Pattern and Growth in Personality

The book's core thesis is that personality must be studied as a patterned and growing system, with full recognition of its idiographic—individual and unique—aspects . Allport rejects the reduction of personality to a collection of common traits or to mechanistic stimulus-response laws that ignore the person's unique organization. He insists that while nomothetic (generalizing) methods have a place, they cannot capture the patterned individuality that defines a person. The book's structure—moving through development, structure, assessment, and understanding—enacts this argument by surveying competing schools while consistently arguing for an approach adequate to the individual's growth and becoming, not merely their categorization.

The relationship is explicitly revisionary but also transformative. The book's front matter states that while it is in one sense a revision of the 1937 textbook, "in another sense it is wholly new" . The continuity lies in Allport's enduring commitment to individuality and trait theory; the novelty lies in the mature elaboration of concepts like functional autonomy and the proprium, and in the expanded engagement with assessment methods and the mature personality. A 1962 review in Contemporary Psychology noted that Allport's ideas on contemporary, cognitive, and functionally autonomous motives are "persuasively argued and documented" in this volume . Readers should approach it as Allport's own restatement, not as a second edition.

Reviews were respectful but identified significant gaps. Sheldon Rappaport, writing in a 1961 psychiatric journal, praised the book's cogent case for patterned individuality but lamented that Allport offered no unified theory or conceptual model: "while the intent is there, the model is absent" . Rappaport also argued that Allport misrepresented psychoanalytic ego psychology, dismissing it as an id-driven energy system when Rapaport and Hartmann had already articulated a model congruent with Allport's own thesis. A British review found the style "inexact" and tiring, while another called it an "encyclopedia" suited to advanced students rather than beginners . These criticisms remain relevant: the book is a survey and a polemic, not a systematic new theory.

Functional autonomy is Allport's principle that acquired motives can become independent of the tensions or conditions from which they originally arose. A person may develop a passion for work, art, or service that no longer serves the infantile drive or deficiency it once did. This concept is central because it grounds Allport's rejection of the psychoanalytic premise that adult motivation is a disguised repetition of childhood conflicts. As one reviewer summarized Allport's position: motives are "contemporary, often cognitive in character, and frequent functionally autonomous" . The principle allows Allport to argue for a genuinely growth-oriented psychology in which the present and future organization of the person matters more than the historical origins of their motives.

The proprium is Allport's term for the self or ego considered as a growing, organizing system—the aspect of personality that experiences continuity, values, and propriate striving. It is not a fixed entity but a developmental achievement, emerging through stages and eventually directing the person toward goals perceived as integral to their identity. In the book's structure, the proprium belongs to the sections on the evolving sense of self and the mature personality. Its significance lies in Allport's insistence that a science of personality must account for the person's own self-interpretation and future-oriented striving, not merely for external observers' trait ratings. The proprium is what makes personality a pattern rather than a pile of dispositions.

It requires substantial background. Contemporary reviews were nearly unanimous on this point. One British reviewer called it "not so much a book as an encyclopedia" and explicitly said it could not be prescribed for first-year students, recommending it instead for advanced students and even "retired professors of psychology" who wish to keep in touch with Allport's thought . Another noted that its style combines "superficial briskness with an inexact prolixity which makes it tiring to read" . Yet Rappaport's review in the same period noted that the book provides "an easily understandable introduction" for the psychology student and a valuable reference . The divergence suggests the book works best as a reference or synthesis for readers already familiar with the major schools it surveys.