PERSONALITY

The term ‘personality’ has a particularly complex history. Originating in the Greek persona which referrred to the mask worn by actors, it subsequently acquired a diverse range of uses in widely different contexts, such as the law and grammar, besides psychological ones. These were famously explored in the first chapter of the American psychologist Gordon W. Allport’s book Personality: A Psychological Iinterpretation (Allport, 1937). This variety remains evident in the contrast between the everyday sense of ‘personality’ as something of which one may have more less, or meaning someone who is particularly charismatic, and the Psychological sense in which it is a neutral term denoting the totality of an individual’s enduring traits, and the sub-discipline which studies these. Kurt Danziger (1997) has an interesting analysis of why the term came to be accepted in Psychology during the 1930s, winning out over potential alternatives such as temperament and character. During the mid-twentieth century ‘Personality Theory’ was one of Psychology’s most important, controversial and productive areas of activity, Hall and Lindzey (1957) and Maddi (1976) providing especially valuable overviews of the topic at this time. During the late twentieth century, however, the term fell somewhat from favour as a sub-discipline title, being replaced by ‘Individual Differences’, reflecting the dominance of psychometric methods focusing on identifying the number of dimensions along which individuals vary from each other (a trait-oriented approach). Nevertheless, theories accepting individual uniqueness and addressing this in terms of complex personality dynamics continued to flourish, especially in relation to the sources of psychopathology. These were influenced both by psychoanalysis and Jungian Analytical Psychology, Jung’s early book Psychological Types or the Psychology of Individuation (Jung, 1923, in English) being the ultimate source of the now widely used Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) test. Jung’s typological theory is one a number of type theories or models going back to antiquity. See also temperament and somatotypes. Hergenhahn and Olson (2006) and Schultz and Schultz (2004) provide recent reviews of the topic (although several similar works may equally well be consulted, the ‘Theories of Personality’ genre being a perennial favourite of Psychology textbook writers). One might note that the phrase personality disorder is widely used as an umbrella term for psychopathological conditions in which the entire personality structure of the individual is implicated (see also borderline personality disorder).