Allport\'s meeting with Freud left a deep impression on him, changing the focus

Question

Allport's meeting with Freud left a deep impression on him, changing the focus of his theory of personality. Do you think that Freud intended his comment to be taken as a psychoanalysis or was he just questioning the meaning of the story? Also, how was Allport's focus on personality altered after this meeting?

Allport believes we can tell more about people by their facial expressions than by analyzing their pasts. Do you think this is true? Do you think it is important to have an understanding of one's past to better understand the present? Explain.

Explanation / Answer

Gordon Willard Allport in his autobiographical essay mentioned his visit to Sigmund Freud in Vienna. At the time of visit, Allport shared an incident of small child who was afraid of dirt and resisting to sit with others in tram even after reassurance by his mother. Freud in turn asked Allport was that child described was Allport himself and commented past memories as reason for this behavior and narration of incident. Allport reports this comment made him feel psychoanalysis tends to focus more on historical variables and unconscious and overlooks present situation and conscious motivation aspects. This event made Allport to emphasize more on surface level and conscious aspects of personality before moving into unconscious.

Allport believes there is difference between mentally healthy individual and neurotic individual. Function of mentally healthy individual lies in conscious and situational aspect rather than unconscious which may be observed in neurotic individual. Hence, the method of studying cannot be generalized to all types of individuals and there should be unique strategy rather than standardized. Hence Allport proposed individuals must first be assessed by surface aspects like their gestures, facial expressions, and present situational influences in conscious responses before going to assess at unconscious level and historical events.

Allport emphasizes situational influences in individual's behavior. Allport views measure of neurotic and normal individual as different concepts and should be measured in unique manner considering surface level aspects, traits, etc. Therefore if we only go deeply into the past to understand present, the results may not be appropriate as there should be unique approach considering individual differences and situations.

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