Author G. Allport. Source: Psychology of Personality. Texts / Ed. Yu.B. Gippenreiter, A.A. Puzyreya. M.: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1982. S. 208-215.
There are two fundamental approaches to a detailed study of personality: literary and psychological.
None of them is «better» than the other: each has certain merits and ardent adherents. Too often, however, the proponents of one approach are scornful of the proponents of the other. This article is an attempt to reconcile them and thus create a scientific and humanistic system for studying personality.
One of the most significant successes of the first part of the twentieth century was the discovery that the individual is an accessible object for scientific research. This, in my opinion, is the one that, above all, is likely to have the greatest impact on learning, ethics, and mental health.
Personality, no matter how it is understood, is first of all a real, existing, concrete part of mental life, existing in strictly individual and individual forms. For centuries, the phenomenon of human individuality has been described and studied by the humanities. The most aesthetically minded philosophers and the most philosophically minded artists have always made this their particular area of interest.
Gradually, psychologists entered the scene. We can say that they are two thousand years late. With his meager equipment, the modern psychologist looks like an arrogant impostor. And so it is, according to many writers. Stefan Zweig, for example, speaking of Proust, Amilie, Flaubert and other great masters of character description, remarks: “Writers like them are giants of observation and literature, while in psychology the problem of personality is developed by small people, who are flies who find themselves protection within the framework of science, and introduce into it their petty platitudes and insignificant heresy.
It is true that, compared to the giants of literature, the psychologists involved in portraying and explaining personality appear sterile and sometimes a little stupid. Only a pedant would prefer the raw set of facts that psychology offers for consideration of the individual mental life to the magnificent and unforgettable portraits that are created by famous writers, playwrights or biographers. Artists create; psychologists only collect. In one case — the unity of images, internal consistency even in the finest details. In another case, a pile of poorly consistent data.
One critic vividly presented the situation. As soon as psychology, he notes, touches on the human personality, it repeats only what literature has always said, but does it much less skillfully.
Whether this unflattering judgment is wholly correct, we shall soon see. For the moment it helps at least to draw attention to the significant fact that literature and psychology are in a sense rivals; they are two methods dealing with personality. The method of literature is the method of art; the method of psychology is the method of science. Our question is which approach is most adequate for the study of personality.
The formation of literature took place over the centuries, it was developed by geniuses of a higher order. Psychology is young, and it is being developed so far by only a few (if any) geniuses for describing and explaining the human personality. Since psychology is young, it should learn a little from literature.
To show what can be useful to her here, I will give a specific example. I chose it from ancient times in order to clearly show the maturity and completeness of literary wisdom. Twenty-three centuries ago Theophrastus, a student and successor of Aristotle at the Lyceum in Athens, wrote many short descriptions of his Athenian acquaintances. Thirty of his descriptions have survived.
The description I choose is called Cowardice. Notice his detachment from time. Today’s coward is essentially the same as the coward of antiquity. Note also the remarkable simplicity and brevity of the portrait. Not one extra word. It’s like a sonnet in prose. No sentence can be added or taken away without making it worse.
Cowardice
(1) Cowardice is a kind of spiritual weakness, expressed in the inability to resist fear, and a coward is what a person is. (2) At sea, he mistakes cliffs for pirate ships. And as soon as the waves begin to rise, he asks if there is anyone uninitiated in the mysteries among the sailors. And, then raising his head to the helmsman, he asks if he keeps the right course on the high seas and what he thinks about the weather; and tells his neighbor that he had an ominous dream. Then he takes off his chiton, gives it to a slave and begs to be put ashore. (3) And in the war, when the detachment in which he is, enters the battle, he calls on his fellow countrymen to stop next to him and, first of all, look around; it is difficult, he says, to recognize and distinguish one’s own from enemies. 4 Hearing the cries of battle and seeing how people fall, he speaks to the soldiers standing near. that in his haste he forgot to grab his sword, and runs to the tent; then he sends a slave with orders to find out where the enemy is. In the tent, he hides the sword under the pillow and then lingers for a long time, as if looking for it. (5) If he sees that one of his friends is being carried wounded, then, running up, encourages, picks up and helps to carry. Then he begins to care for the wounded: he washes the wound with a sponge and, sitting at the head, drives the flies away from the wound, in a word, does everything so as not to fight with the enemies. And when that e.ch zatu.e.t signal for battle, then, sitting in a tent, he mutters: “Damn you! You don’t let a person fall asleep, you just know that. And covered in blood from someone else’s wound, he runs out to meet the soldiers returning from the battlefield, spreads that he saved one of his friends with danger to his life. Then he brings fellow countrymen and citizens of his phyla to look at the wounded man and at the same time tells everyone that he himself brought him to the tent with his own hands (Theophrastus. Characters. L .: Nauka, 1974. S. 33-34). (See Cowardice)
There is one feature in this classic description that I particularly want to point out. Note that Theophrastus chose two situations for his description. In one, the coward travels; in the other, he fights against his will. The first situation describes seven typical episodes: the illusion of a coward, when he takes all the rocks for pirate ships; at least in the middle of this perilous voyage, his appeal to the opinion of experts on the weather, his fear of his own dreams, his preparations for an unhindered voyage, and, finally, the emotional fear that manifested itself in a plea to be let ashore. Even more subtle are the seven episodes of betrayal during the battle. So, in total, fourteen situations are described; all of them are equal for a coward: no matter what influence he is exposed to, the same dominant state of mind arises. His individual actions are themselves different from each other, but they are all similar in that they are a manifestation of the same main property — cowardice.
In short, Theophrastus, more than two thousand years ago, used a method that psychologists have only now discovered: the method of clarifying — with the help of appropriate influences and appropriate answers — the main traits of character.
Generally speaking, almost all literary descriptions of characters (whether it is a written sketch, as in the case of Theophrastus, or fantasy, drama, or biography) proceed from the psychological assumption that each character has certain traits inherent in him, and that these traits can be shown through the description of characteristic episodes of life. In literature, a personality is never described in the way it sometimes happens in psychology, namely, with the help of sequential, unrelated special actions. Personality is not a water ski, rushing in different directions on the surface of a reservoir, with its unexpected deviations that do not have an internal connection between them. A good writer will never make the mistake of confusing a person’s personality with the «personality» of a water ski. Psychology often does this.
So the first lesson psychology has to learn from literature is something about the nature of the essential, enduring properties that make up the personality. It’s a personality trait problem; Generally speaking, I am of the opinion that this problem has been treated more consistently in the literature than in psychology. More specifically, it seems to me that the concept of the appropriate effect and the appropriate response, so clearly presented in the ancient sketches of Theophrastus, can serve as an excellent guide for the scientific study of personality, where patterns can be determined with greater accuracy and greater reliability than is done in the literature. Using the capabilities of the laboratory and controlled external observation, psychology will be able, much more accurately than literature, to establish for each individual a clear set of different life situations that are equivalent to him, as well as a clear set of answers that have the same meaning.
The next important lesson from literature concerns the inner content of her works. No one has ever asked authors to prove that the characters of Hamlet, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina are true and reliable. Great descriptions of characters, by virtue of their greatness, prove their truth. They know how to inspire confidence; they are even necessary. Each action in some subtle way seems to be both a reflection and a completion of one well-sculpted character. This internal logic of behavior is now defined as self-confrontation: one element of behavior supports another, so that the whole can be understood as a sequentially connected unity. Self-confrontation is only a method of validating the work of writers (with the possible exception of the work of biographers, who do have some need for external credibility of a statement). But the method of self-confrontation is hardly beginning to be applied in psychology.
Once, commenting on the description of the character made by Thackeray, G. Chesterton remarked: «She was drinking, but Thackeray did not know about it.» Chesterton’s causticity stems from the requirement that all good characters have internal consistency. If one set of facts about a person is given, then other relevant facts must follow. The descriptor must know exactly what the deepest motivational traits were in the case. For this most central and therefore the most unifying core of any personality, Wertheimer proposed the concept of a base, or root, from which all stems spring. He illustrated this concept with the case of a schoolgirl who was a zealous student and at the same time was fond of cosmetics. At first glance, there is definitely no systematic connection here. It seems that two conflicting lines of conduct collide. But the seeming contradiction is resolved in this case by revealing a hidden underlying root: it turned out that the schoolgirl deeply admired (the psychoanalyst might say «fixed on») one teacher who, in addition to being a teacher, had a bright appearance. The schoolgirl just wanted to be like her.
Of course, the problem is not always so simple. Not all personalities have basic integrity. Conflict, the ability to change, even the disintegration of personality are common phenomena. In many works of fiction, we see an exaggeration of the constancy, consistency of personality — more caricatures than characteristic images. Oversimplification is found in drama, fantasy and biographical descriptions. Confrontations seem to come too easily. Dickens’ description of characters is a good example of oversimplification. They never have internal conflicts, they always remain what they are. They usually resist the hostile forces of the environment, but in themselves are completely constant and whole.
But if literature often errs because of its particular exaggeration of the unity of personality, then psychology, because of lack of interest and limited methods, generally fails to reveal or study that integrity and sequence of characters that really exist.
The greatest shortcoming of the psychologist at present is his inability to prove the truth of what he knows. He knows as well as a literary artist that the personality is a complex, well-composed, and more or less stable mental structure, but he cannot prove it. He does not use, unlike writers, the obvious method of self-confrontation of facts. Instead of trying to outdo writers at this, he usually finds a safe haven in the thickets of statistical correlation.
One psychologist, intending to investigate the masculinity of his subjects, correlated the width of the hips and shoulders with athletic interests for the entire population; another, looking for the basis of intelligence, carefully compared the level of intelligence in childhood with the ossification of the carpal bones; the third correlated body weight with a good disposition or inclination to leadership. Studies such as these, although related to personality psychology, nevertheless go entirely to the subpersonal level. The fascination with the microscope and mathematics leads the researcher to avoid complexity, standard forms of behavior and thinking, even if the whole difficulty consists in recognizing that a person exists at all. Intimidated by the tools of the natural sciences, many psychologists reject the finer recording tool specifically designed to collate and correctly group facts—their own mind.
So, psychology needs methods of self-confrontation — methods by which the inner unity of the personality can be determined.
The next important lesson for psychologists to learn from the literature is how to maintain an uninterrupted interest in a given individual over a long period of time. A famous English anthropologist said that although he writes about savages, he has never seen them. He goes on the attack and adds: «And I trust in God that I will never see them.» A great number of psychologists as professionals have never really seen the individual; and many of them, I must regret to admit, hope never to see him again. Following the older sciences, they believe that individuality should be left out of the study. Science, they argue, deals only with general laws. Individuality is a hindrance. Versatility is needed.
This tradition has led to the creation of a huge, obscure psychological abstraction called the «generalized mature human psyche.» The human psyche, of course, is not like that, it exists only in a concrete, very personal form. This is not a generalized psyche. The abstraction that the psychologist makes in measuring and explaining the non-existent «psyche-in-general» is an abstraction that writers never make. Writers are well aware that the psyche exists only in singular and special forms.
Here, of course, we encounter a fundamental disagreement between science and art. Science always deals with the general, art always deals with the particular, the individual. But if this division is true, then what about the personality? Personality is never «general», it is always «individual». Should it then be given entirely to art? Well, psychology can’t do anything about it? I am sure that very few psychologists will make this decision. However, it seems to me that the dilemma is inexorable. Either we must give up the individual, or we must learn from literature in detail, dwell on it more deeply, modify, as necessary, our conception of the scope of science in such a way as to make room for the single case more hospitably than before.
You may have noticed that the psychologists you know, despite their profession, are no better than others in understanding people. They are neither particularly perceptive nor always able to give advice on personality problems. This observation, if you have made it, is certainly correct. I will go further and say that, because of their habits of over-abstraction and generalization, many psychologists are actually inferior to other people in their understanding of singular lives.
When I say that in the interest of a proper science of personality, psychologists must study in detail, dwell more deeply on the individual case, it may seem that I am invading the realm of biographical descriptions, the clear purpose of which is exhaustive, detailed descriptions of one life.
In England, biographical descriptions began as descriptions of the lives of the saints and as stories of legendary exploits. English biography has gone through periods of ups and downs. Some biographies are as flat and lifeless as a laudatory inscription on a tombstone; others are sentimental and false.
However, the biography is increasingly becoming strict, objective and even heartless. For this trend, psychology was no doubt more important. Biographies are becoming more and more like scientific dissections, done more for the purpose of understanding than for inspiration and noisy exclamations. Now there are psychological and psychoanalytic biographies and even medical and endocrinological biographies.
Psychological science has also influenced autobiography. There have been many attempts at objective self-description and self-explanation.
I have mentioned three lessons that psychologists can learn from the literature to improve their work. The first lesson is a concept about the nature of traits that is widely found in the literature. The second lesson concerns the method of self-confrontation that good literature always uses but psychology almost always avoids. The third lesson calls for a longer interest in one person over a longer period of time.
In presenting these three advantages of the literary method, I have said little about the distinctive merits of psychology. In conclusion, I must add at least a few words to praise my profession. Otherwise, you may conclude that I want and even passionately want to completely abandon psychology for the sake of a copy of Madame Bovary and free entry to the Athenaum
Psychology has a number of potential advantages over literature. It has a strict character, which compensates for the subjective dogmatism inherent in artistic descriptions. Sometimes literature goes into self-confrontation of facts too easily. For example, in our comparative study of the biographies of the same person, it was found that each version of his life seemed plausible enough, but only a small percentage of the events and interpretations given in one biography could be found in others. No one can know which portrait, if any, is the true one.
Good writers don’t need the measure of consistency in observations and explanations that psychologists need. Biographers can give widely differing interpretations of life without discrediting the literary method, while psychology will be ridiculed if its experts cannot agree with each other.
The psychologist is very tired of the arbitrary metaphors of literature. Many metaphors are often grotesquely false, but they are rarely condemned. In literature, one can find, for example, that the obedience of a certain character is explained by the fact that «lackey blood flows in his veins», the ardor of another — by the fact that he has a «hot head», and the intellectuality of the third — by «the height of his massive forehead.» The psychologist would be torn to pieces if he allowed himself such fantastic statements about cause and effect.
The writer, furthermore, is permitted, and even encouraged to do so, to entertain and entertain readers. He can convey his own images, express his own passions. His success is measured by the reaction of readers, who often require only a slight recognition of themselves in the character or escape from their pressing worries. The psychologist, on the other hand, is never allowed to entertain the reader. Its success is measured by a stricter criterion than the delight of the reader.
When collecting material, the writer proceeds from his casual observations of life, passes over his data in silence, discards unpleasant facts of his own free will. The psychologist must be guided by the requirement of fidelity to the facts, all the facts; the psychologist is expected to be able to ensure that his facts come from a verifiable and controlled source. He must prove his conclusions step by step. His terminology is standardized and he is almost completely unable to use beautiful metaphors. These restrictions contribute to the reliability, verifiability of conclusions, reduce their bias and subjectivity.
I agree that personality psychologists are essentially trying to say what literature has always said, and they necessarily say it much less artistically. But about what they have advanced, albeit still a little, they are trying to speak more accurately and from the point of view of human progress — with greater benefit.
The title of this article, like the title of many other articles, is not entirely accurate. Personality is not a problem exclusively for science or exclusively for art, but it is a problem for both. Each approach has its merits, and both are needed for a comprehensive study of the wealth of the individual.
If in the interests of pedagogy it is expected that I end the article with some important advice, then it will be so. If you are a psychology student, read lots and lots of novels and character dramas and read biographies. If you are not a student of psychology, read them, but be interested in psychology papers as well.