184 Christopher R. Bell
Such alternative meanings, including notions of an ‘immortal soul’ and
‘moral character’, are decidedly different conceptualizations of a person
involving different implicit assumptions and explicit theoretical
frameworks from the modern psychological concept of ‘personality’
(Danziger, 2012, p. 59). The concept of personality as it is currently
understood thus largely came into existence alongside the discipline of
Psychology itself in the late 19th century. Personality as a subfield of
empirical research within Psychology oriented towards the study of
individual differences received a systematic conceptual elaboration by the
German philosopher and psychologist William Stern in his 1911
monograph Methodological Foundations of Differential Psychology
(Lamiell, 2013, p. 66). Gordon Allport made foundational contributions to
the development of personality psychology in the late 1920’s and 30’s,
emphasizing personality as a holistic pattern^1 of thought and behavior
involving both universal and particular dimensions, an approach that is
recognized in the currently accepted definition of personality as a
“characteristic pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting” (Meyers & DeWall,
2018, p. 462).
TRADITIONAL THEORIES
Psychoanalysis
In most introduction to psychology textbooks, the study of personality
as pursued from a specifically psychological perspective is depicted as
beginning with the psychoanalytic metapsychology of Sigmund Freud.
Freud was clearly invested in portraying himself as the lone and heroic
(^1) In his book Pattern and Growth in Personality, Allport (1961) writes, “If we accept this dogma
concerning the scope and limitations of science we shall have to abandon the person as a
person. But we are not yet discouraged. That the individual as a system of patterned
uniqueness is a fact. That science likes universals and not particulars is also a fact. Yet
personality itself is a universal phenomenon though it is found only in individual forms.
Since it is a universal phenomenon science must study it; but it cannot study it correctly
unless it looks into the individuality of patterning! Such is the dilemma.” (p. 9, emphasis
mine).