CHAPTER 9
Personality
NICOLE B. BARENBAUM AND DAVID G. WINTER
177CASE STUDIES AND LIFE HISTORIES IN
PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY: A HISTORY
OF AMBIVALENCE 177
INDIVIDUAL LIVES AND INDIVIDUAL
DIFFERENCES: THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY
STUDY OF PERSONALITY (1900–1930) 179
The “Culture of Personality” 179
Psychiatry and Psychopathology 180
Sociology and Social Work 181
The Mental Hygiene Movement 182
American Psychology 183
PROMOTING THE STUDY OF INDIVIDUAL LIVES:
GORDON ALLPORT AND HENRY MURRAY 185
Gordon Allport and Case Studies: “The Most Revealing
Method of All” 185
Henry Murray’s Personology and the Study of Lives 187
The Study of Individual Lives in the 1930s and
1940s... and Later 189
REASSESSING THE HISTORY OF AMBIVALENCE TOWARD
THE STUDY OF INDIVIDUAL LIVES 191
Revival of the Study of Individual Lives in
Personality Psychology 192
Context and Complexity in Personality Psychology 195
REFERENCES 196CASE STUDIES AND LIFE HISTORIES IN
PERSONALITY PSYCHOLOGY: A HISTORY
OF AMBIVALENCE
Psychology is proud of its laboratories, with their apparatus for
careful experimentation and measurement. It is proud also of its
array of tests for measuring the individual’s performance in
many directions. It is pleased when its data can be handled
by mathematical and statistical methods. (Woodworth, 1929,
pp. 7–8)When Robert S. Woodworth revised his influential introduc-
tory psychology text in 1929, he expanded his final chapter on
“personality”—“the individual as a whole, and his social ad-
justments” (Woodworth, 1929, p. 552), citing several recent
studies involving personality tests. Woodworth also revised
his treatment of “the methods of psychology” (p. 6), includ-
ing a new discussion of the “case history method” (p. 8).
However, the status of this method in Woodworth’s hier-
archy of methods was clear: It belonged at the bottom.
Woodworth first described the experimental method, “pre-
ferred as the most trustworthy way of observing the facts”
under controlled conditions (p. 6); this method included the
use of tests, as in testing “the object is to hold conditions con-
stant, so that many individuals can be observed under the
same conditions and fairly compared” (p. 6). When condi-
tions cannot be fully controlled, Woodworth noted, psychol-
ogy “has to resort to” a second method; this “genetic method”
(p. 8) involves observations of developmental processes (dur-
ing this period, “genetic” was frequently used as a synonym
for “developmental”; see, e.g., Warren, 1934, p. 114). If psy-
chologists wish to understand developments that have already
occurred, however, they are left with a substitute:We find a genius, or an insane person, a criminal, or a “problem
child” before us, and we desire to know how he came to be what
he is. Then the best we can do is to adopt a substitute for the ge-
netic method, by reconstructing his history as well as we can
from his memory, the memories of his acquaintances, and such
records as may have been preserved. This case historymethod
has obvious disadvantages, but, as obviously, it is the only way
to make a start towards answering certain important questions.
(Woodworth, 1929, p. 8)Having pointed out that the case history was primarily a
clinical method used to help people with abnormal behavior
and that “the cause of misfits and failures is certainly an im-
portant matter for study,” Woodworth asked, “Would it not beThe authors would like to thank William McKinley Runyan for his
helpful suggestions.