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Adult personality development: Theories and concepts volume 1
BOOK REVIEWS
725
dissociation of mind and body is a relatively recent phenomenon in medicine and medical quoting Hippocrates as saying that “the nature of the body can only be understood as a our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the learn yet again. This book takes us in the right direction, challenging the orthodoxy of
science, with Plato in his dialogues whole, for this is the great error of body”. A lesson we must begin to our times.
REFERENCE Rosch, P. (1984). Stress and cancer. In Cooper, C. L, Psychosocial
stress and cancer.
Chichester
and New York: John Wiley. CARY L. COOPER
L. S. WRIGHTSMAN: Adult Personality Development: Theories and Concepts Volume 1.222 pp. f 15.50. ISBN O-8039-4400-4. Adult Personality Development: Applications Volume 2.242 pp. f 15.50. ISBN 0-8039-4402-O. Thousand Oaks, Sage (1994). One would expect from the title a serious text either on Personality or on Development or perhaps even a creative juxtaposition of the two. Readers who harbour this sort of expectation will find themselves somewhat disappointed. Whilst these volumes do contain several good chapters, on the whole the books must be regarded as difficult and flawed. There are a number of reasons for this judgement. One of the most salient problems with the book has to do with clarity and communication. Rather than the author stating clearly his premises, definitions and most of all his intentions and hypotheses at the beginning, the reader is left to fight his way through a morass of theories, definitions and details. There isn’t enough integration. What comes out is that one of the ideas holding the book together is that ‘things change’. Thus people change, circumstances change, values change and relationships change. There isn’t the level of abstraction that I would like to see. The author’s suggestion that his approach is eclectic is no excuse for things being held together by this tenuous thread. It is also no excuse for the fact that transitions between some chapters are sorely lacking. Nor can it justify the far too frequent digressions and the author’s tendency to intersperse sections on theory, methods, and empirical results contrary to the set out ‘game plan’ of theory in the first volume and applications in the second. Many important points seem to be stated implicitly rather than explicitly. For example, the author defines three broad theoretical perspectives in the first chapter, a static approach, a stage theory approach, and a dialectic approach. It is not clear that this bringing together of disparate ideas is also selection. As someone with an extensive background in personality and in developmental psychology this reviewer was irritated to discover that approaches to personality and behaviour which many people regard as very important are either not mentioned at all or are mentioned in passing while, for example, other approaches such as depth psychology in all its forms are given chapters. Curiously enough, by the end of the first volume the author has come out in favour of a dialectical approach. His chapter on dialectic has only nine pages while the chapters on static and stage theories take up most of the book. Trait theory gets one page and behaviour genetics are not mentioned at all in the first volume. As the author doesn’t make his choices clear a ‘naive’ reader could indeed feel uncomfortable to later discover that important theories aren’t addressed appropriately. Had the author used the term ‘individual’ instead of personality this reviewer would have been much happier. A similar problem arises with regard to development. It is really hard to know what the author means by development. What comes out through the course of the book is that the author means implicitly ‘change’. While change is certainly an important aspect of development the reader is left to surmise how, why, when and where. While several salient theories of development are examined, other equally important ones aren’t even touched upon. Thus an ecological perspective, which could have gone a long way to help the readers’ understanding of development, isn’t included. The concept of attachment barely appears when talking about marriage, sex or death. Many developmental tasks in adulthood involve coping for example with job changes, divorce, etc. I couldn’t find any reference to coping or social support or the like. These seem to me to be serious oversights. The author goes into exceptional detail on the subjects of Psychohistory (Vol. I, Chap. 5), Using Personal Documents (Vol. 2, Chap. 8) and the Idiographic Approach (Vol. 2, Chap. 9). Sometimes he is for sometimes he is against. In essence these are chapters on methodology. Key research methods in personality and in development are either mentioned in passing or not at all. Perhaps in order to make up for the shortcomings the author has included a lot of gossipy type examples and some trendy social psychology topics like sex roles, androgyny, and homosexuality. In addition one has the feeling at times that the author ‘fudges’ a bit. He has copious citations. When one looks through his references one finds that many of the citations are from newspapers and magazines. At times I felt the author treats arguments as refuted although he had hardly got a glove on them. He traces the dialectic to Socrates although it is commonly attributed to Zenon of Alea. His section on Freud relies heavily on Hall and Lindzey (another textbook) rather than on original sources. Similarly there is hardly an indication that he has read any factor analytic sources when going into the ‘big five’ factors. At the end of the first volume he tries to reconcile trait oriented and change oriented views of personality. The idea is that megatraits may stay the same while other aspects of personality change. This he calls a dialectic approach. It’s a great idea but Wrightsman is about 40 years too late. If he had read the trait theorists in the original he could have saved himself the effort. R. FABRY
725
dissociation of mind and body is a relatively recent phenomenon in medicine and medical quoting Hippocrates as saying that “the nature of the body can only be understood as a our day in the treatment of the human body, that physicians separate the soul from the learn yet again. This book takes us in the right direction, challenging the orthodoxy of
science, with Plato in his dialogues whole, for this is the great error of body”. A lesson we must begin to our times.
REFERENCE Rosch, P. (1984). Stress and cancer. In Cooper, C. L, Psychosocial
stress and cancer.
Chichester
and New York: John Wiley. CARY L. COOPER
L. S. WRIGHTSMAN: Adult Personality Development: Theories and Concepts Volume 1.222 pp. f 15.50. ISBN O-8039-4400-4. Adult Personality Development: Applications Volume 2.242 pp. f 15.50. ISBN 0-8039-4402-O. Thousand Oaks, Sage (1994). One would expect from the title a serious text either on Personality or on Development or perhaps even a creative juxtaposition of the two. Readers who harbour this sort of expectation will find themselves somewhat disappointed. Whilst these volumes do contain several good chapters, on the whole the books must be regarded as difficult and flawed. There are a number of reasons for this judgement. One of the most salient problems with the book has to do with clarity and communication. Rather than the author stating clearly his premises, definitions and most of all his intentions and hypotheses at the beginning, the reader is left to fight his way through a morass of theories, definitions and details. There isn’t enough integration. What comes out is that one of the ideas holding the book together is that ‘things change’. Thus people change, circumstances change, values change and relationships change. There isn’t the level of abstraction that I would like to see. The author’s suggestion that his approach is eclectic is no excuse for things being held together by this tenuous thread. It is also no excuse for the fact that transitions between some chapters are sorely lacking. Nor can it justify the far too frequent digressions and the author’s tendency to intersperse sections on theory, methods, and empirical results contrary to the set out ‘game plan’ of theory in the first volume and applications in the second. Many important points seem to be stated implicitly rather than explicitly. For example, the author defines three broad theoretical perspectives in the first chapter, a static approach, a stage theory approach, and a dialectic approach. It is not clear that this bringing together of disparate ideas is also selection. As someone with an extensive background in personality and in developmental psychology this reviewer was irritated to discover that approaches to personality and behaviour which many people regard as very important are either not mentioned at all or are mentioned in passing while, for example, other approaches such as depth psychology in all its forms are given chapters. Curiously enough, by the end of the first volume the author has come out in favour of a dialectical approach. His chapter on dialectic has only nine pages while the chapters on static and stage theories take up most of the book. Trait theory gets one page and behaviour genetics are not mentioned at all in the first volume. As the author doesn’t make his choices clear a ‘naive’ reader could indeed feel uncomfortable to later discover that important theories aren’t addressed appropriately. Had the author used the term ‘individual’ instead of personality this reviewer would have been much happier. A similar problem arises with regard to development. It is really hard to know what the author means by development. What comes out through the course of the book is that the author means implicitly ‘change’. While change is certainly an important aspect of development the reader is left to surmise how, why, when and where. While several salient theories of development are examined, other equally important ones aren’t even touched upon. Thus an ecological perspective, which could have gone a long way to help the readers’ understanding of development, isn’t included. The concept of attachment barely appears when talking about marriage, sex or death. Many developmental tasks in adulthood involve coping for example with job changes, divorce, etc. I couldn’t find any reference to coping or social support or the like. These seem to me to be serious oversights. The author goes into exceptional detail on the subjects of Psychohistory (Vol. I, Chap. 5), Using Personal Documents (Vol. 2, Chap. 8) and the Idiographic Approach (Vol. 2, Chap. 9). Sometimes he is for sometimes he is against. In essence these are chapters on methodology. Key research methods in personality and in development are either mentioned in passing or not at all. Perhaps in order to make up for the shortcomings the author has included a lot of gossipy type examples and some trendy social psychology topics like sex roles, androgyny, and homosexuality. In addition one has the feeling at times that the author ‘fudges’ a bit. He has copious citations. When one looks through his references one finds that many of the citations are from newspapers and magazines. At times I felt the author treats arguments as refuted although he had hardly got a glove on them. He traces the dialectic to Socrates although it is commonly attributed to Zenon of Alea. His section on Freud relies heavily on Hall and Lindzey (another textbook) rather than on original sources. Similarly there is hardly an indication that he has read any factor analytic sources when going into the ‘big five’ factors. At the end of the first volume he tries to reconcile trait oriented and change oriented views of personality. The idea is that megatraits may stay the same while other aspects of personality change. This he calls a dialectic approach. It’s a great idea but Wrightsman is about 40 years too late. If he had read the trait theorists in the original he could have saved himself the effort. R. FABRY