Crimson Bookshelf

Most psychologists, in attempting to be scientific, hope to discover general laws about mind or behavior, which, like the laws of physics and chemistry, hold true for all similar cases. In so doing, they overlook the personalities of the individuals from whom their data are gathered. In this book Dr. Allport holds that psychologists may also arrive at valid generalizations by studying the unique personalities of individuals. "A general law," he says, "may be a law that tells how uniquencess comes about." In pursuing this apporach he introduces the reader to a field of interest new to most Americans, though it has been more thoroughly explored in Germany.

Dr. Allport sees personality, not as a more colection of separate traits possessed in varying degree by all individuals, but as a dynamic organization within the individual of the behavioral tendencies that determine his unique adjustments to his environment. The "adjustments" of which he speaks include mastery of the environment as well as more passive types of response. The persons whom he describes by way of example stand out as real, living, and yet understandable individuals, rather than as aggregates of definite amounts of intelligence, aggressiveness, motility, emotionality and other such characteristics. He accomplishes this portrayal by describing the roles of peculiar and individual traits in each personality, as well as those of the common traits found in all individuals. The methods and techniques employed in studying these patterns of interdependent traits have been devised by the exercise of great ingenuity on the part of Dr. Allport and other investigators.

The book describes fifty different definitions of personality and fifty-two methods of studying it. Taken as a whole, it is the best available handbook on all aspects of personality and personality study. Yet it is no mere compendium, but an interesting and original approach to a subject which concerns all of us. It is not too technical for the educated reader who has not studied psychology.