PAPERS OX PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 4S7 



THE PROBLEMS OF PERSONALITY 



Edward S. Robixsox, University of Chicago 



It is my purpose in the present paper to examine the 

 meaning of a topic in psychology which has lately been 

 enjoying a rather remarkable popularity. I refer to 

 what is being called "psychology of personality". '\^Tiile 

 there are few books of the text or systematic sort which 

 include a cliapter on j^ersonality, there is still no doubt 

 but that a definite chapter on this subject is being or- 

 ganized within the interests of that large group of think- 

 ers engaged in the investigation of psychological and re- 

 lated problems. Certain sources, of course, lie more evi- 

 dently at the basis of the development of this new chap- 

 ter than do others. Those of you who have been in no 

 more intimate contact with present-day psychology than 

 through an occasional observation of book notices will 

 recognize at once that this psychology of personality is 

 somehow related to the activities of Freud and his school. 

 Another outstanding, though less spectacular, source of 

 our impetus toward personality study has grown out of 

 the recent enthusiasm for psychological interpretations 

 of social phenomena. 



Sociologists and economists have founc^ too wide a gap 

 between the closely reasoned abstractions of conven- 

 tional psychology and their own somewhat more concrete 

 concerns. Their cries for a psychology of the synthe- 

 sized and social individual have served as very potent 

 stimuli for the study of personality. 



It should be interesting to note just what sorts of facts 

 the chapter on personality contains or is likely to con- 

 tain. As I have already indicated, writers on personal- 

 ity are likely to keep the synthetic, integrated, psycho- 

 physical organism before them in a way which is not 

 done by the general ran of writers in psychology. This 

 notion that the study of personality should especially 

 emphasize those problems which arise only when the 

 subject's activities are viewed in their integrated form 



