Towards a theory of personality

Abstract

There are many indications that personality psychology, with its eclecticism and historically oriented fragmentation, is still a pre-theoretical discipline. Personality psychology seems to be a bizarre field, although not the only one, where almost everything a little bit more complex than a plain descriptive narrative can be labeled a theory. A sloppy story containing a certain amount of critical words like “Ego”, “defense”, or “sublimation” can pretend to be a theory. A description of a simple flowchart connecting loosely defined concepts can also be called a theory. All this has led to a situation in which the label “personality theory” has no reasonable meaning outside introductory psychology textbooks.

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