Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionIV. Dispositional Theories 13. Allport: Psychology of
the Individual© The McGraw−Hill^383
Companies, 2009meet with him. The encounter proved to be a fortuitous life-altering event for All-
port. Not knowing what to talk about, the young visitor told Freud about seeing a
small boy on the tram car earlier that day. The young child complained to his mother
about the filthy conditions of the car and announced that he did not want to sit near
passengers whom he deemed to be dirty. Allport claimed that he chose this particu-
lar incident to get Freud’s reaction to a dirt phobia in a child so young, but he was
quite flabbergasted when Freud “fixed his kindly therapeutic eyes upon me and said,
‘And was that little boy you?’ ” (Allport, 1967, p. 8). Allport said he felt guilty and
quickly changed the topic.
Allport told this story many times, seldom changing any words, and never re-
vealing the rest of his lone encounter with Freud. However, Alan Elms has uncov-
ered Allport’s written description of what happened next. After realizing that Freud
was expecting a professional consultation, Allport then talked about his dislike of
cooked raisins:
I told him I thought it due to the fact that at the age of three, a nurse had told me
they were “bugs.” Freud asked, “When you recalled this episode, did your dislike
vanish?” I said, “No.” He replied, “Then you are not at the bottom of it.” (Elms,
1994, p. 77)When Allport returned to the United States, he immediately enrolled in the
PhD program at Harvard. After finishing his degree, he spent the following 2 years
in Europe studying under the great German psychologists Max Wertheimer, Wolf-
gang Kohler, William Stern, Heinz Werner, and others in Berlin and Hamburg.
In 1924, he returned again to Harvard to teach, among other classes, a new
course in the psychology of personality. In his autobiography, Allport (1967) sug-
gested that this course was the first personality course offered in an American col-
lege. The course combined social ethics and the pursuit of goodness and morality
with the scientific discipline of psychology. It also reflected Allport’s strong personal
dispositions of cleanliness and morality.
Two years after beginning his teaching career at Harvard, Allport took a posi-
tion at Dartmouth College. Four years later, he returned to Harvard and remained
there for the rest of his professional career.
In 1925, Allport married Ada Lufkin Gould, whom he had met when both were
graduate students. Ada Allport, who received a master’s degree in clinical psychol-
ogy from Harvard, had the clinical training that her husband lacked. She was a
valuable contributor to some of Gordon’s work, especially his two extensive case
studies—the case of Jenny Gove Masterson (discussed in the section titled The
Study of the Individual) and the case of Marion Taylor, which was never published
(Barenbaum, 1997).
The Allports had one child, Robert, who became a pediatrician and thus sand-
wiched Allport between two generations of physicians, a fact that seemed to have
pleased him in no small measure (Allport, 1967). Allport’s awards and honors were
many. In 1939, he was elected president of the American Psychological Association
(APA). In 1963, he received the Gold Medal Award of the APA; in 1964, he was
awarded the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the APA; and in 1966,
he was honored as the first Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at
Harvard. On October 9, 1967, Allport, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer.
Chapter 13 Allport: Psychology of the Individual 377