A NEW THEORY OF PERSONALITY
So, what if there was to be a new theory of personality? What would such a theory contain? At some point, every budding Psychologist has, perhaps, asked that question.
"What am I as a human being and what kind of individual am I?" (Berrill, N.J. Man's Emerging Mind, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1955.) A beginning to answering the Berrill question is to try to rephrase the Platonic question "Who am I?" Carl Rogers (in Rogers, Carl, Client Centered Therapy, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1951.) lists several factors in the development of a Rogerian theory of personality beginning with the self (the "I") as center. The Rogerian question would be: "Who is my self." In the Rogerian conception, the self is not a thing, per se, but a moving, evolving and emergent person. (Where Frued was more object oriented, Rogers was more process oriented.)
"In my attempt to discover who I am, I often find the object of my search is a moving target. There is no 'thing' to find. It is seldom possible to create a still camera shot of my being. The discovering is the significant aspect - not the discovered." (Gibb, Jack, Trust, A New View of Personal and Organizational Development, The Guild of Tutors Press, Los Angeles, 1978.) It could be that a new Rogerian theory of personality would be an action oriented philosophy instead of an object oriented approach.
Rogers thought that a new discipline, labeled Humanistic Psychology, could be created to combine, compare, contrast and ignore parts of Science and Psychoanalysis. The conception began to be known as "the Me-Generation". The idea was that since self is the center then the client is the center of the therapeutic treatment modality. The approach became known as Client-Centered Therapy. Later, the concept was known as "Rogerian".
Curiously, Rogers disliked the Rogerian approach (known by this author from personal contact) and said that if he had it all to do over again, Rogers would begin with Transpersonal thinking. The Rogerian approach was a step in the right direction, for Rogers, but did not go far enough. There were aspects of human behavior which bothered Rogers and which were not covered adequately by Rogerian theory. An example was in that Rogers was fascinated with the idea that friends and family at home reported they knew when their loved ones were in extreme trouble on the Titanic as the ship was sinking. Rogers, however, was stuck in the reputation that Rogerian thinking had. Rogers said that he would not publish in the Transpersonal arena as he feared that whatever reputation he had established would lose its credibility. Others would have to lead the way. Carl Rogers friend and colleague, Abraham Maslow, did not have those particular qualms and published a book late in life about higher consciousness (Maslow, Abraham, The Higher States of Consciousness, Harper and Row, New York).
This means that even though Rogers and Maslow created (with others) a major school of Psychology to follow Science and Psychology, they were ready to deviate. Thus, the Third Force in Psychology (Humanistic) became closely followed by a fourth school: The Transpersonal School of Psychology. (Transpersonal Psychology can, for this point, be defined as "Trans" meaning beyond and "Personal" meaning the person.)
Transpersonal is a psychology where the self is not the center but relies, rather, in a transcending of self to a higher state of consciousness. In this effort, part of the various schools of psychology sought in the 1960s to integrate Science plus Eastern and Western thought into the West. "I have a deep conviction that science, as a method of sharpening and refining knowedge, can be applied to the human experience we call transpersonal or spiritual, and that both science and our spiritual traditions will be enriched as a result. In particualr, we will create a scientific transpersonal psychology, or psychologies, a truly Western understanding of the spiritual. " (Tart, Charles, Transpersonal Psychologies, Harper Colophon Books, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1975.)
Since the publication of Tart's Transpersonal Psychologies, there has been further development. Curiously, the term "Transpersonal Psychology" has not even been heard of late. Perhaps it was the Fourth Force in Psychology or, as Tart suggests, the new creation may be "or psychologies" and Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth Forces are being created. The possiblity would be in keeping with the explosion of the Information Age and the rise of societal diversity and polarization. The direction may not be in creating new schools of psychology but in creating new technologies.
The current rage is not creation of new theory, per se, but in creating new technology. The trend is toward an integration of person and machine (in "cyberspace" ). The object is to create a space which is both person and machine: a "Virtual Reality". In that combination Science and the Personality are combined into one unit. The unit would be a cyborg living in cyberspace:
"Oh look,' she said to no one in particular. ' Its Miss Finland. Wow, look at that red dress.' For an instant, Mrs. Tredgrove forgot that only she could see the televised beauty pageant. Pulling off the visor, as test of a new product called Virtual Vision Sport, she laughed. 'Its hard to remember that you're the only one watching,' she said." (Chartrand, Sabra, New York Times, June 20, 1993)
The above is not a new technology of the future, it is a new technology of now. Virtual Vision is in stores such as The Sharper Image. While it may be true that Mrs. Tredgrove is not a cyborg (consisting partly of biological and partly of mechanical parts), she does have most of her consciousness hooked to a machine even though she was strolling in a shopping mall at the time. Perhaps, Mrs. Tredgrove has a pacemaker, a prosthetic leg, false teeth, a wig, a painted face and so on. Which part is human and which part is "man made"? Is this Transpersonal? Where is her center? The appearance is that the center of Mrs. Tredgrove is in "Cyberspace".
The technological process changes the question of "Who am I?"
Lindblom
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