Personality Theories JEAN PIAGET

  JEAN PIAGET   1896 - 1980 Dr. C. George Boeree      Biography Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature with an interest in local history. His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was intelligent and energetic, but Jean found her a bit neurotic -- an impression that he said led to his interest in psychology, but away from pathology! The oldest child, he was...

Personality Theories CARL ROGERS

CARL ROGERS   1902 - 1987 Dr. C. George Boeree   Biography Carl Rogers was born January 8, 1902 in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, the fourth of six children. His father was a successful civil engineer and his mother was a housewife and devout Christian. His education started in the second grade, because he could already read before kindergarten.      When Carl was 12, his family moved to a farm about 30 miles west of Chicago, a...

Personality Theories ABRAHAM MASLOW

ABRAHAM MASLOW 1908-1970 Dr. C. George Boeree   Biography Abraham Harold Maslow was born April 1, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the first of seven children born to his parents, who themselves were uneducated Jewish immigrants from Russia. His parents, hoping for the best for their children in the new world, pushed him hard for academic success. Not surprisingly, he became very lonely as a boy, and found his refuge in books.     To satisfy his parent...

Personality Theories GORDON ALLPORT

GORDON ALLPORT   1897 - 1967     Dr. C. George Boeree   Gordon Allport was born in Montezuma, Indiana, in 1897, the youngest of four brothers. A shy and studious boy, he was teased quite a bit and lived a fairly isolated childhood. His father was a country doctor, which meant that Gordon grew up with his father’s patients and nurses and all the paraphernalia of a miniature hospital. Everyone worked hard. His early life was otherwise fairly pleasant...

Personality Theories ALBERT BANDURA

ALBERT BANDURA   1925 - present Dr. C. George Boeree   Biography Albert Bandura was born December 4, 1925, in the small town of Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada. He was educated in a small elementary school and high school in one, with minimal resources, yet a remarkable success rate. After high school, he worked for one summer filling holes on the Alaska Highway in the Yukon. He received his bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia i...

Personality Theories B. F. SKINNER

B. F. SKINNER 1904 - 1990 Dr. C. George Boeree Biography Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in the small Pennsylvania town of Susquehanna. His father was a lawyer, and his mother a strong and intelligent housewife. His upbringing was old-fashioned and hard-working. Burrhus was an active, out-going boy who loved the outdoors and building things, and actually enjoyed school. His life was not without its tragedies, however. In particular, his brother died at ...

Personality Theories Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis 1913 - 2007   Since I began putting these personality theories on the internet, I have received requests to add this or that theorist, sometimes with the added notion that I must be a total dunderhead to have left out such a genius! I added Allport, for example, on the basis of one such request. But most I did not add, because, however much the writer loves the genius, the genius is rarely up to the standards set by theorists such as Rogers or Horney, much less Jun...

Personality Theories KAREN HORNEY

KAREN HORNEY 1885 - 1952 Dr. C. George Boeree Biography Karen Horney was born September 16, 1885, to Clotilde and Berndt Wackels Danielson. Her father was a ship's captain, a religious man, and an authoritarian. His children called him "the Bible thrower," because, according to Horney, he did! Her mother, who was known as Sonni, was a very different person -- Berndt's second wife, 19 years his junior, and considerably more urbane. Karen also had an older brother, also named...

Personality Theories ALFRED ADLER

ALFRED ADLER 1870 - 1937 Dr. C. George Boeree   I would like to introduce Alfred Adler by talking about someone Adler never knew: Theodore Roosevelt. Born to Martha and Theodore Senior in Manhattan on October 27, 1858, he was said to be a particularly beautiful baby who needed no help entering his new world. His parents were strong, intelligent, handsome, and quite well-to-do. It should have been an idyllic childhoodBut "Teedie," as he was called, was not as healthy as...

Personality Theories OTTO RANK

OTTO RANK 1884 - 1939 Dr. C. George Boeree   A fascination with mythology, literature, art, and religion was hardly restricted to Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. In fact, it comes up again and again among personality psychologists. It is especially prominent in Otto Rank.  The hero One of his earliest works was The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, in which he examines such birth myths as those of the Babylonian kings Gilgamesh and Sargon, the Hindu hero Karna, The Persian ki...

Personality Theories CARL JUNG

CARL JUNG 1875 - 1961 Dr. C. George Boeree Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throught the world. There in the horrors of prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist mee...

Personality Theories

      Dr. C. George Boeree Professor Emeritus Psychology Department Shippensburg University Versión en Español Version auf Deutsch PDF version This is an electronic textbook ("e-text") created for my students in Personality Theories. In fact, it is the first free e-text in ps...

Personality Theories ERIK ERIKSON

ERIK ERIKSON 1902 - 1994 Dr. C. George Boeree   Among the Oglala Lakota, it was the tradition for an adolescent boy to go off on his own, weaponless and wearing nothing but a loincloth and mocassins, on a dream quest. Hungry, thirsty, and bone-tired, the boy would expect to have a dream on the fourth day which would reveal to him his life's path. Returning home, he would relate his dream to the tribal elders, who would interpret it according to ancient practice. And his dream wo...

Personality Theories ANNA FREUD

ANNA FREUD 1895 - 1982 Dr. C. George Boeree   It seems that every time Freud felt he had his successor picked out, the nominee would abandon him. At least, that's what happened with Jung and Adler. In the meantime, though, his daughter Anna was attending lectures, going through analysis with her father, and generally moving towards a career as a lay psychoanalyst. She also became his care-taker after he developed cancer in 1923. She became at very least her father's symbolic...

Personality Theories SIGMUND FREUD

SIGMUND FREUD 1856 - 1939 Dr. C. George Boeree It is a mistake to believe that a science consists in nothing but conclusively proved propositions, and it is unjust to demand that it should. It is a demand only made by those who feel a craving for authority in some form and a need to replace the religious catechism by something else, even if it be a scientific one. Science in its catechism has but few apodictic precepts; it consists mainly of statements which it has developed to varyin...

Total Posts: 18