model of
reality that helps us to understand, explain, predict, and control that reality. In the study of personality, these
models are usually verbal. Every now and then, someone comes up with a graphic model, with symbolic
illustrations, or a mathematical model, or even a computer model. But words are the basic form.
Different approaches focus on different aspects of theory. Humanists and Existentialists tend to focus on the
understanding part. They believe that much of what we are is way too complex and embedded in history and
culture to "predict and control." Besides, they suggest, predicting and controlling people is, to a considerable
extent, unethical. Behaviorists and Freudians, on the other hand, prefer to discuss prediction and control. If
an idea is useful, if it works, go with it! Understanding, to them, is secondary.
Another definition says that a theory is a guide to action: We figure that the future will be something like the
past. We figure that certain sequences and patterns of events that have occurred frequently before are likely
to occur again. So we look to the first events of a sequence, or the most vivid parts of a pattern, to serve as
our landmarks and warning signals. A theory is a little like a map: It isn't the same as the countryside it
describes; it certainly doesn't give you every detail; it may not even be terribly accurate. But it does provide aguide to action – and gives us something to correct when it fails.
P ersonality
Usually when we talk about someone's personality, we are talking about what makes that person different
from other people, perhaps even unique. This aspect of personality is called individual differences. For
some theories, it is the central issue. These theories often spend considerable attention on things like types
and traits and tests with which we can categorize or compare people: Some people are neurotic, others are
not; some people are more introverted, others more extroverted; and so on.
However, personality theorists are just as interested in the commonalities among people. What, for example,
does the neurotic person and the healthy person have in common? Or what is the common structure in people
that expresses itself as introversion in some and extroversion in others?
If you place people on some dimension – such as healthy-neurotic or introversion-extroversion – you are
saying that the dimension is something everyone can be placed on. Whether they are neurotic or not, all
people have a capacity for health and ill-health; and whether introverted or extroverted, all are "verted" one
way or the other.
Another way of saying this is that personality theorists are interested in the structure of the individual, the
psychological structure in particular. How are people "put together;" how do they "work;" how do they "fall
apart."
Some theorists go a step further and say they are looking for the essence of being a person. Or they say they
are looking for what it means to be an individual human being. The field of personality psychology stretches
from a fairly simple empirical search for differences between people to a rather philosophical search for the
meaning of life!
Perhaps it is just pride, but personality psychologists like to think of their field as a sort of umbrella for all
the rest of psychology. We are, after all, concerned about genetics and physiology, about learning and
development, about social interaction and culture, about pathology and therapy. All these things come
together in the individual.
