Understanding People PDF
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Understanding People AlsobyTrevorButt InvitationtoPersonalConstructPsychology(withVivienBurr)1992 Understanding People TREVOR BUTT &TrevorButt2004 Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noparagraphofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, 90TottenhamCourtRoad,LondonW1T4LP. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorisedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorhasassertedhisrighttobeidentifiedastheauthorofthiswork inaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2004by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN Houndmills,Basingstoke,HampshireRG216XSand 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,N.Y.10010 Companiesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld PALGRAVEMACMILLANistheglobalacademicimprintofthePalgrave MacmillandivisionofSt.Martin’sPress,LLCandofPalgraveMacmillanLtd. Macmillan$isaregisteredtrademarkintheUnitedStates,UnitedKingdom andothercountries.PalgraveisaregisteredtrademarkintheEuropean Unionandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-4039-0465-2 hardback ISBN 978-1-4039-0466-9 ISBN 978-0-230-00059-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-00059-9 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 TypesetinGreatBritainby AarontypeLimited,Easton,Bristol Contents Preface vii PART I FROM PERSONALITY TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 1 TheDimensionsofPersonality 3 Issuesinpersonality 4 Personality:amodernconcept 12 Understandingpeople 17 2 PersonalityTheories1:Trait,BiologicalandCognitive SocialApproaches 21 Traitandbiologicalapproaches 22 Cognitivesocialapproaches 29 Thepersonincognitivesocialtheories 33 3 PersonalityTheories2:Psychoanalyticand HumanisticApproaches 40 Psychoanalysis 41 Humanisticapproaches 48 Thepersoninpsychoanalysisandhumanism 57 4 TheSocialConstructionistCritiqueofPersonality 60 Socialconstructionism 61 Thepersoninsocialconstructionism 69 Thesocialconstructionofreality 73 Therootsofconstructionism 77 PART II AN EXISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH 5 InterpretiveUnderstanding 83 Verstehenandhermeneutics 84 Phenomenology 88 Mead’ssocialpsychology 100 Asynthesis 103 v vi Contents 6 TheCausesofBehaviour 108 Thein£uenceofthepast 109 Thee¡ectsofthesituation 115 7 TheSenseofSelf 125 Theselfinlatemodernity 126 Theexistentialself 129 Fragmentationandthesenseofself 132 Personalagency 136 8 TheUnconscious 140 Thedynamicunconscious 141 Theexistentialproject 149 9 PsychologicalReconstruction 159 Theriseoftherapy 161 Emotionsandfeelings 163 Socialandpersonalconstruction 166 Thepointofunderstanding 174 References 178 AuthorIndex 186 SubjectIndex 189 Preface UnderstandingPeopleseemsat¢rstglancearatherpretentioustitlefor abook.Whenmyfriendsintheclinicalworldhaveaskedmewhatthe titlewastobe,acommonreactionhasbeensomethinglike‘well,ifI giveyouacoupleofnames,perhapsyou’llletmeknowwhatmakes themtick’.So¢rstofall,IshouldsaywhatImeanbyunderstanding. I have spent most of my professional life involved in personal con- struct theory (PCT) and naturally think in terms of dichotomous constructs.Toknowwhatsomethingmeansyouhavetoseewhatits contrast is. Understanding versus explaining is a construct that Dilthey (1988) used in the nineteenth century, arguing that the social sciences should not be concerned with causal explanations. Instead they should concentrate on understanding people in the same way that one understands a text. When we read something, wegetanappreciationofwhatitmeansbymovingbetweenpartand whole,lookingatawordandseeinghowit¢tsintoasentence.So,for example,weonlyknowwhat‘train’meanswhenweseethatitisused as a verb rather than a noun. Similarly, the meaning of a sentence only becomes clear when we canplace it in a largercontext. When someonesaysofapartner,‘Yes,I’vegothimwell-trained’,weknow thatthemeaningissomewhatironic.Atthesametime,themeaning ofthewholereliesonthepartsandasentenceonlyhasmeaningby virtue of the words that constitute it. But psychology is the social science most enamoured with the natural sciences and has usually soughtmeaningbylookingforcausalexplanationsatamoremolecu- lar level. The psychology of personality has largely been a project engagedintryingto¢ndthecausesofindividuals’behaviour,either insidethemorintheenvironment. Now, causalexplanations might have a place in psychology, and onecouldarguethattheexplanationversusunderstandingconstruct is too crude to capture what personality theorists have been up to. Soperhapsexplanationisaparticulartypeofunderstandingandnot asimplecontrasttoit.Nonetheless,Imaintainthatitisausefuldis- tinction,onethatdrawsourattentiontowhatisfrequentlymissingin vii viii Preface the science of personality ^ an understanding that does not rely solelyonanabilitytotelluswhatkick-startsthepersonintoaction. Inmyview,understandingpeoplerequirestwothings:theiraccount of their reasons and how the world appears to them as well as an appreciation of the social context in which they are embedded. By moving our focus from one to the other and back again, we can begin to make sense of what people do, feel and think. This corre- spondsroughlytowhatRicoeur(1970)describesasa‘hermeneutics ofbelief’orempathyanda‘hermeneuticsofsuspicion’.Aninterpre- tationbasedonempathyhastobebalancedwithonethattakesinto accountthingsthatthepersonmightnot,orevencannot,know.The psychologisthastostartwithhowthingsappeartopeople,butmust not stop there. It may be that unconscious forces or the discursive ¢eldwithinwhichonemovesarenotapparenttoactorsthemselves. Peoplemightnotbeinapositiontoknowexactlywhytheythink,feel and act as they do. Interestingly, while personality theorists have been largely looking ‘inside’ people for answers, a very di¡erent approach to the person has been evolving in social psychology. Socialconstructionism(Burr,1995)canbethoughtofasafamilyof approachesthatemphasisetheroleofsocialforces,particularlylan- guage, in the production of individual action. Kenneth Gergen (2001), the originator ofthis approach,has made some bold moves towards transcending the agency versus structure issue. This is the debateaboutwhetherhumanactionistheproductoftheindividual agentorsocialforcesthatdeterminethem(seeWalsh,1998).Deter- minismmightplaynopartinGergen’sthinkingbutmycontentionis that,intheUKatleast,variantsofsocialconstructionismrepresenta pendulumswingawayfromindividualagencyandtowardsanover- estimation of the forces of social structure. Causal explanations beckonnotfromwithintheperson,butfromideologiesanddiscourse thatmovepeopleinwaysofwhichtheyarenotaware. Sohowarewetoconceptualisetheperson?Myanswertothisques- tion is based on a mixture of the pragmatism of both George Kelly and George Mead and the existential phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Interestingly, Berger and Luckmann (1967), on whoseworksocialconstructionismhasbuilt,drewonbothpragma- tismandexistentialphenomenology.Theirworkconceptualisedthe individual as a social construction, but nevertheless a centre for agency and choice once constructed. For contemporary social con- structionism, it is therefore £awed in that it preserves a mythical senseofpersonalagency.ButIwanttoreturntothisconceptionand Preface ix elaborate the interpretive, interactionist, agentic constructionism thatisinherentandsometimesexplicitinpragmatismandexistential phenomenology.Asyoureadthislastsentence,youmightthinkI’ve swallowed a psychological dictionary. And this has been my main probleminwriting:whatdoIcallthepositionthatIamadvocating? I could make up yet another new term or phrase, but I think that both social psychology and personality theory are already overfull with old wine in new bottles. So I have decided to stick to an older vocabulary ^ thatofexistentialphenomenology.Ihavechosenthis becauseitseemstometobeanoverarchingtheoreticalpositionthat cansubsumethepragmatismofKelly(1955)andMead(1934),both of whose work considerably extends existentialist thinking. I see myselfstillasaconstructtheorist,butmyviewofPCTisnotortho- doxoraccepteduncriticallywithinthePCTworld.Iseeitasaspe- cies of existential phenomenology, albeit one that does not use the somewhat mystifying vocabulary of this approach (see Holland, 1977; Butt, 1998). Pragmatism was an American philosophical movement that developed in parallel with existentialism and phe- nomenology in Europe. (Interested students should read Menand’s (2002) fascinating and compulsively readable history of pragma- tism.) In many ways the two approaches complement each other, although their emphases are often di¡erent (Rosenthal and Bour- geois,1991). So inthis book, I have chosento sail under the £agof existentialphenomenology,sometimesmentioningpragmatismand interactionismassignpoststohelpthereader.Onecostofthisstrat- egyisthatIdousethatterminologythatKeen(1975)saysEnglish speakers ¢nd odd and even irritating. Phrases like ‘being-in-the- world’havebeentranslateddirectlyfromGerman,wherethecom- pound nouns have been rendered into somewhat clumsy English equivalents.But‘being-in-the-world’isaconceptthatIwanttopro- mote. The thesis of this book is that understanding people means recognisingthatwearebothallalikeandatthesametimealldi¡er- ent.Psychologyhasoftenignoredhowweareallbeingsinthesame world,acommonalityofsituationandculturethatenablesustocom- municate with each other at all. And structural sociology has often forgottenthatthewayweexperiencetheworldisverydi¡erent,and in this sense we are beings in di¡erent worlds. Such concepts are therefore central to this book, as we struggle to make sense of both ourselvesandothers. Anotherproblemwithcallingmypositionexistentialphenomen- ologyisthatmosttheoristsinthis¢eldwoulddislikemybringingthe
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