Chapter 12 Allport: Psychology of the Individual 359from all other people. Characteristics are marked with a unique engraving, a stamp
or marking, that no one else can duplicate. The words behavior and thought simply
refer to anything the person does. They are omnibus terms meant to include internal
behaviors (thoughts) as well as external behaviors such as words and actions.
Allport’s comprehensive definition of personality suggests that human beings
are both product and process; people have some organized structure while, at the
same time, they possess the capability of change. Pattern coexists with growth,
order with diversification.
In summary, personality is both physical and psychological; it includes both
overt behaviors and covert thoughts; it not only is something, but it does some-
thing. Personality is both substance and change, both product and process, both
structure and growth.
What Is the Role of Conscious Motivation?
More than any other personality theorist, Allport emphasized the importance of
conscious motivation. Healthy adults are generally aware of what they are doing
and their reasons for doing it. His emphasis on conscious motivation goes back to
his meeting in Vienna with Freud and his emotional reaction to Freud’s question:
“And was that little boy you?” Freud’s response carried the implication that his
22-year-old visitor was unconsciously talking about his own fetish for cleanliness
in revealing the story of the clean little boy on the tram car. Allport (1967) insisted
that his motivation was quite conscious—he simply wanted to know Freud’s ideas
about dirt phobia in a child so young.
Whereas Freud would assume an underlying unconscious meaning to the
story of the little boy on the tram, Allport was inclined to accept self-reports at
face value. “This experience taught me that depth psychology, for all its merits,
may plunge too deep, and that psychologists would do well to give full recognition
to manifest motives before probing the unconscious” (Allport, 1967, p. 8).
However, Allport (1961) did not ignore the existence or even the importance
of unconscious processes. He recognized the fact that some motivation is driven
by hidden impulses and sublimated drives. He believed, for example, that most
compulsive behaviors are automatic repetitions, usually self-defeating, and moti-
vated by unconscious tendencies. They often originate in childhood and retain a
childish flavor into adult years.
What Are the Characteristics of a Healthy Person?
Long before Abraham Maslow (see Chapter 9) made the concept of self-actualization
popular, Gordon Allport (1937) hypothesized in depth about the attributes of the
mature personality. Allport’s interest in the psychologically healthy person goes
back to 1922, the year he finished his PhD. Not having any particular skills in
mathematics, biology, medicine, or laboratory manipulations, Allport (1967) was
forced to “find [his] own way in the humanistic pastures of psychology” (p. 8).
Such pastures led to a study of the psychologically mature personality.
A few general assumptions are required to understand Allport’s conception
of the mature personality. First, psychologically mature people are characterized