Story of Psychology - Morton Hunt [201]
Another approach to divining character from visible traits was phrenology, the pseudo-science of skull reading that was the rage in the nineteenth century. Although it died out in the twentieth, many people still assume that a person with a high bulging forehead is “brainy” and sensitive, one with a low flat forehead stupid and unfeeling.
The best-known ancient effort to link personality to physical characteristics was Galen’s humoral theory of temperament—his belief that an excess of phlegm makes one phlegmatic; of yellow bile, choleric; of black bile, melancholic; and of blood, sanguine. The doctrine survived until the eighteenth century; its successors take the form of nutrition fads, chelation, steam-room sweating, and other quasi-scientific efforts to modify body chemistry with the aim of enhancing mental and physical well-being.
In contrast, an approach that sounds remarkably modern was proposed three centuries ago by Christian Thomasius (1655–1728), a German philosopher and jurist, and the founder of the University of Halle. Thomasius worked out a scheme for measuring personality by assigning numerical scores to various traits of character; his method, though crude, remarkably foreshadowed the current personality-assessment technique known as the “rating scale.” Equally noteworthy is the title he gave his book: New Discovery of a Solid Science, Most Necessary for the Community, for Discerning the Secrets of the Heart [s] of Other Men from Daily Conversation, Even Against Their Will. 2 A bit long for modern taste, no doubt, but as up-to-date in spirit as any contemporary how-to-succeed best seller.
Throughout the ages the discussion of personality has often centered on one of the basic, much-debated issues in psychology: Is human nature determined from within or from without? Are our minds and behavior the products of inner forces, or are we shaped and prodded into thought and action by the stimuli of the environment?
The debate began when Plato and his followers maintained that the contents of the mind exist in it from before birth and need only to be remembered; Protagoras and Democritus countered that all knowledge arises from perception. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the dispute was more alive than ever, Descartes and other rationalists arguing that the mind’s ideas are innate, Locke and other empiricists claiming that the newborn’s mind is a blank slate on which experience writes its messages.
When psychology became a science, the hereditarians—Galton, Goddard, Terman, and others—presented survey data to support their view, while the behaviorists—Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, and others— produced experimental evidence to back theirs. The argument has continued ever since, with the “dispositionists” or “innatists” (to use contemporary terminology) interpreting personality and behavior in terms of internal (dispositional) forces, the “situationists” or “environmentalists” interpreting personality and behavior in terms of the situations the individual experiences.
The two views lead to opposite conclusions about child rearing, educational methods, psychotherapy, public policy toward minority groups, the treatment of criminals, the status and rights of women and of homosexuals, immigration policy, and many other personal and social issues. Accordingly, the question has dominated personality psychology in recent decades.3 One longs for a definitive scientific answer; let us see what researchers and theoreticians on both sides have been learning and whether such an answer is emerging.
The Fundamental Units of Personality
Early in this century the chief contributions to personality theory were made by the psychoanalysts. Freud developed