The Uninhabitable Earth: A Call for Climate Emergency

It is worse, much worse, than you think.  So begins one of the most important books of our time, one that will likely be seen by future generations as a red flag that was not heeded soon enough.  I say this because it was published two years ago, and it does not seem to have taken root in the conscience of America yet, least of all the world.  The Uninhabitable Earth goes through great lengths to certify climate change as a fact.  It is well-cited enough to make even the staunchest of doubters look foolish; to realize that all along the real threat to our world was not in some conspiratorial leftist new world order, but in the very things we do every day, like buying things, driving cars, and searching the Internet. 

Yes, even something as harmless as an Internet search contributes to environmental damage.  It seems like everything we do these days is a threat to the environment.  The writer David Wallace-Wells has every right to be alarmed by the current trends that contribute to global warming.  Climate scientists predict that even the lowest temperature forecast in the next 100 years will not be enough to prevent catastrophic disturbances like rising sea levels, air and water pollution, and the loss of biodiversity.  The purpose of this book is to alarm the reader enough to realize that change to our infrastructure is needed as soon as possible if we are to prevent a catastrophe of our own making.  He easily accomplishes this by using a series of global threats that are meant to rattle the reader’s conscience. 

Let’s start with how we are presently doing on our long road to a 100% clean energy society.  According to MIT, the world is not completing the necessary revolution in clean energy fast enough.  At current rates of production, it will take over 400 years to completely change the infrastructure required to produce zero-carbon emissions (Wallace-Wells 2019:200).  A major reason this is happening so slowly is the Treadmill of Production, an economic process of production and consumption that maximizes profits at the expense of extracting natural resources.  The treadmill has a cyclical nature because innovation often breeds new products to sell, even ones that are supposedly safe for the environment.  “Market forces have delivered cheaper and more widely available green energy, but the same market forces have absorbed these innovations, which is to say profited from them, while continuing to grow emissions” (Wallace-Wells 2019:48).  This demonstrates how the treadmill recycles consumption by updating brands, switching platforms, and renovating infrastructure by utilizing new resources that end up polluting the environment even more, often in unforeseen ways. 

As far as green energy is concerned, Ecological Modernization is intimately tied with the Treadmill of Production.  This theory is about why so many economists and politicians believe we can protect the environment by investing in infrastructure and developing alternative energy sources without major reforms to the systems that keep the treadmill going.  Wallace-Wells (2019:178) finds that capitalism is endangered by climate, but we tend to think of the opposite: that climate is contained in it.  For example, he points out (2019:201) that a reliance on carbon capture technology would only strengthen our romance with technology, which in turn keeps the Treadmill of Production going.  Ecological Modernization is a step in the right direction, but not enough to slow it down; only lifestyle and systematic changes can do that.  Just because you add a few a healthy ingredients to a sandwich does not mean you are eating less calories.   

The devastating effects of the treadmill can be seen on many environmental fronts, not just climate change.  These include air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and resource scarcity.  They all contribute to an increasing amount of risk we face as a society.  Risk Society is an umbrella term for our status as a society facing increasing catastrophic threats due to the treadmill.  It also contains the ways we deal with an environment that increasingly threatens us- ways that include Ecological Modernization.  In the Uninhabitable Earth, Wallace-Wells analyzes many other factors caused by global warming that contribute to Risk Society: drought, wildfires, the spread of disease, and warfare over resources, just to name a few.  The current model for dealing with these problems is a continued faith in the system despite all the evidence that it is not working.  Proponents of Ecological Modernization believe technology will solve every problem posed by a Risk Society, but it likely will not happen, for the more risks there are that unfold, the more people will begin to distrust the system. 

Global warming is such a significant problem in our society because it affects things on so many levels, and so many variables go into it.  Three dynamics that reinforce global warming because of human activity are melting ice sheets, Arctic methane, and the albedo effect (Wallace-Wells, 2019:74).  The amount of sunlight reflecting off the Earth’s surface is getting lower as ice sheets retreat, causing more heat to be absorbed.  This exposure is contributing to a rise in methane gas being released from Arctic surfaces.  Methane is an even stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which should be enough to alarm people who are not even living there.  Yet the Arctic is not the only place where human activity is causing methane to increase.   Global beef production has skyrocketed in the last 100 years, creating endless fields of grazing cows that release it through digestive processes. 

The melting of freshwater ice also affects the salinity of the ocean and the rise of sea levels globally, introducing many social problems.  These involve concepts called World Systems Theory and the Global North/Global South network.  World Systems Theory suggests that since wealthier nations often have stronger laws that protect the environment, the means of producing “dirty” products gets exported to countries that do not.  These are often places where laws are so weak that a combination of resources and the working class is exploited.  In this model, the Global North would be considered the wall of privileged countries that outsource dirty production, while the Global South suffers from its side effects, including unbearable temperatures, more severe pollution, and poorer standards of living.  Global warming exacerbates all these issues, for most of the Global South is projected to be abnormally influenced by rising sea levels- a far greater proportion than the Global North.  Not only that, but it will have more of an effect on crop production in the south.  “Climate driven water shortages or crop failures push climate refugees into nearby regions already struggling with resource scarcity” (Wallace-Wells, 2019:25).  These are good reasons to predict major refugee crises will occur in the near future, most of them emanating from the south. 

What makes this especially disturbing is that the Global South is largely an innocent player when it comes to environmental issues.  Wallace-Wells (2019:27) believes that “…much of the Global South has not, to this point, defiled the atmosphere of the planet all that much”.  Even if he is wrong, it was not the Global South that introduced these problems and pressured the rest of the world to adopt the systems that reinforce them.  I believe this is why the Global North should take responsibility for the looming crisis on our hands, which can be done by implementing new systems that reduce the risks of World Systems Theory, making it more fair for the Global South.  If it does not, Wallace-Wells (2019:136) predicts the refugee crisis may trigger resource wars and territorial conflicts due to disappearing habitats.  Unfortunately for the plutocrats, this kind of chaos not only contributes to human suffering and environmental degradation, but also to the higher cost of living in the Global North.  “It will be much, much more expensive to not act on climate than to take the most aggressive action today” (Wallace-Wells, 2019:134).  Even economies taking the most aggressive measures against climate change will be at a higher risk of collapse if action is not taken soon.  

Other ways that global warming affects people are from increases in wildfires and storm intensity; more severe drought and flooding, that in turn influences crop yields; the fallout from wildfires affecting drinking water; the degradation of plastic, which releases even more methane into the atmosphere (Wallace-Wells 2019:116); the tremendous increase in air pollution, estimated to already cause one out of every six deaths globally; the loss of biodiversity, prompted by tropical species needing to migrate north and compete for niches; the spread of tropical disease, assisted by northern latitudes getting warmer; and warmer temperatures dampening cognition and functioning.  The writer touches on all these issues in his analysis of the harmful effects of global warming, most of which are presented in the context of human suffering.  Now imagine all the species on Earth being affected by climate change and the issue increases exponentially, in what a worst-case scenario would likely call the 6th mass extinction in Earth’s history. 

This book is essential reading for environmental sociology students and pretty much everyone else on the planet.  I cannot think of any group of people that would not benefit from reading it.  Even the climate deniers and plutocrats who worship the Treadmill of Production need to understand that if these trends continue, the lives of their children and grandchildren are at stake.  This generation has a moral obligation to future ones to act now before it is too late.  We may or may not survive what we have wrought, but if we do, I do not think history will look kindly on this age of decadence. 

Students should also read The Uninhabitable Earth because it describes the climate crisis in a profound way that overwhelmingly cements it as the biggest issue of our time.  If we do not cut emissions significantly in the next 30 years, there may be no turning back.  “The world has, at most, about three decades to completely decarbonize before truly devastating climate horrors begin” (Wallace-Wells 2013:237).  The book serves as the strongest motivator for Environmental Movement since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.  It should be more influential than it already is- that is its only disappointment.   

Near the end, Wallace-Wells implies that if there are other civilizations in the galaxy, they did not pass the critical stage we are at.  They may have faced a similar situation we are in, due to some universal limit on the amount of production and waste one planet can sustain.  Only a handful of solar systems in the galaxy could host a planet like Earth; not many of their neighbors would be able to provide the resources for “planet hopping”, especially between solar systems.  This may be why we have not seen any signs of intelligent life despite 100 years of studying deep astronomy.  It is also why anyone who believes technology will help us terraform other planets is gravely mistaken and has probably read too many science fiction novels.  It should be an ominous sign to humans that there are so few planets like ours that we have yet to find alien life.  We must cherish and honor the planet; not desecrate the only home we know. 

 

Reference: 

Wallace-Wells, David.  2019.  The Uninhabitable Earth.  New York: Random House 

Cult of Personality: Key Figures in Psychological Theory

A course in personality can really enrich one’s mind.  I don’t know of any other class that teaches about the inner workings of people quite like it.  Personality is a broad term that describes the characteristics, behaviors, values, motivations, and emotional patterns of an individual.  It would be difficult to formulate a flawless theory that uses all these variables to explain one personality, let alone all of them, but many psychologists have tried.  Most of them sought to discover the environmental and social roots of behavior, as opposed to the biological ones we take for granted.  Here I will describe the theories I found most useful, and the ones I did not find as appealing. 

Every theorist I studied had something interesting to contribute to the puzzle of the human psyche, but none painted a more complete picture of it than Carl Jung.  While his theories are difficult to test due to their abstract nature, I found a certain elegance in his typology, the archetypes, and the collective unconscious.  Jung brings more balance to the study of the mind than any other theorist, describing its energy as a dynamic competition of forces acting between psychic elements.  As a psychoanalyst, he extracted these elements from what he described as the collective unconscious, a reservoir of primitive instincts, memories, and inherited possibilities that affect behavior (Ryckman, 2013, 56).   

He did this in two different but very appealing ways.  The first was his concept of archetypes, which are primordial, mythological blueprints of personality elements that transcend all cultures, for they derive from the collective unconscious.  There are many archetypes one can gather from his ideas, including the Shadow, the Anima/Animus, and the Self; and ones he did not study in-depth but appear as literary devices based on his ideas (Wise Old Man, Hero, Jester, Caregiver, etc.).  Jung thought each of us has variations of these archetypes stirring inside us, affecting our behavior and the projection of Self- an archetype that serves as a path to individuation. 

The second way he unraveled the collective unconscious was through his typology, which serves as a vehicle through which the Self is projected to others.  Jung’s typology is a matrix of personality evaluation with three parameters: extrovert vs. introvert, intuitive vs. sensing, thinking vs. feeling.  In their development of the Self, people may be categorized into one of the eight types that result from this matrix.  (The Myers-Briggs typology is an extension of this, adding judging vs. perceiving types.)  Depending on type, Jung thought some people have more access to the collective unconscious than others, particularly those high in intuition, connecting his typology to the core of his theory. 

The second theorist that painted the most complete picture for me was Gordon Allport.  His trait theory emphasized characteristics that a personality is genetically pre-disposed to at birth, which then gets shaped by environmental factors.  Allport saw personality as “jointly determined by biology at the environment” (Ryckman, 2013, 189).  Traits are invisible qualities used to describe consistencies in behavior.  Allport categorized them into three levels: cardinal, central, and secondary.  Cardinal traits are those that best describe one’s “master motives, ruling passions, and eminent traits” (Ryckman, 2013, 190).  Central traits are less influential in determining behavior but still important, while secondary traits would describe someone’s behavior in a situational context rather than in general.   

Furthermore, his traits can be used to predict the motivational sources in a person’s life, which result from environmental factors during stages of development.  The shaping of a proprium, or self, can be influenced at each stage of development, unfolding in what he termed propriate strivings that strengthen one’s adult life.   A resolution of each stage leads to what Allport describes as “becoming”- a process by which characteristics of maturity are reached after infantile motives are replaced by propriate strivings (Ryckman, 2013, 194).  As you can see, Allport’s theory not only includes biological and environmental determinants to personality, but a strong blueprint for motivation.  The only drawbacks to his theory are that it has not been tested as extensively as others, and it does not explain the social contexts in which a personality may develop (Ryckman, 2013, 204-205). 

From a social and cultural perspective, I think Rollo May’s existential psychology best explains how environmental factors determine behavior.  May’s theory did not mention a biological source for personality at all; rather, he suggested that behavior is more strongly influenced by society than genetics.  He cited the interaction of the caregiver and infant as an essential medium through which the values and expectations of society are filtered through.  If the society is unstable, the caregiver is less likely to raise an infant in a stable environment.  Therefore, the infant is more likely to experience anxiety, hostility, and other symptoms of neurotic behavior.  Likewise, a stable society will tend to facilitate a more stable environment for the parent-child relationship.  I think it is important for psychologists, especially those diagnosing mental illnesses, to consider how the increasing pressures of globalization are radically changing traditional upbringing.  That may be why mental illness is on the rise in so many countries, not just in the undeveloped world but in the developed world as well.   

What I like most about May is that he borrowed ideas from other theorists and incorporated them into his theory.  From sociological theorists like Max Weber and Karl Marx, he borrowed the concept of alienation resulting from an increasingly rational society, which he translated to existential psychology as the three modes of existence.  According to May, alienation can manifest in the three modes as Umwelt, the environmental aspect of existence; Mitwelt, the sphere of our personal relations; and Eigenwelt, our relationship with the self (Ryckman, 2013, 342).  Many environmental pressures can result in these alienations, whether it’s by their conveyance through bad parenting, parenting that is too influenced by society’s values, or societal disturbances like war and poverty. 

Another idea he borrowed is from Rotter’s locus of control.  May’s belief that individuals should be responsible for overcoming their problems, rather than blaming them on other people and society (even if it is true), reminded me of Rotter’s theory, where people who are internally driven tend to shape their lives by taking control rather than externalizing their shortcomings and feeling stagnated.  Another thing that influenced him was Rogers’ person-centered therapy technique, where the personality and the disease determine the course of treatment.  Like Rogers, May believed the therapist must listen attentively, show unconditional positive regard, and not place any constraints on the relationship, such as a forced treatment plan.  Still other theorists he borrowed from were Karen Horney, whose hyper-competitiveness featured in his critique of modern society’s influence on values; and Abraham Maslow, whose self-actualization is like the self-realization that May predicted would unfold once a person fully takes responsibility for their direction in life (Ryckman, 2013, 348). 

Many personality theorists have useful ideas but do not complete a full personality profile, or they propose something so alien that it is difficult for me to accept.  The best example of this is Sigmund Freud, whose defense mechanisms made me see the world in a new light, while his stages of development left me feeling awkward.  Defense mechanisms are unconscious methods people use to protect themselves from feelings of vulnerability.  Some of the most common ones are denial, rationalization, and projection.  Projection is an unconscious transmittance of painful feelings onto others- in other words, treating others how you have been treated, or describing others in a way that reflects your own insecurities.  Rationalization is a way of convincing yourself and others you did the right thing despite all the evidence against it.  Freud’s theory helped me discover some of my own defense mechanisms, which served as a revelation to my behavior.  In addition, it has made me more aware of the ways people around me protect themselves from a psychological threat.  It might be the most useful concept I learned in the personality course. 

Other things that strengthen my opinion of Freud are his concepts of dream interpretation and repression.  Freud thought most neurotic elements in people stem from childhood trauma that gets repressed in some form.  These forms can be expressed in dreams, which serve as a tool for recovering repressed memories and finding resolutions.  As the father of psychoanalysis, Freud introduced a whole series of ideas like these to the discipline of psychology.  Most would say he is the most influential psychologist of all time.  However, his adamant stance on the development of children did not resonate with me, and many other theorists showed their disapproval, including Carl Jung and Karen Horney.  He insisted that children go through stages of development where sexual conflicts get resolved, such as the oral, anal, and phallic stages.  The phallic stage is particularly noteworthy, giving rise to the controversial Oedipus and Electra complexes.  These are stages, around ages 5-6 for boys and girls, where Freud thought children fight for the affection of their opposite-sex parent due to a desire to replace the same-sex parent.  While that may be true for some children, I do not think it is true for most, and I think this might say more about Freud’s pathology than humans in general.  Nonetheless there is some evidence verifying the oral and anal stages, but not the phallic one (Ryckman, 2013, 45-46). 

A better theory about developmental stages is Erik Erikson’s psychoanalytic ego psychology.  Erikson proposed that there are eight stages during one’s life where developmental crises are faced.  Some examples of these are trust vs. mistrust (birth stage), industry vs. inferiority (5-12 years old), and intimacy vs. isolation (18-40 years old).  According to Erikson, much of one’s behavior can be explained either by the resolution of a previous crisis or the inability to resolve it.  People can get “stuck” on multiple stages, and many are unable to resolve a crisis throughout their entire lives.  For example, there are people who go their whole lives without trusting people.  In Erikson’s theory, it would have been the mother’s lack of response to their needs during infancy that made them unable to trust people in adulthood, because they were not able to resolve this birth stage crisis.  Most people are able to resolve this crisis as they are aging through the later stages, even stages as late as adulthood, but the ones who aren’t will likely need many years of treatment for it. 

While I think Erikson’s crises are critical for explaining human development, I do not think they encapsulate the whole continuum of personality and behavior.  Erikson’s theory does not mention two critical components that affect personality development: biological traits and social environment.  People may be biologically predisposed to traits that would make certain crises easier to overcome.  For example, some children are naturally gifted at things, which would make them overcome the crisis of industry vs. inferiority easier than others.  Social environment can also play a role.  If an orphan never goes to school, or a child is homeschooled without being able to compare themselves to other children, there is no opportunity for them to even face this crisis.  Therefore, Eriksen’s overemphasis on psychosocial stages is not sufficient for the full range of behavior. 

Another theory with a very useful concept is Adler’s individual psychology.  Adler thought that every individual strives for perfection by confronting feelings of inferiority.  The individual can strive for superiority over others in two ways: through completeness, which leads to a constructive lifestyle; or through personal superiority, which leads to a destructive lifestyle and neurosis (Ryckman, 2013, 80).  What makes the theory useful is that it explains the ways people overcompensate to hide feelings of inferiority.  For example, a person might focus more on their career than their family to prove their financial worth.   This could be done in an effort to hide feelings of guilt, shame, a lack of intelligence, or something else that makes them feel inferior. 

Yet Adler’s theory is even more limited in scope than Erikson’s because all it does is explain one of his crises: industry vs. inferiority.  Granted, he describes it using much more detail than Erikson does by applying it to the totality of one’s goals in life, but it is still a similar concept.  It may not seem fair to reduce Adler’s theory to one dimension of Erikson’s theory; after all, Erikson did his theorizing a full 30 years later, so one could argue Erikson borrowed an Adlerian concept for one of his crises.  But due to his other concepts (birth order and lifestyle types) not having much personal or scientific merit, I would have to rank him as one of my least useful theorists.  His birth order theory posits that first-borns are generally more responsible, accomplished, ambitious, and lust for power more, while second-borns are more competitive, spoiled, lazy, and more likely to take drugs (Ryckman, 2013, 84-85).  First-borns become this way because they are faced with the challenge of learning from adults, losing their parents’ attention to the second-born, and being a role model early on.  Second-borns are this way because things came easier to them due to having an older sibling, and because they tend to grow up comparing themselves to someone older, stronger, and wiser.  While Adler’s work on birth order has been supported by research, I found that it did not really apply to my own family, so it was difficult for me to find it relevant.  A good thing about Adler’s theory is that it explains some underlying motivations behind behavior, yet I believe Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs does this job even better. 

Maslow took a humanist approach to explaining personality, believing that humans are more attuned to creative possibilities and personal growth when all their needs have been met.  His hierarchy of needs uses environmental factors to predict how different types of needs influence our motivations and behaviors.  On the lowest level of the hierarchy are physiological needs, like food, water, sleep, and shelter.  Level two has safety needs, like security and financial stability.  Level three consists of belongingness and love needs, like friendship and family.  On the fourth level are esteem needs, such as prestige, accomplishment, and usefulness.  Maslow saw these first four levels as consisting of basic needs, believing people are unable to reach the highest level without them.  The highest level he termed self-actualization- a state where optimal creativity and growth can fertilize one’s career, or ultimate goal.  Maslow described people on this level as having peak experiences, where they “experience phenomena in their simplicity, ‘oughtness’, beauty, goodness, and completeness” (Ryckman, 2013, 306).  Only on this level can people reach their full potential, motivating them to make sure all their needs are being met on the levels below.  Maslow thought needs that are not being met on the lower levels could prevent the individual from ascending the hierarchy.  For example, a person could have all his physiological and esteem needs met, but a lack of feeling secure or loved would prevent them from actualizing and reaching their full potential. 

Aesthetically I would have to say Maslow’s theory is the most pleasing.  It is simple, elegant, and inspirational.  I have used it to improve my own life, making sure all my needs are met, striving for the peak experiences of self-actualization.  There are some flaws in Maslow’s theory that should not be overlooked.  One is that it fails to account for biological determinants in behavior, and another is that it is culturally biased.  To Maslow’s credit, the hierarchy considers sociological factors like poverty and race but does not consider culture as a motivating factor.  Some cultures are not as geared toward the values of self-actualization, particularly Native American, African, and Eastern ones.  Autonomy, independence, and achievement rarely describe people in community-oriented cultures like these, where each person is expected to pull their weight for the good of the community.  Cultural motivations in the West are simply different than in other parts of the world.  For that I reason I do not see Maslow’s theory being as strong as someone like Jung’s, whose archetypes are based on numerous mythologies that span the globe.    

The last theorist I want to touch on is Skinner, for he is arguably the most influential personality psychologist behind Freud.  Skinner was a behaviorist whose theory was called operant conditioning.  In operant conditioning, behavior results from a stimulus-reaction series, where actions that are rewarded are more likely to be continued, which Skinner called positive reinforcement.  Conversely, actions that are punished are more likely to become extinct, which he called negative punishment.  In addition, there are two intermediate series.  One is where the negative stimulus is removed to create a positive effect that increases behavior, called negative reinforcement.  The other is where a positive stimulus is added to create a negative effect that decreases behavior, called positive punishment (Ryckman, 2013, 367-369).   

Of all the personality theories that have been tested, Skinner’s has the most research to back it up.  This is one reason we see reinforcement and punishment in so many social settings, including law, academia, and household parenting.  Ultimately, the reason I do not rank Skinner’s theory among the best is that it is an oversimplification of personality.  I do not see how it accounts for nuances like motivation, emotional patterns, values, and spontaneity, which I admit is the bane of scientific practice.  For personalities though, I believe you need to have some allowance for spontaneity, lest people philosophically get reduced to mindless machines.  The fact that there are many people able to ignore or suppress conditioning, whether through positive reinforcement (i.e. saints, monks) and negative punishment (i.e. criminals, sociopaths), suggests the theory is incomplete.  I am basing this on the belief that values and morals can have as strong an impact on behavior as conditioning. 

Like other theories, operant conditioning ignores the biological determinants of traits, suggesting they can be conditioned to extinction.  An ominous interpretation of this is that we could all be conditioned to become the same person.  Society already does this on one level, by reinforcing and punishing behaviors that are not normal, legal, or valuable.  I cannot help thinking of the novel 1984; about how all the dissenters against an authoritarian regime were brainwashed to support the state through torture in a way that was similar to the experiments of behaviorists like Skinner (especially his predecessors).  Don’t get me wrong, I think Skinner’s ideas are useful to society, but I also think they can be taken to dangerous extremes when put in the wrong hands. 

As I was writing this, I realized how few of the theorists considered biological factors in their theories.  One reason is that genetic studies in personality were not done until after most of these theorists’ primes.  Yet the concept of genetics has been known since at least the 1860s, when Gregor Mendel found that traits in plants were passed down from one generation to the next.  Therefore, it is a little surprising that most of these theorists did not consider the effect of genes on personality.  You have to credit Allport for at least acknowledging the partial biological roots of behavior.  Similarly, Freud and Jung should be credited for their views on the unconscious, which to me has a source in biology since we inherited it from animals.  Granted this is more like a mental inheritance, yet it is something we would not have without our ancestors passing it down. 

A special case should be made for the influence that Freud had on all the theorists I touched on.  Though I did not agree with his psychosexual stages, it opened the door for other theorists to think of better stage theories, including Allport and Erikson.  His biggest contribution though seems to be repression in childhood as a source of trauma, which nearly all the other theorists agreed with.  Skinner in particular did a wonderful job translating Freud’s ideas on repression and defense mechanisms into operant analysis.  The way this works is if a negative stimulus is perceived, a defense mechanism is likely to remove it, making it a positive reinforcer of repression. 

Maslow and Allport are the only theorists I’m not aware of covering repression in some form, even trauma for that matter.  This may be due to their more positive outlook on what motivates people.  In Allport’s case, it was the propriate strivings governed by traits, whereas with Maslow it was basic needs being met to achieve self-actualization.  Both these theorists (and Erikson) also held a similar view that people would develop into full maturity once their stages of life are complete or their basic needs are met. 

The biggest similarity between my three top theorists- Jung, Allport, and May- is that their theories are the most comprehensive, at least to me.  Another similarity is that they incorporate the views of others into their theories, whether it was planned or not.  Jung was heavily influenced by Freud and the vast mythology of human experience.  Allport’s trait theory added developmental stages that were similar to Erikson’s.  May borrowed a number of ideas from other theorists, which helped me make more connections between theorists than any other did. 

The biggest similarity between the other theorists I mentioned are that their theories were one-dimensional.  Adler, Erikson, Maslow, Skinner- all made important contributions to the discipline that are strong on their own, but do not paint as clear a picture of personality as the first three.  Coincidentally, they are also the theorists who did not take into account biological factors.  However, that is not why I did not favor them; their theories just did not provide enough detail for the complex web of behavior that people exhibit. 

Personality is an exciting topic that I think everyone could benefit studying from.  The more we understand about people, the easier it is to deal with them.  And we can become inspired in the process of discovering how they got where they are, whether it is through positive or negative experiences.  We do not have to know every single detail about someone to understand why they exhibit neurotic behavior, act defensive, or feel insecure in certain situations.  The theories presented here lay sufficient groundwork for tolerating people who behave in distasteful ways, for it is pretty clear that most bad behavior results from unconscious mechanisms, whether they are biological, environmental, or social.  The duty of a psychologist is to help people know why things make them tick, by finding the source and working through it.  The psychologist must help them locate a path that will lead to inner discovery, whose origins are often clouded in suffering.  Then someday, the clouds may lift so the reasons can shed new light. 

 

Reference: 

Ryckman, Richard M.  (2013).  Theories of Personality, 10th ed.  Cengage Learning.