2130 Personality Psychology
“Know Thyself”
Week 1
Professor Ian McGregor
Why Greeks, Freud?

Western Bias in Personality Psychology
 Powers

and Perils of Independent Selfhood
Normative Personality Processes
 Development
and self-actualization
 Ways of managing conflicts and obstacles
 Wisdom and virtue are difficult

Individual Differences
 Nature/Nurture
of traits
East: Interdependent Self-Construal
and Collectivistic Culture
Mother
x
x X
X
x
Co-worker
x
Father
x
X
x
Self
x
X
x
Friend
x
Sibling
X x
x
West: Independent Self-Construal
and Individualistic Culture that
Shaped Personality Psychology
Father
Mother
x
x x
x
x
Self
X
X
X
X X
Sibling
x
X
xx
Co-worker
x
x
Friend
Crete’s: Minoan Civilization
(About 3000-1450 BCE)
Mycenaean Civilization:
Achilles and the Siege of Troy
(1600-1100—BCE; Iliad by Homer during Archaic Greece, 800-500 BCE)
Homer’s Odyssey: Long Strange Trip
(Homer in Archaic Greece 800-500 BCE)
John William Waterhouse; Ulysses and the Sirens, 1892
Labyrinth and Minotaur
Theseus’ Heroism
Icarus’ Melted Wings:Nothing in Excess
Jacob Peter Gowy; The Fall of Icarus; 1650
Aesop
620-560 BCE
Help with Self-Knowledge:
Circe and the Delphic Oracle
Highest Happiness from Contemplating
Perfect Ideals and Abstract, Absolute Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69F7GhASOdM
Greek Idealism

Pythagoras
 Ideals
and perfection of math abstractions
 Ideals for living (his commune)

Socrates/Plato
 Allegory
of the Cave
Plato’s ideals and phenomena
 Aristotle essence and matter

 Rational
animal—highest happiness from
contemplating essential truth
Virtue as Harmony: “Nothing to excess”


Cool Odysseus vs. passionate Achilles
Icarus
 Fly

the middle course
Pythagoras
 Harmony—proper

proportion
Socrates’ golden mean
 "choose
the mean and avoid the extremes on
either side, as far as possible"

Aristotle
 Virtue
falls between two vices
Virtue from Self-Knowledge is Difficult

Circe and Delphic Oracle at Apollo’s temple
 “Know

Thyself”
Aesop
 self-deception

Pythagoras
 Silence

for 2 years
Socrates
 Recognize

of cave, Charioteer
Aristotle
 Like

ignorance; unexamined life not worth living”
Plato
 Allegory

and rationalization
taming a wild horse
Balancing ideal, pragmatic, mysterious and
unconscious elements
Summary: Greek Influence on Western
Theories of Personality Process



Independent, empowered, idealistic selves
Psychological sophistication and pragmatism (trade)
Virtue and happiness from self-knowledge and inner
harmony among competing impulses
 Especially


in the face of obstacles and inner conflicts
Self-knowledge and harmony (virtue) are difficult and
sometimes require consultation with unconscious and
intuitive reality
Greeks also contributed to theory about Individual
Differences
 Beyond
Plato’s gold, silver, iron, and bronze souls
Galen’s Synthesis

495-435 BCE: Empedocles (Greek
Philosopher)—4 Elements

450-380 BCE: Hippocrates (Greek Physician)—
4 Humours and Health

130-200 CE: Galen (Greek Physician)
 Fire,
Yellow Bile = Choleric (disagreeable)
 Air, Blood = Sanguine (extraverted)
 Water, Phlegm = Phlegmatic (conscientious)
 Earth, Black Bile = Melancholic (neurotic)