186 Personality
personal documents (e.g., G. W. Allport, 1942) may have
been encouraged by Stern, who advocated the use of bio-
graphical and historical methods (1911) and published a
psychological analysis of his own adolescent diaries (1925;
cited in G. W. Allport, 1942).
Promoting “the Intuitive Method”
After returning from Europe, Allport struggled to reconcile
the empirical and quantitative American approach to per-
sonality with the more theoretical and qualitative German
approach (G. W. Allport, 1962b). He became particularly in-
terested in the German method known asVerstehen,which he
translated as “the intuitive method” (G. W. Allport, 1929) or
“case method” (Roe, 1962)—“the understanding of the con-
crete personality in its cultural setting” (G. W. Allport, 1929,
p. 15). Contrasting the intuitive method with the psychomet-
ric approach, Allport remarked, “It was inevitable that mental
testing should appear. By these methods persons can be com-
pared with persons,but can never in the wide world be under-
stood in and of themselves” (n.d., p. 11; emphasis in original
[Courtesy of the Harvard University Archives]; see also
G. W. Allport, 1924, p. 133; 1929, p. 16, for further elabora-
tions of this point, which was one of Allport’s cardinal princi-
ples). By this, Allport meant that only the intuitive method, by
its focus on the whole person rather than the measurement of
separate traits, could reveal the interaction ororganizationof
traits within the person. (We discuss this point further below.)
In 1928, Allport conducted “an experiment in teaching by
the intuitive method” (G. W. Allport, 1929, p. 14), basing an
introductory psychology course on the autobiography of
William Ellery Leonard (1927) and requiring that students
prepare a case study (G. W. Allport, 1929). It is probably in
this context that Allport began to develop his suggestions for
preparing case studies (G. W. Allport, 1937b). He continued
to teach by the case method throughout his career, using auto-
biographies (e.g., Leonard, 1927; Wells, 1934), personal
documents, and other case materials and assigning the prepa-
ration of case studies (Barenbaum, 1997b; Cherry, 2000).
Allport’s early publications promoting “the study of the
undivided personality” (G. W. Allport, 1924) and the intuitive
method (G. W. Allport, 1929) apparently had little impact on
American psychologists. His suggestion that “personality
never possesses an exclusively objective character” and his
emphasis on intuition were clearly incompatible with the
view of psychology as an objective “natural science.” His cri-
tique of the psychometric method was an unwelcome
reminder of psychologists’ subjectivity:
Personality is in reality always perceived by some person whose
own experience is the background for the perception. That is tosay, in actual life the apprehension of personality is conditioned
by three factors, (a) the behavior sets of the person studied,
(b) the behavior sets of the person studying, and (c) the condi-
tions under which the study is made, including the relation which
exists between the two persons. The psychograph [i.e., a profile
of trait scores] oversimplifies the problem by assuming that the
investigation of personality need only consider the first of these
conditions. (1924, pp. 132–133)Although Allport stressed the need for both “natural science”
and intuitive methods in the study of personality, statements
such as the following were no doubt unpersuasive to his sci-
entifically minded colleagues: “The psychology of personal-
ity must be broad enough to embrace both the particular and
general aspects of its subject. Even if this obligation requires
that it be bothart and science, there is still no escape” (1929,
p. 20; emphasis in original).Promoting “Scientific Case Studies”In the early 1930s, Allport adopted a new strategy in his ef-
forts to promote the case study. Employing more scientific
rhetoric and echoing the prevailing view that the method was
“unsatisfactory,” he suggested nevertheless that “the concrete
individual has eluded study by any other approach” and re-
marked that “in the future there will undoubtedly be attempts
to standardize the case study in some way which will reduce
its dependence upon the uncontrolled artistry of the author”
(G. W. Allport & Vernon, 1930, p. 700; see also G. W. Allport,
1933; Nicholson, 1996). Toward this end, Allport and his stu-
dents designed experimental studies of “intuitive” processes
and attempted to improve the scientific respectability of case
studies by addressing methodological issues related to the
question, “How shall a psychological life history be written?”
(G. W. Allport, 1967, p. 3). For example, Cantril (1932; cited
in G. W. Allport, 1937b) showed that “optimum comprehen-
sion and memory-value result from the use of general charac-
terization followed by specific illustration” (p. 393n).
Allport’s (1937b) text reflected this change in strategy. Un-
like other authors of psychological texts (e.g., Stagner, 1937),
who treated the case study as a clinical method, Allport
treated it as a research method. Noting that the case study “has
not ordinarily been recognized as a psychological method,”
he described it as “the most revealing method of all” and de-
voted several pages to six “suggestions for the preparation of
a case study” (1937b, p. 390)—for example, “Deal only with
a personality that is known” (p. 391; emphasis in original). He
cited the work of several students relating to the ability to
judge personality and to the most effective method of describ-
ing personality. He discussed the “generalization of case stud-
ies” in “the construction of psychological laws” (p. 395)—a
“nomothetic” application that would bolster their scientific