GORDON W ALLPORT

GORDON W ALLPORT

INTRODUCTION

Five decades ago most of the best of minds in psychology were pushing relentlessly toward increasing rigor and quantification or else were earnestly seeking to track unconscious motives to their hidden, lair. In very midst of these trends garden all port serenely pursued his own way advocating the importance of the qualitative study of the individual case and emphasizing conscious motivation. This reluctance, to swim with contemporary currents of thought has resulted at times in Allport’s formulations seeming archaic or old fashioned but on other occasions he has appeared to be the champion of new and outrageously radical ides. In spite of his iconoclasms, he represents perhaps better than any other contemporary theorist, the synthesis of traditional psychological thought and personality theory.

His systematic position represents a distillation and elaboration of ideas that are in part derived from such highly repeatable sources as gestalt psychology. William stern, William James and William McDougall, from gestalt theory and stern has come a distrust of the customary analytic techniques of natural science and a deep interest in the uniqueness of the individual, as well as the congruence of his or her behavior, James is reflected not only in Allport’s brilliant writing style, wide-ranging, relatively humanistic orientation toward human behavior, and on interest in the self but also in certain doubts concerning the ultimate power of psychological method to represent adequately and to understand completely the enigma of human behavior. Similar to McDougall’s position in Allport’s heavy emphasis upon the importance of motivational variables, his ready acceptance of the importance of motivational variables, his ready acceptance of the important role played by genetic or constitutional factors, and his prominent use of “ego” concepts, in addition to these focal influences, it is clear from Allport’s writings that he deeply respected the message of the past and he consistently showed a full awareness of and sympathy for the classical problems that psychologists in an out of the laboratory have struggled with during the past century.

BIOGRAPHY OF GORDON ALLPORT

Gorden Willard Allport was born on November 11, 1897, in Montezuma, Indian, the fourth and youngest son of John E. Allport and Nellie wise Allport, his father had engaged in a number of business ventures before becoming a physician at about the time of Allport’s birth. Lacking adequate outside facilities, Dr. Allport turned the household into a miniature hospital, with both patient and nurses occupying the home. In his autobiography, Allport (1967) wrote that his early life “was marked by plain protestant piety”, Floyd his older brother by 7 years and who also become a famous psychologist, described their mother as a very pious woman who placed heavy emphasis on religion (F. Allport, 1974). As a former School teacher,  she taught young Gorden the virtues of clean language and proper conduct as well as the importance as searching for ultimate religious answers.

By the time Gordon was 6 years old, the family had moved three times – finally settling in aleveland, ohio. Young Allport developed an carly interested in philosophical and religious questions and had more facility for words than for games. He describes himself as a social isolate” who fashioned his own circle of activities. Although he graduated second in his high school class of  100, he did not consider himself an inspired scholar.

In the fall of 1915, Allport entered Hovard, following in the foot steps of his brother Floyd, who had graduated 2 years earlier and who at that time was a graduate assistant in psychology. In his autiobiography, Gordon Allport (1967) wrote “Almost overnight my world was remade, my basic moral value, to be sure, had been fashioned at home, what was new as the horizon of Intellect and culture I was how invited to explore”, his enrollment at Harvard also marked the beginning of a 50-years association with that university, which was only twice briefly interrupted. When he received has bachelor’s degree  in 1919 with a major in philosophy and economics, he was still uncertain about a future correct. He had taken undergraduate course in psychology and social ethics, and both disciplines had made a lasting impression on him. When he received an opportunity to teach in Turkey, he saw it as a chance to find out whether he would enjoy teaching. He spent the academic year 1919-1920 in Europe teaching English and sociology at Robert college in Istanbul,

While  in Turkey, Allport was offered a fellowship for graduate study a Harvard. He also received an invitation from his brother Fayette to stay with him in Vienna. Where Fayette was working for the U.S trade commission. In Vienna, Allport had an interesting meeting with Sigmund  and Freud that greatly influence his later ideas on personality, with a certain audacity, the 22-year-old Allport wrote to Freud announcing that he was in Vienna and offered the father of psychoanalysis an opportunity to meet with him. The encounter proved to be a fortuitous life altering even for Allport, not knowing what to talk about, the young visitor told Freud about seeing a small boy on the from car going to Freud’s home. The boy, about 4 years old had displayed on obvious dirt phobia, complaining constantly to his well –starched mother about the filthy conditions on the car, Allport claimed that he chose this particular incident to get Freud’s reaction to a dirt phobia in 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 said he felt a bit guilty and quickly changed the subject.

Allport told this study many times, seldom changing any words, and never revealing the rest of his lone encounter with Freud. However, Alan Elms has uncovered 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.

After that discussion Allport “Spoke of a  common sexual problem of youthful male of my age” and finally Allport asked Freud to recommend a psychoanalyst in America, Freud suggested A.A. Brill, Allport wrote that he “then departed with a vivid feeling of respect of liking for Freud, even though our short conversation has started at cross purposes”.

Back at Harvard, Allport quickly finished his work, receiving a Ph.D in psychology 1922 at age 24. His dissertation titled an experimental study of the traits of personality with application to the problems of social diagnosis showed the influenced of John Watson and his behaviourist view of personality. Allport spent the following 2 years in Europe studying under the great German psychologist Maxwertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, William Stern, Heinz, Werner, and others in Berlin and Hamburg. The latter half of his Europe experience was spent in Cambridge England, where he had a chance to absorb what he had learned in Germany.

In 1924, he returned again to Harvard to teach, among other classes, a new course in the psychology of personality. This course, called personality and social Amelioration, was taught in the department of social ethics in 1924 and then cross listed in the department of psychology the next year as personality. Its psychological and social aspects in his autobiography Allport suggested that this course was the first course on personality offered in an American college. The course combined social ethics and the pursuit of goodness and morality with the scientific discipline of psychology. It also reflected his strong personal disposition of cleanliness and morality.

Two years after beginning his teaching calreer at Harward, Allport took a position at Dartmouth college, four years later he returned to Harvard and remained therefore 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 psychology from Harvard, had the clinical training that her husband lacked. She was a valuable contributor to some of garden’s work especially his two extensive case studies the case of Jenny gove Masterson and the case of Marion Taylor, which was never published (Barenbaem 1997). 

The Allports had one child Robert, who become 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’s awards and honors were many in 1939 he was elected president of the American psychological association. In 1963, he received the gold medal aware 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 Alarke Cabort Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard on October 9, 1967, Allport a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer.

ALLPORT’S APPROACH TO PERSONALITY

Allport’s approach to the study of personality rests on several key terms and concepts:-

1.      Conscious motivation

2.      Psychologically healthy individuals

3.      Proactive behavior

4.      Uniqueness of each individual

5.      An eclectic attitude toward other theories

We discuss these concept in more detail later, but here we look briefly at each. 

All port traced his emphasis on conscious motivation to his single encounter with Freud, who surprised 22-year-old Allport when he asked, “And was that little boy you?” Freud’s question was to have great meaning for Allport, although not an anti-Freudian, he later evolved a personality theory about the importance of conscious motivation that was almost diametrically opposed to psychoanalysis where Freud assumed an underlying unconscious meaning to such stories. Allport was inclined to accept self – reports at face value, Allport reported that “this experience taught me that depth psychology for all its merits, may plunge too deep, and that psychologists would do well to give full recognition to manifest motives before probing the unconscious”. Most people, Allport believed are motivated by present drives rather than by past events and are aware of what they are doing and have some understanding of why they are doing it.

Allport perhaps, was the first personaliy theorist to study the psychologically healthy individual, long before Abraham Maslow made the concept of self actualization popular, Gorden Allport hypothesized in depth about the attributes of the mature personality psychologically healthy people have the potential to learn new patterns of behavior and to experience additional growth during any period of their lives.

Psychologically mature personalities are characterized by proactive behavior that is not only do they react to external stimuli but they capable of consciously acting on their environment in new innovative ways and causing their environment to react to them proactive behavior is not merely directed at reducing tensions but also at establishing new ones.

A fourth key concept in Allport’s approach to the study of personality is uniqueness of the individual. In deed Allport himself is rather unique among personality theorists in his insistence that each person is in some manner, unlike any other individual. Any attempts to describe people in terms of general traits robs them to their unique individuality, for this reason, Allport objected to the trait and factor theories of cattle and Eysenck that tended to reduce individual behavior to common traits. He would insist, for example, that one person’s miserliness is different from any other person’s miserliness and the manner in which one person’s miserliness interacts with his or her introversion is duplicated by no other individual.

Consistent with Allport’s emphasis on each person’s uniqueness was his willingness to study in depth a single individual. He called the study of the individual morphogenic science and contrasted it with the nomothetic methods used by most other psychologists. Morphogenic methods are these that gather data on a single individual where nomathetic methods gather data on groups of people Morphogenic methods can reveal a great deal of information about one person, which then may generalize to other individuals, nomathetic methods reveal information about a group of people which then may have some significance for a particular individual.

Finally Allport advocated an eclectic approach to theory building. He argued against particularism, or theories that emphasize a single approach, and he went on the warn theorists not to “forget what you have decided to neglect”. In other words, no theory is completely comprehensive and one should always realize that much of human nature is not included in any single theory, Allport accepted the contributions of Freud, Cattle, skinner and others but he believed that these theorists were unable to explain the growing, changing personality. The growth theories of Maslow, Rogers and Allport himself add to the earlier foundation by psychoanalysis and learning theory. But none is complete by itself. Allport, therefore, favored eclecticism over particularism because it is less restrictive and offers more hope in understanding the complete and unique person, broader theories even those that do not generate specific testable hypothesis are preferable to narrow ones, because they organize known facts from all kinds of research as well as from institution.

References

1.      Balduin A.F. personality structure of personality

2.      Theories of personality – Calvin S. Hall, Gardner Lindzey, Thon B. Campbell.      

3.      Adler A study of origin inferiority and its psychical compensation, New York Nervous  and Mental Disorder publishing.