Promoting the Study of Individual Lives: Gordon Allport and Henry Murray 185advertised psychoanalysis for a dollar or promised to “show
you how to talk with God” (Crider, 1936, p. 371).Accusing their
competitors of being unscientific, they cited their own training
in the use of rigorous scientific methods and quantitative tech-
niques (Freyd, 1926; Morawski & Hornstein, 1991; Napoli,
1981). Personality researchers promoted tests as experimental
methods (Terman, 1924; Woodworth, 1929) and ignored or crit-
icized methods that appeared subjective. They considered the
case studies of psychiatrists and psychoanalysts “unscientific
and old-fashioned” (Hale, 1971, p. 115), and perhaps too simi-
lar to the sensational cases reported in the popular press (see,
e.g., Burnham, 1968b). Roback, for example, found Freud’s
case studies more artistic than scientific (1927b) and sug-
gested that many authors selected case material to “furnish in-
teresting reading” or “prove a certain point” (1927a, p. 421).
Indeed, Freud had expressed his own ambivalence toward case
studies: “It still strikes me myself as strange that the case histo-
ries I write should read like short stories and that, as one might
say, they lack the serious stamp of science” (1893–1895/1955,
p. 160).
PROMOTING THE STUDY OF INDIVIDUAL LIVES:
GORDON ALLPORT AND HENRY MURRAY
By 1930, studies of personality were flourishing, but person-
ality was still considered a topic of several areas of psychol-
ogy (e.g., abnormal, educational, and social) rather than a
separate area. Gordon Allport played a central role in system-
atizing and defining the subfield of personality psychology
and separating it from social psychology (Barenbaum, 2000;
Nicholson, 1998, in press; Winter & Barenbaum, 1999), and
Henry Murray was influential in expanding the boundaries of
the study of personality to include experimental investiga-
tions of psychoanalytic concepts (Triplet, 1983; Winter &
Barenbaum, 1999). Both Allport (1937b) and Murray (1938)
promoted the intensive study of individual lives, an approach
to the study of personality that their colleagues in psychology
had generally overlooked. In doing so, each man drew
upon his training in disciplines outside the mainstream of
American psychology. In this section, we examine their
efforts and assess the status of case studies and life histories
in personality psychology in the 1930s and 1940s.
Gordon Allport and Case Studies: “The Most Revealing
Method of All”
When Goethe gave it as his opinion that personality is the
supreme joy of the children of the earth, he could not have fore-
seen the joyless dissection of his romantic ideal one hundred
years hence. (G. W. Allport, 1932, p. 391)Gordon Allport (1897–1967) is well known as an advocate of
the idiographic approach to personality, a focus on the partic-
ular individual (e.g., G. W. Allport, 1937b; Pandora, 1997).
Interestingly, however, his use of this approach has been both
exaggerated and minimized. Labeled a “militant idiographer”
by Boring (in an editorial introduction to G. W. Allport, 1958,
p. 105) and accused by some critics of rejecting the nomo-
thetic approach—the search for general laws via the study of
common dimensions of personality (see, e.g., Skaggs, 1945),
Allport in fact advocated and used both approaches (e.g.,
G. W. Allport, 1928, 1937b; G. W. Allport & Vernon, 1931).
Other critics, noting that Allport published only one case
study (1965), have commented on his “ambivalence regarding
the approach that he had so long championed” (Cohler, 1993,
p. 134; see also Capps, 1994; Holt, 1978; Peterson, 1988).Interdisciplinary Roots: American Psychology, Social
Ethics, and German PsychologyTrained in psychology at Harvard in the late 1910s and early
1920s, Allport was influenced by the prevailing experimental,
scientific ethos and contributed to the psychometric approach
to personality (Nicholson, 1996, 2000, in press). However, he
also studied social ethics, an area that involved “field training
and volunteer social service” (G. W. Allport, 1967, p. 6).
Allport (1968) described social ethics professor Richard C.
Cabot, who used case studies and biographies extensively in
his teaching (G. W. Allport, 1937a), as a teacher who had in-
fluenced his thinking. It is not clear, however, whether he actu-
ally completed a course with Cabot. Allport (1951) mentioned
having dropped one of Cabot’s courses when he learned of the
assignment to write up 25 cases in one semester. (The course
was probably Cabot’s seminar in case history method, which -
Allport’s future wife, Ada Gould, took in 1922; see Baren-
baum, 1997a.) Allport’s (1922) dissertation, an experimental
study of personality traits, included individual case profiles
and a chapter on the application of his methods to an individ-
ual client of a social service agency (possibly a client of Ada
Gould, who was a social worker at the time; see Cherry, 1996).
Another disciplinary influence on Allport’s interest in case
studies was his encounter during a postdoctoral year in
Germany (in 1923) with a qualitative, interpretive approach
to the study of personality (e.g., G. W. Allport, 1923, 1924;
see also Danziger, 1990). He studied with Eduard Spranger,
a disciple of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey, who had
promoted psychology as a “human science” (Geisteswis-
senschaft), emphasizing biographical studies (G. W. Allport,
1924). Allport also studied with William Stern, known not
only for his psychology of individual differences but also for
his interest in “the unity of the personality” (G. W. Allport,
1923, p. 613). Allport’s interest in the case method and in