ABSTRACT
According to the psychoanalytic interpretation, the Puritan personality manifests itself in various special traits or types of development. If personality is the key to the explanation of social change as psychoanalysis asserts, there must be some recognizable difference between the personality of the innovator and that of the social conformist. The picture of Hannah More which psychoanalytic evaluation provides is virtually identical with that of Griffith Jones. There is considerable evidence of an absence of true feeling, a certain psychological isolation from her fellow-creatures. According to psychoanalytic doctrine, the cradle of adult personality is in the nursery: Personality is broadly determined in the first two or three years of life. Subsequent experiences are only formative to the extent that they reanimate primitive conflicts and reinforce patterns already laid down.
