A lot depends on how we designate traits. Allport owns one of the first lexicographic studies of personality traits through word analysis in English denoting certain features of behavior. He emphasizes that the same features of behavior can be called differently. It is necessary to distinguish the features themselves from their names. One person will call some behavior courageous, another aggressive, and yet another vicious. The most important thing is that the designations of traits do not carry any moral or social assessments, although sometimes this cannot be avoided.
According to Allport, one can say that a person has this or that trait, but it cannot be said that he has this or that type - he fits the type or belongs to the type. Allport's position on typologies in general is rather critical. There can be as many typologies as you like, because any typology is based on an abstraction from the integral personality of one segment and draws boundaries according to one single criterion. "Any typology draws boundaries where there really are none". Depending on what criterion we take, we will get different types and a different distribution of people according to these types. Therefore, typologies are important and useful for solving practical problems, where we classify people according to the criterion that we practically need. When solving cognitive, research tasks, the task itself does not determine the need to choose any one criterion and ignore all the others. We cannot arbitrarily choose what to take as a basis and what to ignore, so here any typology turns out to be a very artificial procedure.
"I" and "proprium". By themselves, traits cannot fully characterize a person. In 1942 Allport's generalizing article "The Ego in Modern Psychology" appeared (see present edition, pp. 75–92). If in the 19th century it was fashionable to talk about the ego, about the soul, then later these philosophically loaded concepts went out of fashion, and in the lexicon of behaviorism, associationism and psychoanalysis that came to replace them, there was no room for concepts expressing the connectedness of the personality, activity and purposefulness. It is time to return these concepts to psychology.
Describing a range experimental studies, Allport found one interesting pattern in them: when a person does something that involves him I and he is not indifferent, consistency, stability, correlations of traits are revealed. And when the ego is not involved, a person is not very interested in what he is doing - stability is broken, unity breaks up and traits appear in some tasks, but not in others.
In the 1950s, Allport introduces a new concept to replace the traditional I- the concept of proprium. He did this solely because the concepts of "ego", "lifestyle", "self" were overloaded with other meanings. Proprium, according to Allport, is close to what W. James once referred to as a sphere I, meaning by this what can be denoted by the word "mine" - what I relate to myself. The main thing that Allport developed in connection with the concept of proprium introduced by him, as well as propriative personality structures, is the periodization of personal development, based on the identification of seven aspects of proprium. This periodization is undeservedly little known, although it is original and hardly inferior in its merits to the much more popular periodization of E. Erickson. It is especially important that in this periodization we are talking about the development of personal structures proper in the full sense of the word, in contrast to most periodizations of age development, which do not speak entirely of a person, or not at all about a person.
The first aspect of proprium development is the feeling of one's body, the bodily self. It occurs in the first year of life when infants begin to become aware of and integrate many of the sensations that come from muscles, tendons, ligaments, internal organs, and so on, and come to feel their bodies. As a result, infants begin to separate, to distinguish themselves from other objects, primarily bodily ones. This feeling remains the mainstay of self-awareness for most of life. Adults do not realize it until everything is in order, until they feel some kind of pain or illness. The second aspect is the feeling I, sense of self-identity. It occurs when the child begins to talk about himself "I". Through language, he feels himself as a reference point, awareness and self-reference appear. own name. Through this, the child begins to comprehend that he remains the same person, despite all the changes in his interactions with outside world. This is mainly the second year of life, although development does not stop - all aspects of identity are not established at once, they continue to develop further, but at this age stage they become leading. Allport localizes this feeling in the second year of life, and in the third year of life he refers to the third aspect of proprium - a sense of self-esteem, which is associated with a sense of pride due to the child's successful completion of some tasks. Adults sometimes consider this negativism, because the child opposes almost all the suggestions of an adult, perceiving them as an encroachment on his integrity and autonomy. The fourth stage falls on the age of 4–6 years. Proprium at this age develops through the expansion of the boundaries of the self: children begin to realize that they own not only their physical body, but also some elements of the world around them, including people; this expansion occurs through the meaning of the word "my". This period is characterized by relapses of zealous possessiveness: my ball, my dollhouse, my mother, my sister, and so on. The fifth aspect of the proprium begins to develop at the age of 5–6 years. This is an image of himself that arises when the child begins to realize how others see him, what is expected of him, how they treat him, how they want to see him. And it is during this period that the child comprehends the difference between "I am good" and "I am bad." It turns out I can be different. The sixth stage covers the period between 6 and 12 years, when the child begins to understand that he is able to find rational decisions life's problems and deal effectively with the demands of reality. Thinking itself appears - reflexive, formal-logical, the child begins to think about the very process of thinking. But this is not independent thinking in the sense that an adult can have it, because at this stage there is no independent morality yet. This stage of development of the proprium reflects a strong conformism towards group values, norms, and moral principles. The child at this stage dogmatically assumes that his family, religion, group is always right. The seventh aspect of the proprium, whose development is largely associated with adolescence, is what Allport calls the propriative drive. The central problem for a teenager is the choice of a career or other life goals. The teenager already knows that the future must be planned, and in this sense he acquires a promising sense of self. There is a focus on the future, the setting of long-term goals, perseverance in finding ways to solve the planned tasks, a feeling that life has meaning - this is the essence of the propriative desire. This period is not limited to adolescence; all these aspects continue to develop throughout life. In addition to these seven aspects, there is another one that has a special status. Allport designates it as self-knowledge, which synthesizes all the other seven aspects.
Mature personality. Allport was the first to introduce the idea of ​​a mature personality into psychology, noting that psychoanalysis never considers an adult as a truly adult. In his 1937 book, he devoted a separate chapter to the mature personality, formulating three criteria for personal maturity. The first criterion is the diversity of autonomous interests, the expansion of the "I". A mature person cannot be narrow and selfish; she considers the interests of other relatives and significant people like your own. The second is self-consciousness, self-objectification. He also includes here such a characteristic as a sense of humor, which, according to experimental data, correlates best with self-knowledge. The third criterion is the philosophy of life. A mature personality has its own worldview, in contrast to an immature personality.
In later works, he expands and supplements the list of these criteria, describing already 6 main parameters of a mature personality (see this edition, pp. 35–45, 330–354), which incorporate the first three. First, a psychologically mature person has wide boundaries I. Mature people are busy not only with themselves, but also with something outside of themselves, actively participate in many things, have hobbies, are interested in political or religious issues, in what they consider significant. Secondly, they have the ability to close interpersonal relationships. In particular, Allport mentions friendly intimacy and sympathy in this connection. The friendly intimate aspect of relationships is the ability of a person to show deep love to family, close friends, not colored by possessive feelings or jealousy. Empathy is reflected in the ability to be tolerant of differences in values ​​and attitudes between oneself and other people. The third criterion is the absence of large emotional barriers and problems, good self-acceptance. Mature people are able to calmly relate to their own shortcomings and to external difficulties, without reacting to them with emotional breakdowns; they know how to cope with their own conditions and, while expressing their emotions and feelings, they consider how it will affect others. The fourth criterion is that a mature person demonstrates a realistic perception, as well as realistic claims. He sees things as they are, not as he would like them to be. Fifth, a mature person demonstrates the ability for self-knowledge and a philosophical sense of humor - humor directed at oneself. Sixth, a mature person has a whole philosophy of life. What is the content of this philosophy does not play a fundamental role - the best philosophy does not exist.
The reason for these changes in the set of criteria for a mature personality, as his student T. Pettigrew noted at the symposium in memory of Allport, was largely their joint trip to South Africa to study racial problems. There they saw people who fit Allport's original definition of a mature person, but who did evil regularly and routinely. Allport later openly admitted that the role of sociocultural factors in the formation of personality was underestimated by him.

* * *

In this edition, we decided to focus on the main general theoretical views of Allport, leaving aside his classical applied research. social problems: rumors, prejudices, religion and others, which, like everything he touched, bear the easily recognizable imprint of his brilliant intellect and indifference. Many of them have retained their significance to this day, and work on Russian editions of Allport's monographs on the problems of religiosity and the psychology of prejudice has already begun. But it is precisely his general theoretical positions that give an idea of ​​the scale of his personality, and it is they that make it possible to fill the gaping gaps in our understanding of the development of personality psychology in the 20th century.
This edition is based on two books: a short monograph "Becoming", written on the basis of a course of lectures delivered by Allport at the special invitation of the Terry Foundation, and containing a concentrated expression of the new that Allport introduced into the psychological understanding of personality, and a voluminous textbook "Structure and development of personality ”, published here in its entirety. Not included were chapters of a predominantly review nature, devoted to those aspects of the personality, in the development of which the author's contribution of Allport himself is relatively small. It should, however, be noted that Allport's unique style as a creative individual permeates this entire textbook: whatever he writes about, his handwriting cannot be confused with anyone else; moreover, it is not always possible to determine from the text whether he is writing a textbook for junior students or articles for sophisticated professionals.
In addition to these two books and Autobiography, we included in the publication a number of key theoretical articles by G. Allport, which were included in the golden fund of psychology of the 20th century. In terms of content, these articles partly overlap with both books, as well as books with each other, but this did not bother us. To avoid repetition, one would have to violate the integrity of the texts, and this would be incompatible, first of all, with the whole spirit of Allport's theory, which puts integrity in the first place. Therefore, we deliberately kept some repetitions; Allport is such an author, who cannot be too much, especially since we practically did not know him for a long time.
Every personality psychologist, whether he likes it or not, talks about himself by no means only in his autobiography. Gordon Allport was a unique, active, integrated, mature, forward looking individual. He left us the psychology of a unique, active, integrated, mature, future-oriented personality.

D.A.Leontiev

Doctor of Psychology

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Bergson believed that the philosophy of each life is based on some "personal idea", even if the attempt to express this idea is never completely successful. This saying, which has a shade of idealism and romanticism, is alien to the Lockean image of man, which dominates Anglo-American psychology. And yet, I confess, this thought appeals to me. Perhaps, in a broad sense, it expresses a hypothesis that can be tested.
It may be said that my own personal idea is to discover whether such general hypotheses about the nature of man are empirically viable, at least to the same extent as the associationist or reactive hypotheses that govern the American psychological worldview today. Considering that Bergson exaggerates the potential unity human personality, I think that he (like other Leibnizians, neo-Kantians and existentialists) challenges empirical psychology and that these views need to be tested. Human philosophy and human psychology must be correlated with each other.
Let me formulate some empirical questions relevant to this problem. How to write psychological history life? What processes and structures should be included in Full description personality? How can one find (if they exist) the threads connecting the various aspects of life? A large part of my professional activity can be seen as an attempt to answer these questions through successive studies and articles. Because of my conviction that before diving into the abyss of research, a scientist must ask himself significant, non-trivial questions, the volume of my theoretical publications exceeds the volume of the "products" of empirical research.
In 1940 I devoted my seminar at Harvard to the problem: "How should the psychological history of life be written?" Jerome Bruner, Dorwin Cartwright, Norman Polanski, John R. P. French, Alfred Baldwin, John Harding, Dwight Fiske, Donald McGrenaghan, Henry Ricken, Robert White and Freed Bales participated in the seminar. I mentioned the names of these scientists because it seems to me that although scientific activity they are very diverse, a significant part of the creative work of these psychologists in a broad sense corresponds to the topic of my seminar.
We have not been able to complete our task. True, we created a set of rules and described cases according to these rules, but in the end we were frustrated by the insignificance of the results. Our failed rules were never published, but several important subsequently published studies grew out of the workshop, some of which are summarized in my monograph The Use of Personal Documents in Psychological Science (1942).
I still don't know how to write a psychological life story. And now, ironically, I am faced with the task of writing my own psychological biography. Without a method, I will be forced to "flounder", hoping that the psychologists of the future will find a way to accomplish such a task.

1897–1915

Anyone who writes an autobiography finds his own genealogy fascinating and knows that his family relationships are of the greatest explanatory value. But the reader usually finds the same matters boring, something that must be endured because it is must deal with the matter. It is very difficult for the writer to show the reader what just right, where And why. He himself does not know how to separate the primary formative influences from the facts that were of secondary importance or minimal influence. My own description will be as brief as possible.
My father was a country doctor who learned his profession after a career in business and already had a family with three sons. I, the fourth and last of my family, was born on November 11, 1897, in Montezuma, Indiana, where my father began his medical practice. I think my mother and I were his first patients. He soon moved his practice to Streetsboro and Hudson, Ohio. Before I went to school, we moved again, to Glenville (Cleveland), where I studied normally for twelve years without interruption at school.
My brothers were much older (Harold by 9 years, Floyd by 7, Fayette by 5 years) and I had to start my own hobby company. It was a rather narrow circle, because I never "fit" into the general boyish company. I was "sharp with my tongue" and weak at games. When I was 10 years old, a classmate said about me: “Oh, this guy is a walking encyclopedia.” But even being "isolated", I managed to be a "star" for a small group of friends.
Our family has lived in rural New York for generations. Paternal grandfather was a farmer, maternal grandfather was a cabinetmaker and veteran civil war. My father, John Edward Allport (b. 1863), was of pure English descent, my mother, Nellie Edith Wise (b. 1862), was of German-Scottish descent.
Our home life was marked by simple Protestant piety and hard work. My mother was a school teacher and passed on to her sons a passionate sense of philosophical inquiry and the importance of finding answers to basic religious questions. Since my father did not have a separate room suitable for a hospital, our house served as such for several years, accommodating both patients and nurses. Cleaning the doctor's office, washing vials, and interacting with patients were important aspects of my upbringing as a child. In addition to general practice, my father was engaged in many businesses: founding a cooperative pharmaceutical company, building and renting apartments, and finally developed a new specialty - construction and supervision of hospitals. I mentioned his versatility only to emphasize the fact that his four sons were trained in the practical matters of life as well as in broad humanitarian matters. Papa did not recognize holidays. Rather, he followed a rule of life which he formulated for himself thus: “If everyone worked as diligently as he could, and took only the minimum financial compensation, limited by the needs of his family, there would be sufficient abundance everywhere.” Thus, it was hard work, softened by trust and love, that was characteristic of our home.
With the exception of this generally favorable foundation, I cannot single out any particularly important influences that determined my development until graduation in 1915. high school, which I graduated as the second student (out of 100 people). Obviously, I was a good, "correct" student, but clearly not inspired or inquisitive about what went beyond the usual teenage interests.
Graduation from school posed the problem of further education. My father wisely insisted that I spend the summer learning how to type, a skill I treasure to no end. At this time, my brother Floyd, who graduated from Harvard University in 1913, suggested that I apply there. It was late, but I was finally accepted after I made my way through the entrance tests held at Cambridge in early September. There was an experience of intellectual dawn.

1915–1924

Has a guy from the Midwest ever been more affected by "going East to college"? I doubt. Almost instantly, the whole world changed for me. Of course, my core moral values ​​were formed at home; new were the intellectual and cultural horizons which I was now invited to explore. Student years(1915–1919) brought a host of new influences.
The first and most important impression was the constant feeling high standards. Harvard simply assumed (or so it seemed to me) that everything should be of the highest quality. In my first exams, I got a lot of "mediocre" grades. Very upset, I applied myself to my studies and ended the year with excellent grades. As a reward I received detur(what could it be?) in the form of a deluxe edition of Marius the Epicurean (who was that?). In my 50 years of association with Harvard, I have never ceased to admire the silent expectation of the best results. A person had to do everything to the limit of his abilities, and he was provided with all the conditions for this. Although all the courses were interesting to me, my attention soon turned to psychology and social ethics. Taken together, these two disciplines marked my future career.
My first psychology teacher was Münsterberg, who looked like Wotan. My brother Floyd, a graduate student, was his assistant. From Münsterberg's guttural lectures and his textbook Psychology: General and Applied (1914) I learned little beyond the fact that "causal" psychology is not the same as "purposeful" psychology. The blank page separating the two corresponding sections of the book intrigued me. Is it possible to reconcile and unite them? I asked myself. Harry Murray also began to study with Münsterberg. In the article “What should a psychologist do with psychoanalysis?” (What Should Psychologist Do About Psychoanalysis? 1940), he writes that the coldness of Münsterberg's approach was so disgusting to him that he fled through the nearest exit, thereby delaying for several years the choice of his future profession. What became "bread" for me was "poison" for Murray. The question arises: what is a “good” teacher? I drew nourishment from both Münsterberg's dualistic dilemma and his pioneering work in applied psychology.
I soon began attending classes with Edwin B. Holt, Leonardo Troland, Walter Dearborn, and Ernest Southard. I studied experimental psychology with Herbert Langfeld and my brother. Between classes and free time I have benefited greatly from my older brother's reflections on the problems and methods of psychology. Floyd invited me to participate in his own research social influence as a test subject. Münsterberg convinced him to follow the tradition of Möde and find differences in the results of performing tasks in a group and alone.
First World War only slightly disrupted my program. As a conscript of the student military preparatory corps, I was allowed to continue my studies (with the addition of subjects such as sanitary engineering and cartography). Even at training camp, I prepared, with Langfeld's support, reports on the psychological aspects of shooting practice. Although my input was immature, the assignment proved useful. The armistice was signed on my twenty-fifth birthday, November 11, 1918. In early 1919, I received my bachelor's degree, and Floyd received his doctorate.
The final touch of influence from the undergraduate period relates to my studies in the Department of Social Ethics under James Ford, especially the accompanying field training and voluntary social service, which were of great interest to me. Throughout my college years, I ran a boys' club on the west side of Boston, occasionally volunteered with the Family Society (visiting their charges), and worked with the parole and parole service. For one month, I did paid work for humanitarian organization Cleveland, for another, worked for Professor Ford as a field agent, looking for housing for military workers in the overcrowded industrial cities of the East. At Phillips Brooks House, I did a paid job as an Aid Commissioner. foreign students and secretary of the Cosmopolitan Club. This social work gave me deep satisfaction, partly because it gave me a sense of competence (outweighing the general feeling of inferiority), and partly because I found that I liked helping people with their problems.

For the first time in Russian, the psychological heritage of Gordon Allport, one of the greatest psychologists of the 20th century, who actually created personality psychology as a special subject area, is presented in all its richness and diversity. psychological science. Psychologists, representatives of related sciences, students of psychological specialties.

A series: Live classic

* * *

The following excerpt from the book The formation of personality. Selected Works (G. W. Allport) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

GORDON ALPORT - architect of personality psychology

In any science, among outstanding scientists one can meet representatives of two main types - "discoverers" and "systematizers". The former discover a new explanatory principle and restructure their field of knowledge in accordance with it. They see reality through the prism of their ideas, they are in danger of bias, one-sidedness, but it is they who provide breakthroughs in science and create scientific schools who develop further the doctrine founded by them. The latter, as a rule, have encyclopedic knowledge, which allows them, without introducing new explanatory principles, to systematize and generalize existing knowledge, build general theoretical systems and “make ends meet”. They, of course, also make discoveries, although more private ones. They have students, but no schools, because the school is formed around a bright idea, and not around a system. However, they enjoy great prestige because the ability to integrate different ideas into a system is even rarer than the ability to discover something fundamentally new. There are many examples: the discoverer Plato and the systematizer Aristotle, the discoverer Kant and the systematizer Hegel, the discoverer A.N. Leontiev and the systematizer S.L. Rubinshtein. These two types of scientists complement each other; if one or the other did not exist, science could hardly develop.

Togo scientists and other types differ in their personal characteristics. To become a "discoverer" you need talent, passion, conviction, work, courage. "Systematizers" are people gifted in a different way: this requires, first of all, intelligence, a broad outlook, erudition, a calmer scientific temperament, which helps rather not to defend one's own, but to combine different points of view. It requires sincere interest and respect for someone else's position, rare even for people of science objectivity, which allows one to prefer someone else's point of view, more correct, high degree scientific humility. Finally, there must be professional taste - a flair that allows one to discern through the rubble of traditions and the veil of fashion the sprouts of ideas and approaches to which the future of science belongs. And the nobility, manifested in the disinterested support of these ideas and approaches with all the power of their scientific authority.

All these virtues were combined in Gordon Willard Allport (1897-1967), whose influence on world psychology during his lifetime was difficult to overestimate. Allport belonged to a rare type of systematizers. He was, perhaps, the most intelligent person among those who dealt with the psychology of personality. In one of the articles, he wrote how a psychologist needs imagination. However, the most striking distinguishing feature of Allport himself is logical thinking. Never belonging to the dominant paradigm, he constantly unobtrusively "corrected" the psychology of the individual on the right path. His characteristic style is to smooth over extremes and overcome dichotomies; he can rightfully be called one of the most dialectically thinking psychologists. He was often called an eclecticist, and he agreed with this, specifying that Goethe distinguished between two types of eclecticism: eclecticism, like a jackdaw, which drags everything that comes into its nest, and systematic eclecticism, based on the desire to build a single whole from what can be found in various places. Eclecticism of the second type is not a vice, but a very productive method scientific work.

Perhaps few (if anyone) can be compared with Allport in terms of the number of ideas included not in textbooks on personality theories, but in the main body of knowledge of personality psychology - often these ideas now seem so obvious that they are mentioned anonymously, without special attribution. Allport stood at the origins of the theory of traits, humanistic psychology, wrote the first generalizing textbook on personality psychology and rewrote it a quarter of a century later, legitimized the introduction of qualitative methods into academic science, such research problems as personal maturity, worldview, self-realization, religiosity. He did not make discoveries, did not provide breakthroughs, did not create a school, did not lay a new paradigm, but in many respects it is he who has the merit of creating the psychology of personality as a special subject area - without exaggeration, he can be called the architect of personality psychology. During his life he was awarded all sorts of honors - he was elected president of the American Psychological Association (1939), president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, received the award "For Outstanding Contribution to Science" (1964), etc., but in his autobiography he admitted that among the many In 1963, the most valuable prize for him was a two-volume collection of papers by 55 of his former graduate students with the inscription "from your students - with gratitude for your respect for our individuality." His students are characterized by such distinctive features as the presence own position, a holistic approach to man and scientific non-conformity - otherwise they are very different. Among them are such remarkable psychologists as Leo Postman, Philip Vernon, Robert White, Brewster Smith, Gardner Lindsay, Jerome Bruner and others.

But Allport is great not only because he raised a galaxy of his students, but also because he was able to appreciate many of the advanced ideas of others, in particular, foreign scientists and provide them with significant support in advancing to the American "scientific market", which is generally extremely biased. applies to everything non-American. In the list of his publications, a huge place is occupied by reviews and prefaces to other people's books. This educational activity was characteristic of Allport all his life - starting from a young age, when, after returning home after a two-year stay in Europe, he began to actively enrich American science with the ideas of W. Stern's personology, the psychology of the spirit of E. Spranger and the Gestalt psychology of K. Koffka, V. Köhler and M. Wertheimer. In his adult years, he actively supported the pioneering research of Kurt Lewin, who immigrated to America. In old age, he was able to appreciate the importance of the ideas of existentialism for psychology, introduced the still unknown Viktor Frankl to the American public and supported the creation of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, although he himself did not enter into any of its structures. Survey clinical psychologists in the United States in the 1950s, he discovered that Allport was second only to Freud in his ideological and theoretical influence.

Nor was he a purely armchair thinker. One more distinguishing feature Allport's scientific style is to always be at the forefront of the social problems of our time. He strove to study first of all what is more important, and not what is simpler. He created articles and books that were landmarks for many specific areas and areas of research - the psychology of expressive movements, the psychology of radio, the psychology of rumors, the psychology of war, the psychology of religion. His 600-page work on the nature of prejudice has been the main and unsurpassed source on this problem for almost half a century, and its relevance is growing, unfortunately, every year. The total circulation of this book by 1970 had reached half a million copies.

Gordon Allport's autobiography is included in this volume. Therefore, there is no need to retell it in detail. life path, which, however, is quite simple and straightforward - this is the path of an excellent student in the good sense of the word, who consistently applies his outstanding intellect and diligence to achieve goals and naturally achieves them.

Gordon Allport was born in 1897 into a family of provincial American intellectuals. He is a year younger than Piaget and Vygotsky, seven years younger than Levin, three years older than Fromm, five years older than A. R. Luria and P. Ya. Galperin, and six years older than A. N. Leontiev. He graduated from school second in academic achievement out of 100 graduates and entered the famous Harvard University - in the footsteps of his older brother Floyd, who later left a very noticeable mark in social psychology and the psychology of perception.

At Harvard, Gordon Allport's intellectual faculties were brought to full strength and direction. In parallel with psychology, he is engaged in social ethics - with young years his interest was divided between psychology and the wider social context, and it is no coincidence that in the 1930s he created an inherently interdisciplinary department at Harvard social relations, who synthesized the approaches of psychology, sociology and anthropology.

A distinctive feature of Allport's scientific worldview has become quite big influence on him European psychology, especially William Stern, Eduard Spranger and Gestalt psychology. This was largely facilitated by the young scientist's stay in Europe in the early 1920s; although most textbooks pay attention only to Allport's meeting with Freud, there was no conversation between them. Allport was opened by the most various influences, however, his powerful intellect allowed him to process them and go his own way.

Under the influence of European ideas, Allport, having taken up the study of personality psychology in the 1920s, first of all personality traits and expressive movements, quickly came to the need to consider the whole personality, and not its fragments. At the university, he was taught in the behavioral tradition, in the spirit of the scheme S-O-R, where O is an organism that mediates the connection between a stimulus S and reaction R. In fact, says Allport, we find a small S and small R but very, very large O.

However, to approach the whole person from a scientific standpoint, Allport states, is not easy: “as one person noted, the only thing that can be done with the whole person is to give her flowers.” Nevertheless, Allport was the first in world psychology to build an integral theoretical building of the scientific psychology of personality. His book Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, published in 1937, began much of the academic psychology of personality. Personality, according to Allport, is "the dynamic organization of the psychophysical systems of the individual, which determines the unique adaptation of the individual to his environment." Interestingly, he reproduces almost the same definition 24 years later, only excluding from it (which, however, is very significant) the concept of adaptation: “Personality is a dynamic organization of the psychophysical systems of an individual, which determines his characteristic behavior and thinking.” Personality and character are, in fact, one and the same, only character is a concept loaded with evaluation, and personality is the same, devoid of evaluation.

Individuality. The problem of individuality and its study in psychology is a question that remained central for Allport throughout his life. He devotes many pages to discussing the problem of uniqueness, the problem of the individual and the general in relation to the psychology of personality. It was he who made the dilemma of the nomothetic and the idiographic the center of consideration in psychology. The nomothetic approach is an attempt to bring any psychological manifestations under general patterns. The idiographic approach is the desire to describe the individual originality of a given case not as a particular manifestation of some general patterns, but as something unique. "Each person in itself is essentially a special law of nature." All psychology, and above all practical, still continues to varying degrees to rush between these two poles. On the one hand, the uniqueness of each person is difficult to deny, on the other hand, general patterns are a prerequisite for the application of some methods, techniques, principles. This problem is especially acute in counseling and psychotherapy, in particular, in the form of a dilemma: to rely on methods and techniques, or to work without relying on them, with the personality of the psychotherapist as his main “tool”.

Allport was the first to subject the problem of the general and the individual in personality to a detailed methodological reflection. In the spirit of the "systematic eclecticism" position, he finds the dilemma "nomothetic - idiographic" unnecessarily pointed; truth in their combination and synthesis. Allport stressed that we should not forget that each person is unique, but this does not mean that it is impossible to find something in common in people. "A general law can be a law about how uniqueness is exercised." The law of uniqueness is the basic law of personality psychology.

The most complete expression of the individual uniqueness of an individual is the sphere of his expressive, or expressive, manifestations, in relation to which Allport uses the concept of style. “Only by style do we recognize Chopin's music, Dali's paintings, and Aunt Sally's macaroni” (Now ed., p. 440). Allport gave great attention this area of ​​research since the late 1920s. The experimental data he cites indicate that the subjects manage to surprisingly successfully identify different forms expressive manifestations - handwriting, gait, face, etc., belonging to the same people, although the mechanisms of this stylistic unity of individuality remain obscure. A person most of all manifests himself as an individuality not in what he does, but in how.

Activity and functional autonomy of motives. The fundamental feature of the personality - and here Allport was also practically the first to put this at the forefront - is its activity, proactivity, as he calls it, as opposed to the postulate of reactivity, on which all behaviorism is built. Allport categorically disagrees with the opinion of the majority of psychologists who attribute to man the desire for homeostasis, the reduction of stress. For him, a person is a creature striving to establish and maintain a certain level of tension, and the desire to reduce tension is a sign of ill health. His theory of personality as an open system (see this edition, pp. 62–74) is a new stage in the development of these ideas.

Perhaps the most striking expression of Allport's understanding of personality as active is the principle of functional autonomy of motives he introduced.

At the time when Allport put forward this idea, the monopoly on the explanation of motivation actually belonged to psychoanalysis, which proceeded from the fact that everything is in the past - including the future. To understand motivation, you need to “dig” the history of a person: the deeper you dig into what happened to a person in the past, the easier it is to understand what is ahead of him.

In “The Trend in Motivational Theory” (see this ed., pp. 93-104), Allport talks about the emerging bias towards indirect methods of diagnosing motivation, based on a basic distrust of what a person himself knows about his motivation. Why not ask a person directly about his motives before "digging" deep? This looks a bit naive at first glance. Allport begins to analyze the situation in more detail, relying on experimental data, and formulates, on the basis of this analysis, the requirements for what the theory of psychodynamics, that is, motivation, should be. He states that, according to a number of studies, projective methods, firstly, do not reflect some of the motives that are clearly and reliably present in a person. Secondly, in people who are healthy, without severe problems, there is a good agreement between the data obtained on the basis of direct and indirect methods of motivation analysis. Their projective methods add little to their direct self-report. In people with personality conflicts, there is a discrepancy between the direct and projective pictures. Their projective methods really make it possible to reveal those motives that are not directly captured. But unless we use methods of direct self-report, says Allport, we will not be able to determine whether we are dealing with motives that are accepted, realized and integrated into the structure of the personality, or with repressed infantile fixations that exert their influence in an implicit way, generating conflicts in personal structure. In these two cases, we have motives that are completely different in origin and characteristics of influence on the personality, but it is impossible to distinguish between these cases without referring to reflective consciousness. It is necessary to combine both sources of information - only then will we have a complete picture.

Allport does not argue with the psychoanalytic view of the roots of human motivation, but introduces a fundamental addition. In the process of development, the initial libidinal energies are transformed, different motives are formed, albeit from the same roots. Some motives arise from others, bud off, separate from them (this happens through their differentiation and integration, which are the two main vectors of personality development) and become functionally autonomous, that is, independent of the original basic motives.

The idea of ​​functional autonomy of motives is itself very simple. It explains why adults have a fairly wide and varied range of motives, despite the fact that the basic initial biological needs are the same; it removes this contradiction and avoids the reduction of the entire motivation of an adult, a mature personality, to the same limited sets of needs. Motivation is always localized in the present and directed not to the past, but to the future, because it is already functionally independent of the past. Therefore, it is of little use to “dig” the past, says Allport with his usual causticity, otherwise it turns out that psychologists and the people they study look in opposite directions: people forward, and psychologists back. Isn't it time for psychologists to turn around?

The structure of personality. The concept of hell. Emphasizing the individual uniqueness of an individual does not prevent Allport from seriously raising the question of its structural organization: "the success of psychological science, like the success of any science, largely depends on its ability to identify the essential units that make up this particular clot of the cosmos" (present ed., p. 354). Analyzing various approaches to the selection of such units (see this ed., pp. 46-61, 354-369), Allport dwells on the concept of features, or dispositions. He did not invent or introduce the concept of traits into psychology, but he was the first to build a generalizing theory and methodology for studying them, gave an explanation of what it is, and his theory is still referred to in textbooks as a dispositional theory of personality. Although Allport was a broad-minded author, far from rigid mechanical and simplified constructions, nevertheless, the concept of personality traits is associated in today's psychology primarily with his name. There was a semi-joking definition in the 1920s that traits are what trait questionnaires measure. Indeed, the concept of traits arose from a measurement procedure, but it was Allport who was able to fill it with real theoretical content and turn the meager definition of a trait as something extracted from questionnaires into a full-blooded scientific psychological concept. At the same time, Allport himself stated unequivocally: “The measurement of different traits was related to the content of my doctoral dissertation, so I got involved in it quite early. But to label my later scientific work as “psychology of traits” is to misunderstand it.”

For Allport, a trait is not just a statistically fixed pattern, a statement of observed behavior, but a certain neuropsychological system specific to a given individual. A trait, at its most superficial, is a predisposition to behave in similar ways in different (but not all) situations. The two aspects of this stability of behavior are stability over time and stability with respect to different situations. Of course, there are situations when we behave differently than usual, but those situations in which the behavior is similar may not be exactly the same. If a person shows the same features (for example, anxiety) every time on an exam, but outside the exam situation these behavioral features are absent, his anxiety cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a personality trait. The latter manifest themselves in a wide range of situations, and not just in one area. Here is an example that Allport gives: if a person is inherently timid, then he will remain calm and restrained in the street, and in the store, and in a taxi, and in the audience, and anywhere. If he is basically friendly, then he will be friendly always and with everyone. The fact that actions, or even habits, are not consistent with certain traits does not mean that these traits do not exist. Thus, a very pedantic, punctual and collected person can become nervous and careless when he misses the train. Further, traits are not independent of each other. There is a correlation between distinctly different features that do not match. As an example, Allport cites consistently observed correlations between intelligence and a sense of humor - it is clear that these are not the same thing, but the correlations are theoretically quite explainable.

Traits transform many different stimuli into a certain set of responses. Different sets of traits transform the same stimuli into different responses and vice versa: traits simplify everything, allow you to respond in the same way to different stimuli. Allport illustrates this effect with a personality trait such as fear of communism. In America in the 1950s, the fear of communist aggression reigned, and the attitude towards communism was transferred to a lot. One category of incentives that people with this trait primarily respond to are communists, the books of Marx, neighbors - blacks and Jews, emigrants, intellectuals and liberals, left-wing organizations ... From the communists themselves comes the gradual generalization of everything connected with them or somehow resembles them. The output of this mechanism reveals such forms of behavior as support nuclear war against communist countries, voting for extremist right-wing political candidates, criticizing the UN, speaking out against dissidents, writing letters of protest to newspapers, denouncing the left to the Un-American Activities Committee, and so on. As a result of the transformation, the stimulus is generalized: it can be predicted that a person with a given trait will respond in the same way to different stimuli belonging to this set. And, accordingly, if he is prone to one reaction, then you can predict his tendency to other reactions from this list.

Unlike most representatives of the psychology of traits, Allport introduces a methodologically fundamental distinction between common traits and traits of personality, or personality dispositions. Common features are universal features by which all or many people can be compared. Based on the normal distribution of these traits in a population, questionnaires are constructed to compare most people in a given culture. But there is more individual, or idiosyncratic traits, as Allport calls them, are individually unique behavioral features that consistently characterize a given person, but have no analogues in the vast majority of other people. Personality, says Allport, can be adequately described only if we take into account not only the general features, determined using the standard psychometric battery, but also individual ones. True, from the methodological point of view, individual traits are much more difficult to determine and measure.

In the last years of his life, Allport gradually began to replace the concept of a personality or individual trait with the concept dispositions as more content loaded. The concept of a feature refers to ordinary language and is too connected with simplified meanings, meanings that are invested in this word in the context of everyday speech. In addition, it has become so commonplace in professional use among psychologists themselves, and also in such different meanings that it was difficult to put the desired content into it. Therefore, Allport left the concept of traits only for common features personalities that are measured by questionnaires, and what he used to call "individual personality traits" began to be called " personal dispositions". The concept of disposition essentially acts as an explanatory concept in relation to the descriptive concept of trait. The feature states a certain sequence in the implementation of a certain behavior, but says nothing about the mechanism and stability of this sequence. In later works, Allport pointed to such a feature of personality traits as the possibility of their empirical establishment, evidence of their presence and stability. The concept of disposition denotes a certain psycho-physiological system, which allows us to talk about the causes of the observed stability. It is an unobservable entity postulated to explain observable phenomena.

A lot depends on how we designate traits. Allport owns one of the first lexicographic studies of personality traits through the analysis of English words denoting certain behavioral features. He emphasizes that the same features of behavior can be called differently. It is necessary to distinguish the features themselves from their names. One person will call some behavior courageous, another aggressive, and yet another vicious. The most important thing is that the designations of traits do not carry any moral or social assessments, although sometimes this cannot be avoided.

According to Allport, one can say that a person has this or that trait, but it cannot be said that he has this or that type - he fits the type or belongs to the type. Allport's position on typologies in general is rather critical. There can be as many typologies as you like, because any typology is based on an abstraction from the integral personality of one segment and draws boundaries according to one single criterion. "Any typology draws boundaries where there really aren't any." Depending on what criterion we take, we will get different types and a different distribution of people according to these types. Therefore, typologies are important and useful for solving practical problems, where we classify people according to the criterion that we practically need. When solving cognitive, research tasks, the task itself does not determine the need to choose any one criterion and ignore all the others. We cannot arbitrarily choose what to take as a basis and what to ignore, so here any typology turns out to be a very artificial procedure.

"I" and "proprium". By themselves, traits cannot fully characterize a person. In 1942 Allport's generalizing article "The Ego in Modern Psychology" appeared (see present edition, pp. 75–92). If in the 19th century it was fashionable to talk about the ego, about the soul, then later these philosophically loaded concepts went out of fashion, and in the lexicon of behaviorism, associationism and psychoanalysis that came to replace them, there was no room for concepts expressing the connectedness of the personality, activity and purposefulness. It is time to return these concepts to psychology.

After describing a number of experimental studies, Allport found one interesting pattern in them: when a person does something that involves him I and he is not indifferent, consistency, stability, correlations of traits are revealed. And when the ego is not involved, a person is not very interested in what he is doing - stability is broken, unity breaks up and traits appear in some tasks, but not in others.

In the 1950s, Allport introduces a new concept to replace the traditional I- the concept of proprium. He did this solely because the concepts of "ego", "lifestyle", "self" were overloaded with other meanings. Proprium, according to Allport, is close to what W. James once referred to as a sphere I, meaning by this what can be denoted by the word "mine" - what I relate to myself. The main thing that Allport developed in connection with the concept of proprium introduced by him, as well as propriative personality structures, is the periodization of personal development, based on the identification of seven aspects of proprium. This periodization is undeservedly little known, although it is original and hardly inferior in its merits to the much more popular periodization of E. Erickson. It is especially important that in this periodization we are talking about the development of personal structures in the full sense of the word, in contrast to most periodizations of age development, which do not speak entirely of a person, or not at all about a person.

The first aspect of proprium development is the feeling of one's body, the bodily self. It occurs in the first year of life when infants begin to become aware of and integrate many of the sensations that come from muscles, tendons, ligaments, internal organs, and so on, and come to feel their bodies. As a result, infants begin to separate, to distinguish themselves from other objects, primarily bodily ones. This feeling remains the mainstay of self-awareness for most of life. Adults do not realize it until everything is in order, until they feel some kind of pain or illness. The second aspect is the feeling I , sense of self-identity. It occurs when the child begins to talk about himself "I". Through language, he feels himself as a reference point, there is an awareness and attribution to himself of his own name. Through this, the child begins to comprehend that he remains the same person, despite all the changes in his interactions with the outside world. This is mainly the second year of life, although development does not stop - all aspects of identity are not established at once, they continue to develop further, but at this age stage they become leading. Allport localizes this feeling in the second year of life, and in the third year of life he refers to the third aspect of proprium - a sense of self-esteem, which is associated with a sense of pride due to the child's successful completion of some tasks. Adults sometimes consider this negativism, because the child opposes almost all the suggestions of an adult, perceiving them as an encroachment on his integrity and autonomy. The fourth stage falls on the age of 4–6 years. Proprium at this age develops through the expansion of the boundaries of the self: children begin to realize that they own not only their physical body, but also some elements of the world around them, including people; this expansion occurs through the meaning of the word "my". This period is characterized by relapses of zealous possessiveness: my ball, my dollhouse, my mother, my sister, and so on. The fifth aspect of the proprium begins to develop at the age of 5–6 years. This is an image of himself that arises when the child begins to realize how others see him, what is expected of him, how they treat him, how they want to see him. And it is during this period that the child comprehends the difference between "I am good" and "I am bad." It turns out I can be different. The sixth stage covers the period between 6 and 12 years, when the child begins to understand that he is able to find rational solutions to life's problems and effectively cope with the demands of reality. Thinking itself appears - reflexive, formal-logical, the child begins to think about the very process of thinking. But this is not independent thinking in the sense that an adult can have it, because at this stage there is no independent morality yet. This stage of development of the proprium reflects a strong conformism towards group values, norms, and moral principles. The child at this stage dogmatically assumes that his family, religion, group is always right. The seventh aspect of the proprium, whose development is largely associated with adolescence, is what Allport calls the propriative drive. The central problem for a teenager is the choice of a career or other life goals. The teenager already knows that the future must be planned, and in this sense he acquires a promising sense of self. There is a focus on the future, the setting of long-term goals, perseverance in finding ways to solve the planned tasks, a feeling that life has meaning - this is the essence of the propriative desire. This period is not limited to adolescence; all these aspects continue to develop throughout life. In addition to these seven aspects, there is another one that has a special status. Allport designates it as self-knowledge, which synthesizes all the other seven aspects.

Mature personality. Allport was the first to introduce the idea of ​​a mature personality into psychology, noting that psychoanalysis never considers an adult as a truly adult. In his 1937 book, he devoted a separate chapter to the mature personality, formulating three criteria for personal maturity. The first criterion is the diversity of autonomous interests, the expansion of the "I". A mature person cannot be narrow and selfish; she considers the interests of other close and significant people as her own. The second is self-consciousness, self-objectification. He also includes here such a characteristic as a sense of humor, which, according to experimental data, correlates best with self-knowledge. The third criterion is the philosophy of life. A mature personality has its own worldview, in contrast to an immature personality.

In later works, he expands and supplements the list of these criteria, describing already 6 main parameters of a mature personality (see this edition, pp. 35–45, 330–354), which incorporate the first three. First, a psychologically mature person has wide boundaries I. Mature people are busy not only with themselves, but also with something outside of themselves, actively participate in many things, have hobbies, are interested in political or religious issues, in what they consider significant. Secondly, they have an inherent ability for close interpersonal relationships. In particular, Allport mentions friendly intimacy and sympathy in this connection. The friendly intimate aspect of relationships is the ability of a person to show deep love to family, close friends, not colored by possessive feelings or jealousy. Empathy is reflected in the ability to be tolerant of differences in values ​​and attitudes between oneself and other people. The third criterion is the absence of large emotional barriers and problems, good self-acceptance. Mature people are able to calmly relate to their own shortcomings and to external difficulties, without reacting to them with emotional breakdowns; they know how to cope with their own conditions and, while expressing their emotions and feelings, they consider how it will affect others. The fourth criterion is that a mature person demonstrates a realistic perception, as well as realistic claims. He sees things as they are, not as he would like them to be. Fifth, a mature person demonstrates the ability for self-knowledge and a philosophical sense of humor - humor directed at oneself. Sixth, a mature person has a whole philosophy of life. What is the content of this philosophy does not play a fundamental role - the best philosophy does not exist.

The reason for these changes in the set of criteria for a mature personality, as his student T. Pettigrew noted at the symposium in memory of Allport, was largely their joint trip to South Africa to study racial problems. There they saw people who fit Allport's original definition of a mature person, but who did evil regularly and routinely. Allport later openly admitted that he underestimated the role of sociocultural factors in the formation of personality.

In this edition, we decided to focus on Allport's main general theoretical views, leaving aside his classical applied studies of social problems: rumors, prejudices, religion and others, which, like everything he touched, bear the easily recognizable imprint of his brilliant intelligence and indifference. Many of them have retained their significance to this day, and work on Russian editions of Allport's monographs on the problems of religiosity and the psychology of prejudice has already begun. But it is precisely his general theoretical positions that give an idea of ​​the scale of his personality, and it is they that make it possible to fill the gaping gaps in our understanding of the development of personality psychology in the 20th century.

This edition is based on two books: a short monograph "Becoming", written on the basis of a course of lectures delivered by Allport at the special invitation of the Terry Foundation, and containing a concentrated expression of the new that Allport introduced into the psychological understanding of personality, and a voluminous textbook "Structure and development of personality ”, published here in its entirety. Not included were chapters of a predominantly review nature, devoted to those aspects of the personality, in the development of which the author's contribution of Allport himself is relatively small. It should, however, be noted that Allport's unique style as a creative individual permeates this entire textbook: whatever he writes about, his handwriting cannot be confused with anyone else; moreover, it is not always possible to determine from the text whether he is writing a textbook for junior students or articles for sophisticated professionals.

In addition to these two books and Autobiography, we included in the publication a number of key theoretical articles by G. Allport, which were included in the golden fund of psychology of the 20th century. In terms of content, these articles partly overlap with both books, as well as books with each other, but this did not bother us. To avoid repetition, one would have to violate the integrity of the texts, and this would be incompatible, first of all, with the whole spirit of Allport's theory, which puts integrity in the first place. Therefore, we deliberately kept some repetitions; Allport is such an author, who cannot be too much, especially since we practically did not know him for a long time.

Every personality psychologist, whether he likes it or not, talks about himself by no means only in his autobiography. Gordon Allport was a unique, active, integrated, mature, forward looking individual. He left us the psychology of a unique, active, integrated, mature, future-oriented personality.

D.A.Leontiev Doctor of Psychology

Gordon Willard Allport is an American psychologist and personality trait theorist. Born November 11, 1897 in Montezuma, Indiana, the youngest of four brothers.

FROM early age Allport was a capable child; he characterized himself as a socially isolated individual, especially successful in literature and poorly prepared physically. At the insistence of his older brother Floyd, who was then a graduate student in psychology at Harvard University, he enters after graduation from the same university.

Although Allport took several courses in psychology at Harvard, he still majored in economics and philosophy. During his senior years, he participated in the development of a number of volunteer service projects.

In 1922, Allport received his doctorate in psychology. His dissertation on personality traits was the first study of its kind to be done in the United States. Over the next two years, Allport worked research work at the Universities of Berlin and Hamburg in Germany and at Cambridge in England. After returning from Europe, he worked for two years as a lecturer at Harvard University in the Department of Social Ethics. Here he taught the course "Personality: its psychological and social aspects." It was the first course in personality psychology in the United States.

In 1926, Allport took up a post as assistant professor of psychology at Dartmouth College, where he remained until 1930. Then he received an invitation from Harvard to work in the same position at the Faculty of Social Relations. In 1942 he was awarded the title of professor of psychology, and until his death in 1967 he continued to hold this post. During his long illustrious career at Harvard, Allport influenced generations of students with his popular lecture course. He also received recognition as "the elder of American scientific research on personality problems."

He was elected president of the American Psychological Association (1939), president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, received the "Outstanding Contribution to Science" award (1964) and many other awards.

Allport was a prolific author. His well-known publications include Personality: A Psychological Interpretation (1937); "Man and his Religion" (1950); "Becoming: the main provisions of the psychology of personality" (1955); "Personality and social conflicts"(1960); "Style and Personal Development" (1961) and "Jenny's Letters" (1965). He is also the co-author of two widely used personality tests: "Study of A-S reactions"(together with f. H. Allport, 1928) and "The Study of Values" (with P. E. Vernon, 1931; revised by G. Lindsay in 1951 and again in 1960). His autobiography is presented in Volume 5 of The History of Psychology in Autobiographies.

In any science, among outstanding scientists one can meet representatives of two main types - "discoverers" and "systematizers". The former discover a new explanatory principle and restructure their field of knowledge in accordance with it. They see reality through the prism of their ideas, they are in danger of bias, one-sidedness, but it is they who provide breakthroughs in science and create scientific schools that further develop the doctrine they founded. The latter, as a rule, have encyclopedic knowledge, which allows them, without introducing new explanatory principles, to systematize and generalize existing knowledge, build general theoretical systems and “make ends meet”. They, of course, also make discoveries, although more private ones. They have students, but no schools, because the school is formed around a bright idea, and not around a system. However, they enjoy great prestige because the ability to integrate different ideas into a system is even rarer than the ability to discover something fundamentally new. There are many examples: the discoverer Plato and the systematizer Aristotle, the discoverer Kant and the systematizer Hegel, the discoverer A.N. Leontiev and the systematizer S.L. Rubinshtein. These two types of scientists complement each other; if one or the other did not exist, science could hardly develop.

Scientists of both types differ in their personal characteristics. To become a "discoverer" you need talent, passion, conviction, work, courage. "Systematizers" are people gifted in a different way: this requires, first of all, intelligence, a broad outlook, erudition, a calmer scientific temperament, which helps rather not to defend one's own, but to combine different points of view. It requires sincere interest and respect for someone else's position, an objectivity rare even for people of science, which allows one to prefer someone else's, more correct, high degree of scientific humility to one's point of view. Finally, there must be professional taste - a flair that allows one to discern through the rubble of traditions and the veil of fashion the sprouts of ideas and approaches to which the future of science belongs. And the nobility, manifested in the disinterested support of these ideas and approaches with all the power of their scientific authority.

All these virtues were combined in Gordon Willard Allport (1897-1967), whose influence on world psychology during his lifetime was difficult to overestimate. Allport belonged to a rare type of systematizers. He was, perhaps, the most intelligent person among those who dealt with the psychology of personality. In one of the articles, he wrote how a psychologist needs imagination. However, the most striking distinguishing feature of Allport himself is logical thinking. Never belonging to the dominant paradigm, he constantly unobtrusively "corrected" the psychology of the individual on the right path. His characteristic style is to smooth over extremes and overcome dichotomies; he can rightfully be called one of the most dialectically thinking psychologists.

He was often called an eclecticist, and he agreed with this, specifying that Goethe distinguished between two types of eclecticism: eclecticism, like a jackdaw, which drags everything that comes into its nest, and systematic eclecticism, based on the desire to build a single whole from what can be found in various places. Eclecticism of the second type is not a vice, but a very productive method of scientific work 1
Cit. on: Evans R.I. Gordon Allport: The man and his ideas. N.Y.: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970. P.19.

Perhaps few (if anyone) can be compared with Allport in terms of the number of ideas included not in textbooks on personality theories, but in the main body of knowledge of personality psychology - often these ideas now seem so obvious that they are mentioned anonymously, without special attribution. Allport stood at the origins of trait theory, humanistic psychology, wrote the first generalizing textbook on personality psychology 2
Allport G.W. Personality: A psychological interpretation. N.Y.: Holt, 1937.

And rewrote it a quarter of a century later 3
Allport G.W. Pattern and growth in personality. N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961.

He legitimized the introduction of qualitative methods into academic science, such research problems as personal maturity, worldview, self-realization, religiosity. He did not make discoveries, did not provide breakthroughs, did not create a school, did not lay a new paradigm, but in many respects it is he who has the merit of creating the psychology of personality as a special subject area - without exaggeration, he can be called the architect of personality psychology. During his life he was awarded all sorts of honors - he was elected president of the American Psychological Association (1939), president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, received the award "For Outstanding Contribution to Science" (1964), etc., but in his autobiography he admitted that among the many In 1963, the most valuable prize for him was a two-volume collection of papers by 55 of his former graduate students with the inscription "from your students - with gratitude for your respect for our individuality." His students are characterized by such distinctive features as the presence of their own position, a holistic approach to the person and scientific non-conformity - otherwise they are very different. Among them are such remarkable psychologists as Leo Postman, Philip Vernon, Robert White, Brewster Smith, Gardner Lindsay, Jerome Bruner and others.

But Allport is great not only because he raised a galaxy of his students, but also because he was able to appreciate many of the advanced ideas of others, in particular, foreign scientists and provide them with significant support in advancing to the American "scientific market", which is generally extremely biased. applies to everything non-American. In the list of his publications, a huge place is occupied by reviews and prefaces to other people's books. This educational activity was characteristic of Allport all his life - starting from a young age, when, after returning home after a two-year stay in Europe, he began to actively enrich American science with the ideas of W. Stern's personology, the psychology of the spirit of E. Spranger and the Gestalt psychology of K. Koffka, V. Köhler and M. Wertheimer. In his adult years, he actively supported the pioneering research of Kurt Lewin, who immigrated to America. In old age, he was able to appreciate the importance of the ideas of existentialism for psychology, introduced the still unknown Viktor Frankl to the American public and supported the creation of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, although he himself did not enter into any of its structures. A survey of clinical psychologists in the United States in the 1950s found that Allport was second only to Freud in his ideological and theoretical influence.

Nor was he a purely armchair thinker. Another distinguishing feature of Allport's scientific style is to always be at the forefront of the social problems of our time. He strove to study first of all what is more important, and not what is simpler. He created articles and books that were landmarks for many specific areas and areas of research - the psychology of expressive movements, the psychology of radio, the psychology of rumors, the psychology of war, the psychology of religion. His 600-page work on the nature of prejudice 4
Allport G.W. The nature of prejudice. Cambridge (Mass.): Addison-Wesley, 1954.

For almost half a century, it has remained the main and unsurpassed source on this problem, and its relevance is growing, unfortunately, every year. The total circulation of this book by 1970 had reached half a million copies.

* * *

Gordon Allport's autobiography is included in this volume. Therefore, there is no need to retell in detail his life path, which, however, is quite simple and straightforward - this is the path of an excellent student in the good sense of the word, who consistently applies his outstanding intellect and diligence to achieve goals and naturally achieves them.

Gordon Allport was born in 1897 into a family of provincial American intellectuals. He is a year younger than Piaget and Vygotsky, seven years younger than Levin, three years older than Fromm, five years older than A. R. Luria and P. Ya. Galperin, and six years older than A. N. Leontiev. He graduated from school second in academic achievement out of 100 graduates and entered the famous Harvard University - in the footsteps of his older brother Floyd, who later left a very noticeable mark in social psychology and the psychology of perception.

At Harvard, Gordon Allport's intellectual faculties were brought to full strength and direction. In parallel with psychology, he was engaged in social ethics - from a young age, his interest was divided between psychology and the wider social context, and it was not by chance that in the 1930s he created an inherently interdisciplinary department of social relations at Harvard, synthesizing the approaches of psychology, sociology and anthropology.

A distinctive feature of Allport's scientific outlook was the rather great influence of European psychology, especially William Stern, Eduard Spranger and Gestalt psychology. This was largely facilitated by the young scientist's stay in Europe in the early 1920s; although most textbooks pay attention only to Allport's meeting with Freud, there was no conversation between them. Allport was open to a variety of influences, but his powerful intellect allowed him to process them and go his own way.

Under the influence of European ideas, Allport, having taken up the study of personality psychology in the 1920s, primarily personality traits and expressive movements, quickly came to the need to consider the whole personality, and not its fragments. At the university, he was taught in the behavioral tradition, in the spirit of the scheme S-O-R, where O is an organism that mediates the connection between a stimulus S and reaction R. In fact, says Allport, we find a small S and small R but very, very large O5
Cit. on: Evans R. I. Gordon Allport: The man and his ideas. N. Y.: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970. P. 14.

However, approaching the whole person from a scientific standpoint, states Allport, is not easy: “as one person noted, the only thing that can be done with the whole person is to give her flowers.” 6
Ibidem. P.9.

Nevertheless, Allport was the first in world psychology to build an integral theoretical building of the scientific psychology of personality. His book Personality: A Psychological Interpretation, published in 1937, began much of the academic psychology of personality. Personality, according to Allport, is "the dynamic organization of the psychophysical systems of the individual, which determines the unique adaptation of the individual to his environment" 7
Allport G.W. Personality: A psychological interpretation. N.Y.: Holt, 1937. P. 48.

Interestingly, he reproduces almost the same definition 24 years later, only excluding from it (which, however, is very significant) the concept of adaptation: “Personality is a dynamic organization of the psychophysical systems of an individual, which determines his characteristic behavior and thinking” 8
Allport G.W. Pattern and growth in personality. N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961.

Personality and character are, in fact, one and the same, only character is a concept that is evaluatively loaded, and personality is the same, devoid of evaluation. 9
Allport G.W. Personality: A psychological interpretation. N.Y.: Holt, 1937. P. 52.

Individuality. The problem of individuality and its study in psychology is a question that remained central for Allport throughout his life. He devotes many pages to discussing the problem of uniqueness, the problem of the individual and the general in relation to the psychology of personality. It was he who made the dilemma of the nomothetic and the idiographic the center of consideration in psychology. The nomothetic approach is an attempt to bring any psychological manifestations under general patterns. The idiographic approach is the desire to describe the individual originality of a given case not as a particular manifestation of some general patterns, but as something unique. "Each person in itself is essentially a special law of nature" 10
Ibidem. P. 21.

All psychology, and above all practical, still continues to varying degrees to rush between these two poles. On the one hand, the uniqueness of each person is difficult to deny, on the other hand, general patterns are a prerequisite for the application of some methods, techniques, principles. This problem is especially acute in counseling and psychotherapy, in particular, in the form of a dilemma: to rely on methods and techniques, or to work without relying on them, with the personality of the psychotherapist as his main “tool”.

Allport was the first to subject the problem of the general and the individual in personality to a detailed methodological reflection. In the spirit of the "systematic eclecticism" position, he finds the dilemma "nomothetic - idiographic" unnecessarily pointed; truth in their combination and synthesis. Allport stressed that we should not forget that each person is unique, but this does not mean that it is impossible to find something in common in people. "A general law can be a law about how uniqueness is exercised" 11
Ibidem. P. 194.

The law of uniqueness is the basic law of personality psychology.

The most complete expression of the individual uniqueness of an individual is the sphere of his expressive, or expressive, manifestations, in relation to which Allport uses the concept of style. “Only by style do we recognize Chopin's music, Dali's paintings, and Aunt Sally's macaroni” (Now ed., p. 440). Allport paid great attention to this area of ​​research since the late 1920s. The experimental data he cites indicate that the subjects are surprisingly successful in identifying different forms of expressive manifestations - handwriting, gait, face, etc., belonging to the same people, although the mechanisms of this stylistic unity of individuality remain poorly understood. A person most of all manifests himself as an individuality not in what he does, but in how.

Activity and functional autonomy of motives. The fundamental feature of the personality - and here Allport was also practically the first to put this at the forefront - is its activity, proactivity, as he calls it, as opposed to the postulate of reactivity, on which all behaviorism is built. Allport categorically disagrees with the opinion of the majority of psychologists who attribute to man the desire for homeostasis, the reduction of stress. For him, a person is a creature striving to establish and maintain a certain level of tension, and the desire to reduce tension is a sign of ill health. His theory of personality as an open system (see this edition, pp. 62–74) is a new stage in the development of these ideas.

Perhaps the most striking expression of Allport's understanding of personality as active is the principle of functional autonomy of motives he introduced.

At the time when Allport put forward this idea, the monopoly on the explanation of motivation actually belonged to psychoanalysis, which proceeded from the fact that everything is in the past - including the future. To understand motivation, you need to “dig” the history of a person: the deeper you dig into what happened to a person in the past, the easier it is to understand what is ahead of him.

In “The Trend in Motivational Theory” (see this ed., pp. 93-104), Allport talks about the emerging bias towards indirect methods of diagnosing motivation, based on a basic distrust of what a person himself knows about his motivation. Why not ask a person directly about his motives before "digging" deep? This looks a bit naive at first glance. Allport begins to analyze the situation in more detail, relying on experimental data, and formulates, on the basis of this analysis, the requirements for what the theory of psychodynamics, that is, motivation, should be. He states that, according to a number of studies, projective methods, firstly, do not reflect some of the motives that are clearly and reliably present in a person. Secondly, in people who are healthy, without severe problems, there is a good agreement between the data obtained on the basis of direct and indirect methods of motivation analysis. Their projective methods add little to their direct self-report. In people with personality conflicts, there is a discrepancy between the direct and projective pictures. Their projective methods really make it possible to reveal those motives that are not directly captured. But unless we use methods of direct self-report, says Allport, we will not be able to determine whether we are dealing with motives that are accepted, realized and integrated into the structure of the personality, or with repressed infantile fixations that exert their influence in an implicit way, generating conflicts in personal structure. In these two cases, we have motives that are completely different in origin and characteristics of influence on the personality, but it is impossible to distinguish between these cases without referring to reflective consciousness. It is necessary to combine both sources of information - only then will we have a complete picture.

Allport does not argue with the psychoanalytic view of the roots of human motivation, but introduces a fundamental addition. In the process of development, the initial libidinal energies are transformed, different motives are formed, albeit from the same roots. Some motives arise from others, bud off, separate from them (this happens through their differentiation and integration, which are the two main vectors of personality development) and become functionally autonomous, that is, independent of the original basic motives.

The idea of ​​functional autonomy of motives is itself very simple. It explains why adults have a fairly wide and varied range of motives, despite the fact that the basic initial biological needs are the same; it removes this contradiction and avoids the reduction of the entire motivation of an adult, a mature personality, to the same limited sets of needs. Motivation is always localized in the present and directed not to the past, but to the future, because it is already functionally independent of the past. Therefore, it is of little use to “dig” the past, says Allport with his usual causticity, otherwise it turns out that psychologists and the people they study look in opposite directions: people forward, and psychologists back. Isn't it time for psychologists to turn around? 12
Cm.: Allport G. W. Becoming: basic considerations for the psychology of personality. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1955. Present. ed. pp. 166–216.

The structure of personality. The concept of hell. Emphasizing the individual uniqueness of the individual does not prevent Allport from seriously raising the question of its structural organization: "the success of psychological science, like the success of any science, largely depends on its ability to identify the essential units that make up this particular clot of the cosmos" (present ed. ., p. 354). Analyzing various approaches to the selection of such units (see this ed., pp. 46-61, 354-369), Allport dwells on the concept of features, or dispositions. He did not invent or introduce the concept of traits into psychology, but he was the first to build a generalizing theory and methodology for studying them, gave an explanation of what it is, and his theory is still referred to in textbooks as a dispositional theory of personality. Although Allport was a broad-minded author, far from rigid mechanical and simplified constructions, nevertheless, the concept of personality traits is associated in today's psychology primarily with his name. There was a semi-joking definition in the 1920s that traits are what trait questionnaires measure. Indeed, the concept of traits arose from a measurement procedure, but it was Allport who was able to fill it with real theoretical content and turn the meager definition of a trait as something extracted from questionnaires into a full-blooded scientific psychological concept. At the same time, Allport himself stated unequivocally: “The measurement of different traits was related to the content of my doctoral dissertation, so I got involved in it quite early. But to slap the “psychology of traits” label on my subsequent scientific work is to misunderstand it.” 13
Cit. on: Evans R. I. Gordon Allport: The man and his ideas. N. Y.: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970. P. 24.

For Allport, a trait is not just a statistically fixed pattern, a statement of observed behavior, but a certain neuropsychological system specific to a given individual. A trait, at its most superficial, is a predisposition to behave in similar ways in different (but not all) situations. The two aspects of this stability of behavior are stability over time and stability with respect to different situations. Of course, there are situations when we behave differently than usual, but those situations in which the behavior is similar may not be exactly the same. If a person shows the same features (for example, anxiety) every time on an exam, but outside the exam situation these behavioral features are absent, his anxiety cannot, strictly speaking, be considered a personality trait. The latter manifest themselves in a wide range of situations, and not just in one area. Here is an example that Allport gives: if a person is inherently timid, then he will remain calm and restrained in the street, and in the store, and in a taxi, and in the audience, and anywhere. If he is basically friendly, then he will be friendly always and with everyone. The fact that actions, or even habits, are not consistent with certain traits does not mean that these traits do not exist. Thus, a very pedantic, punctual and collected person can become nervous and careless when he misses the train. Further, traits are not independent of each other. There is a correlation between distinctly different features that do not match. As an example, Allport cites consistently observed correlations between intelligence and a sense of humor - it is clear that these are not the same thing, but the correlations are theoretically quite explainable.

Traits transform many different stimuli into a certain set of responses. Different sets of traits transform the same stimuli into different responses and vice versa: traits simplify everything, allow you to respond in the same way to different stimuli. Allport illustrates this effect with a personality trait such as fear of communism. In America in the 1950s, the fear of communist aggression reigned, and the attitude towards communism was transferred to a lot. One category of incentives that people with this trait primarily respond to are communists, the books of Marx, neighbors - blacks and Jews, emigrants, intellectuals and liberals, left-wing organizations ... From the communists themselves comes the gradual generalization of everything connected with them or somehow resembles them. The output of this mechanism reveals such forms of behavior as supporting a nuclear war against the countries of the communist camp, voting for extremist right-wing political candidates, criticizing the UN, speaking out against dissidents, writing letters of protest to newspapers, denunciations of leftists to the Commission on Un-American Activities, and so on. Further 14
Cm.: Allport G. W. Pattern and growth in personality. N. Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961. Present. ed. pp. 217–461.

As a result of the transformation, the stimulus is generalized: it can be predicted that a person with a given trait will respond in the same way to different stimuli belonging to this set. And, accordingly, if he is prone to one reaction, then you can predict his tendency to other reactions from this list.

In any science, among outstanding scientists one can meet representatives of two main types - "discoverers" and "systematizers". The former discover a new explanatory principle and restructure their field of knowledge in accordance with it. They see reality through the prism of their ideas, they are in danger of bias, one-sidedness, but it is they who provide breakthroughs in science and create scientific schools that further develop the doctrine they founded. The latter, as a rule, have encyclopedic knowledge, which allows them, without introducing new explanatory principles, to systematize and generalize existing knowledge, build general theoretical systems and “make ends meet”. They, of course, also make discoveries, although more private ones. They have students, but no schools, because the school is formed around a bright idea, and not around a system. However, they enjoy great prestige because the ability to integrate different ideas into a system is even rarer than the ability to discover something fundamentally new. There are many examples: the discoverer Plato and the systematizer Aristotle, the discoverer Kant and the systematizer Hegel, the discoverer A.N. Leontiev and the systematizer S.L. Rubinshtein. These two types of scientists complement each other; if one or the other did not exist, science could hardly develop.

Scientists of both types differ in their personal characteristics. To become a "discoverer" you need talent, passion, conviction, work, courage. "Systematizers" are people gifted in a different way: this requires, first of all, intelligence, a broad outlook, erudition, a calmer scientific temperament, which helps rather not to defend one's own, but to combine different points of view. It requires sincere interest and respect for someone else's position, an objectivity rare even for people of science, which allows one to prefer someone else's, more correct, high degree of scientific humility to one's point of view. Finally, there must be professional taste - a flair that allows one to discern through the rubble of traditions and the veil of fashion the sprouts of ideas and approaches to which the future of science belongs. And the nobility, manifested in the disinterested support of these ideas and approaches with all the power of their scientific authority.

All these virtues were combined in Gordon Willard Allport (1897-1967), whose influence on world psychology during his lifetime was difficult to overestimate. Allport belonged to a rare type of systematizers. He was, perhaps, the most intelligent person among those who dealt with the psychology of personality. In one of the articles, he wrote how a psychologist needs imagination. However, the most striking distinguishing feature of Allport himself is logical thinking. Never belonging to the dominant paradigm, he constantly unobtrusively "corrected" the psychology of the individual on the right path. His characteristic style is to smooth over extremes and overcome dichotomies; he can rightfully be called one of the most dialectically thinking psychologists. He was often called an eclecticist, and he agreed with this, specifying that Goethe distinguished between two types of eclecticism: eclecticism, like a jackdaw, which drags everything that comes into its nest, and systematic eclecticism, based on the desire to build a single whole from what can be found in various places. Eclecticism of the second type is not a vice, but a very productive method of scientific work.

Perhaps few (if anyone) can be compared with Allport in terms of the number of ideas included not in textbooks on personality theories, but in the main body of knowledge of personality psychology - often these ideas now seem so obvious that they are mentioned anonymously, without special attribution. Allport stood at the origins of trait theory, humanistic psychology, wrote the first generalizing textbook on personality psychology and rewrote it a quarter of a century later, legitimized the introduction of qualitative methods into academic science, such research problems as personal maturity, worldview, self-realization, religiosity. He did not make discoveries, did not provide breakthroughs, did not create a school, did not lay a new paradigm, but in many respects it is he who has the merit of creating the psychology of personality as a special subject area - without exaggeration, he can be called the architect of personality psychology. During his life he was awarded all sorts of honors - he was elected president of the American Psychological Association (1939), president of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, received the award "For Outstanding Contribution to Science" (1964), etc., but in his autobiography he admitted that among the many In 1963, the most valuable prize for him was a two-volume collection of papers by 55 of his former graduate students with the inscription "from your students - with gratitude for your respect for our individuality." His students are characterized by such distinctive features as the presence of their own position, a holistic approach to the person and scientific non-conformity - otherwise they are very different. Among them are such remarkable psychologists as Leo Postman, Philip Vernon, Robert White, Brewster Smith, Gardner Lindsay, Jerome Bruner and others.

But Allport is great not only because he raised a galaxy of his students, but also because he was able to appreciate many of the advanced ideas of others, in particular, foreign scientists and provide them with significant support in advancing to the American "scientific market", which is generally extremely biased. applies to everything non-American. In the list of his publications, a huge place is occupied by reviews and prefaces to other people's books. This educational activity was characteristic of Allport all his life - starting from a young age, when, after returning home after a two-year stay in Europe, he began to actively enrich American science with the ideas of W. Stern's personology, the psychology of the spirit of E. Spranger and the Gestalt psychology of K. Koffka, V. Köhler and M. Wertheimer. In his adult years, he actively supported the pioneering research of Kurt Lewin, who immigrated to America. In old age, he was able to appreciate the importance of the ideas of existentialism for psychology, introduced the still unknown Viktor Frankl to the American public and supported the creation of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, although he himself did not enter into any of its structures. A survey of clinical psychologists in the United States in the 1950s found that Allport was second only to Freud in his ideological and theoretical influence.

Nor was he a purely armchair thinker. Another distinguishing feature of Allport's scientific style is to always be at the forefront of the social problems of our time. He strove to study first of all what is more important, and not what is simpler. He created articles and books that were landmarks for many specific areas and areas of research - the psychology of expressive movements, the psychology of radio, the psychology of rumors, the psychology of war, the psychology of religion. His 600-page work on the nature of prejudice has been the main and unsurpassed source on this problem for almost half a century, and its relevance is growing, unfortunately, every year. The total circulation of this book by 1970 had reached half a million copies.

Gordon Allport's autobiography is included in this volume. Therefore, there is no need to retell in detail his life path, which, however, is quite simple and straightforward - this is the path of an excellent student in the good sense of the word, who consistently applies his outstanding intellect and diligence to achieve goals and naturally achieves them.

Gordon Allport was born in 1897 into a family of provincial American intellectuals. He is a year younger than Piaget and Vygotsky, seven years younger than Levin, three years older than Fromm, five years older than A. R. Luria and P. Ya. Galperin, and six years older than A. N. Leontiev. He graduated from school second in academic achievement out of 100 graduates and entered the famous Harvard University - in the footsteps of his older brother Floyd, who later left a very noticeable mark in social psychology and the psychology of perception.