Understanding People

203 Pages·2004·2.499 MB·English

by  Trevor Butt (auth.)

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