A1. An Integrated Theory of Personality Development

The theory of an individual’s emotional/ personality development, proposed here, results from integrating various developmental psychology and psychoanalytic theories. The outlined integration of theories of human emotional development has revealed relative consistency between them. This chapter will review various theories from classical and contemporary psychoanalysis and humanistic psychology before integrating them to derive a theory of individual emotional or personality development. Some of the more notable theories include Margaret Mahler’s infant developmental theory, Otto Rank’s developmental concepts of separation and union, Freud’s psychosexual theory of an individual and civilization, and the psychoanalytic theories of Heinz Kohut, Carl Jung, Melanie Klein, Erik Erikson, Harry Guntrip, John Gedo, Jacques Lacan, Kohlberg and Carol Gilligan’s theory of moral development, along with a humanistic psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchical Theory of Human Needs. Otto Rank’s (1941) developmental perspective claims, “In personality development, we can detect the same dynamic cycles within an individual’s life which we have found operating in the “dialectical” movements of history (p. 169). On the other hand, Maslow found that, as humans resolve psychological needs, they evolve to self-actualize with the attained self-esteem (Maslow, 1943).

Based on these various psychoanalytic theorists’ work, a universally observable pattern of human psychological development was identified. There appears to be a broad consensus among the theorists that humans have unconscious emotional needs related to caregivers’ early environments. In infancy, individuals share emotional bonding, attachment, or symbiosis with their mothers, experiencing a mutually dependent relationship for the first year of their lives.

Beyond mainstream psychoanalytic theorists, a similar stage-based theory has been proposed by other theorists, such as Kazimierz Dabrowski’s (1964) Theory of Positive Disintegration. Here, he claimed that psychological growth occurs in a series of disintegrations and reintegration, through which an individual shapes or changes his or her conception of the world. His outlined growth process follows a strikingly similar developmental sequence, as shown in Table 1I that the 5-Stage process described in the proposed model. His Primitive/Primary Integration at Level 1 is characterized by selfishness and egocentrism; the Unilevel Disintegration at Level 2 is characterized by a transitional period in developmental crises; involuntary Spontaneous Multilevel Disintegration at Level 3 is characterized by vertical conflicts; the Directed Multilevel Disintegration at Level 4 is characterized by a deliberate, conscious, and self-directed life; and the Secondary Integration at Level 5 is characterized by an integrated and harmonious visionary character with creative expression and empathy. Together, these levels correspond with the five stages of the proposed model.

Table 1I. Dabrowski’s (1964, 1967) Theory of Positive Disintegration from the 5-Stage framework

Furthermore, cultural mythologist Joseph Campbell (1968, 1988),  in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces, viewed all great mythic narratives as variations of a single great story, or a mono-myth, of individual development. It is similar to the proposed model, where a common pattern is discerned, regardless of the origin or time of creating the myths. In his interview with Bill Moyers, Campbell (1988) states:

The stages of human development are the same today as they were in ancient times. As a child, you are brought up in a world of discipline and obedience and dependent on others. All this has to be transcended when you come to maturity so that you can live not in dependency but with self-responsible authority. If you can’t cross that threshold, you have the basis for neurosis. (p. 70)

He further claims that all myths deal with “the maturation of the individual, from dependency through adulthood, through maturity, and then to exit, and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos (p. 32).” Therefore, Campbell’s theory supports the idea that the socio-cultural theory could be applied across cultures, societies, and times.

Table 1J. Joseph Campbell‘s Theory from the 5-Stage framework