Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Historical precursors of personality theory
- 2 From illness to wellness models of human nature
- 3 Developmental perspectives on personality: from youth-based to life-span models
- 4 The biology of personality
- 5 Trait theories and the psychology of individual differences
- 6 The puzzle of the self
- 7 Culture and personality
- 8 Gendered personality
- 9 Emotions and reasoning: a definition of the Human
- 10 Taking the measure of the Human: benefits and inherent limitations of personality measures
- 11 Can personality change? The possibilities of psychotherapeutics
- 12 The disordered personality: evolution of nosological systems
- 13 Eight appendices: at the margins of personality psychology
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
6 - The puzzle of the self
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- 1 Historical precursors of personality theory
- 2 From illness to wellness models of human nature
- 3 Developmental perspectives on personality: from youth-based to life-span models
- 4 The biology of personality
- 5 Trait theories and the psychology of individual differences
- 6 The puzzle of the self
- 7 Culture and personality
- 8 Gendered personality
- 9 Emotions and reasoning: a definition of the Human
- 10 Taking the measure of the Human: benefits and inherent limitations of personality measures
- 11 Can personality change? The possibilities of psychotherapeutics
- 12 The disordered personality: evolution of nosological systems
- 13 Eight appendices: at the margins of personality psychology
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Motile microorganisms of the same species are like solitary eccentrics in their swimming behavior. When they are searching for food, some tumble in one direction for precisely so many seconds before quitting, while others tumble differently and for different, but characteristic, periods of time. If you watch them closely … you can tell them from each other by the way they twirl, as accurately as though they had different names.
(Thomas, 1979, p. 2)The search for self
William James ([1980] 1990) wrestled with the problem of “selfhood” and “personal identity.” He stated that determining what these “entities” are was the “most puzzling puzzle” of the psychology of his time (p. 213). No wonder; there was no agreement (nor is there still) as to just what these constructs comprise. Cushman (1995) stated that “each era has a predominant configuration of the self, a particular foundational set of beliefs about what it means to be human” (p. 3). In the same vein, Leahey (2000) commented on the numerous historical notions of self that have been the legacy of Western culture. He gave several examples:
Augustine looked inside himself and found God. Descartes looked inside himself and seemed to find himself. However the leading British philosopher of the next century, David Hume, looked inside himself and found sensations and images from the world and the body, but no self. Rejecting this alarming conclusion, leading German philosopher [Immanuel] Kant could not find a self either, but posited it as a logical necessity. He then imbued it with enormous powers, and his followers, the German idealists, said that the invisible Self is so powerful, it creates the universe. (p.154)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A History of Personality PsychologyTheory, Science, and Research from Hellenism to the Twenty-First Century, pp. 183 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010