Two Views of Toward a New Personology: Personality Renaissance in Clinical Psychology.
Authors:
Rushton, J. Philippe, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
Source:
PsycCRITIQUES, Vol 38 (9), Sep, 1993. pp. 969-971
Publisher:
US: American Psychological Association
Reviewed Item:
Millon, Theodore (1990). Toward a New Personology: An Evolutionary Model; New York:
Wiley, 1990. 200 pp. $32.95, 0-471-51573-6
Personality Renaissance in Clinical Psychology
Abstract:
Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 1993, Vol 38(9), 969971. Reviews the book, Toward a New Personology: An Evolutionary Model by Theodore Millon
(1990). In this innovative, grandly sweeping, and brilliantly conceptualized book, Theodore
Millon celebrates the end of this historical epoch and the revival of the rich heritage of
personality theory for clinical psychology. The primary goal is to connect the conceptual
structure of personology to a bedrock of physics and evolutionary biology A secondary goal is to
describe Millon's assessment procedures. A third goal is to describe "personologic therapy."
Millon's thesis is that three great polarities govern all of mental life. These are pleasure-pain,
active-passive, and self-other. Although Millon cited work on human reproductive strategies, he
made no mention of a study showing the genetic contribution to individual differences in
altruism, empathy, nurturance and other elements of the self-other polarity to be about 50 to
60 perceent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved)
The belief in a structured core to human nature around which individuals and groups
consistently differed was widely derogated during the 1960s and 1970s. Three main
explanations have been advanced for why this occurred. First, the predictive power of trait and
psychic coherence theories was judged to be weak. Second, the interventionist power of social
learning theory was affirmed to be strong. Third, the socially committed emphasized
malleability to change an unjust society.
In this innovative, grandly sweeping, and brilliantly conceptualized book, Theodore Millon
celebrates the end of this historical epoch and the revival of the rich heritage of personality
theory for clinical psychology. Written in an elegant and expressive style, the book is a major
advancement of Millon's work on the personality disorders. The primary goal is to connect the
conceptual structure of personology to a bedrock of physics and evolutionary biology. A
secondary goal is to describe Millon's assessment procedures. A third goal is to describe
"personologic therapy" (p. 164).
Millon's thesis is that three great polarities govern all of mental life. These are pleasure–pain,
active–passive, and self–other. The polarities are ubiquitous with forerunners in psychological
theories going back to antiquity. Millon holds that time and again these polarities have
emerged as raw materials in the construction of psychological processes, from the early
psychodynamic theories of Freud and Jung to the contemporary factor models of Cloninger,
Eysenck, Gray, and Tellegen. They had even been fashioned earlier by Millon (1969) employing
a biosocial-learning model, while he was unacquainted with other proposals.
Evolutionary polarities
The polarities are now articulated from the perspective of thermodynamics and evolutionary
biology. Pleasure and pain facilitate the preservation and enhancement of life as proposed by
Darwin's contemporary, Herbert Spencer. In The Principles of Psychology, Spencer (1870)
provided the first scientifically plausible account of how the behavior of organisms was
differentially strengthened ontogenetically to be increasingly adaptive. Spencer set forth the
role of pleasure and pain that Thorndike was later to term the Law of Effect, as well as ideas on
excitation and inhibition that foreshadowed those to come by Pavlov and Freud.
The passive–active polarity is rooted to the adaptive mode of plants and animals:
accommodation to the environment versus modification of the environment. Low and high
intensities of arousal are linked to individual differences in the threshold, that is, the ease with
which one can be roused to respond to stimuli or to expend energy. First to employ the arousal
concept was Pavlov who made the distinction between strong and weak nervous systems, an
idea that generated numerous typologies such as those by Nebylitsyn and Strelau in Eastern
Europe and by Cloninger, Gray, Zuckerman, and others in the West. For example, Gray (1987)
proposed that those with weak nervous systems are easily aroused, punishment-avoiding
introverts who prefer low levels of stimulation to high levels. Conversely, those with strong
nervous systems are harder to arouse, rewardseeking extraverts who find low stimulation
boring and high levels pleasant.
Millon derives the self–other polarity from modern evolutionary theorizing on r-K reproductive
strategies, including my own (Rushton, 1985). At one extreme is the r-strategy, a pattern of
propagating a vast number of offspring but exhibiting minimal attention to their survival. At the
other extreme there is the production of only a few offspring followed by considerable
nurturance and parental effort to assure their survival. The self-oriented r-strategists have an
aggressive life-style whereas the other-oriented K-strategists maximize an altruistic life-style.
For Millon, the behavioral and neurobiological substrates of gender exemplify the self–other
domain. Thus, girl neonates are more sensitive to external stimuli than are boys in touch and
taste, sound and light, including the sounds of other newborns' crying. Newborn girls engage in
more reflexive smiling than boys, a communicative style that remains a female trait into
maturity. Females are also appreciably and consistently superior than males across the life span
in decoding nonverbal cues from others. Girls are also "softer" and more manageable than are
boys.
Millon next applies the polarity model to the personality disorders of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed.; DSM-III) of the American Psychiatric Association
(1980). A well-functioning or normal person is harmonically balanced in the three polarities.
When one or another variant of the personality disorders is present, then deficiencies and
conflicts are noted. Thus schizoid personalities are deficient in pain and pleasure. Avoidant
personalities are unusually sensitive to psychic pain and are not other-oriented. Sadistic
personalities are also pain-oriented but are other-seeking. Dependent personalities are
imbalanced by virtue of turning almost exclusively to others as a means of experiencing
pleasure and avoiding pain. With narcissitic personalities there is an imbalance of pleasure to
be derived from the self. Histrionic personalities have an imbalance in "active" dependency.
Obsessive–compulsive disorders are characterized by an overt consistency in social compliance
so that perfectionistic ways derive from a conflict between hostility toward others and a fear of
social disapproval.
Etiology and change
At this point in Millon's narrative, I was surprised to see a gaping hole. No discussion took place
of the genetic basis of the personality disorders or even of normal personality. Yet evolutionary
approaches are predicated on the notion of genetic variance. Although Millon mentions hardwired neurobiology his discussion of the origins of the personality disorders emphasized
upbringing. Thus, narcissism is "learned largely in response to admiring and doting parents" (p.
122) and people become obsessive–compulsive through "having been subjected to constraint
and discipline, but only when they transgressed parental strictures and expectations" (p. 124).
Although Millon cited work on human reproductive strategies, he made no mention of a study
showing the genetic contribution to individual differences in altruism, empathy, nurturance and
other elements of the self–other polarity to be about 50 to 60 percent (Rushton, Fulker, Neale,
Nias, & Eysenck, 1986). The heritable basis of normal personality is increasingly well established
(Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, & Tellegen, 1990), and research on schizophrenia,
depression, and the other major psychopathologies continues apace (Plomin & Rende, 1991).
Research on the genetics of the personality disorders, however, is sparse.
One very recent study of 175 twin pairs (90 monozygotic and 85 dizygotic) using a
questionnaire developed to assess 18 dimensions of personality disorder found genetic factors
to be central in most, but not all, dimensions (Livesley, Jang, Jackson, & Vernon, in press).
Estimates of heritability ranged from zero for Conduct Problems to .62 for Narcissism, with a
mean of .43 across all dimensions. Livesley et al. noted that among the dimensions with the
lowest heritabilities are those referring to close interpersonal relationships. These may be
related to Millon's self–other polarity and run counter to the high heritabilities for altruism,
empathy, nurturance, and aggression found by Rushton et al. (1986). More valuable research is
needed.
The significance of genetic factors in personality has implications for treatment. It raises
questions about the extent to which change is possible and about the mechanisms of change.
The fact that a trait has substantial genetic underpinning does not mean that the trait and its
manifestations cannot be modified. Nevertheless, genetic predispositions may impose limits on
the extent to which behavioral change is possible. A personality disorder, almost by definition,
is resistant to change.
As Millon elaborates, because personality traits may modify responses to various interventions
they are important factors to consider in planning intervention. Personologic therapy brings an
armament of instrumentation to bear to assess not only the disorders but moods and
temperaments, cognitive styles and self-images, and behaviors and expressive acts. The first
goal is self-knowledge, for few clients will be able to introspect and articulate the nature of
their strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, the "person," the organically integrated system,
must be at the center of all therapies. Parts and contexts depend on the person to whom they
are anchored.
The primary goal of this eclectic therapy is to modify the particular unbalanced or deficient
polarity underlying the disorder. Thus, for avoidants, the use of medicants for softening the
pain would be recommended along with cognitive desensitization procedures and behavioral
skills training to enable a more proactive role in life. With the self–other polarity, imbalances
found among narcissists and antisocials suggest that a major aim of treatment would be a
reduction in their predominant self-focus and a corresponding augmentation of their sensitivity
to the needs of others. Millon notes that this is a new focus and a goal as yet untested.
Conclusion
In an epilogue, Millon notes the book's limitations—it is short and speculative. I would have to
agree and add that this was unnecessarily so. The possible neurobiological substrates
underlying the three polarities could have been discussed more fully using, for example, Gray's
behavioral inhibition system or Cloninger's tripartite classification scheme. Confirmatory factor
analyses of the personality disorders could have been carried out targeting the three polarities
as orthogonal dimensions and contrasting the results with alternative formulations (Eysenck,
1987). Substantive material on psychometric scale reliabilities and validities could have been
added from the several Millon manuals listed in the references. The poverty of psychotherapy
outcome studies could have been detailed so as to provide a firmer guide to avoid future
pitfalls. And, perhaps some of the further flung speculations could have been avoided, as in the
digression on pages 28–29 into catastrophe theory, cosmogony, and the evolution of life.
However, Millon is typically well informed, and the questions he raises are large. Millon is
optimistic that the special role assigned to personality in the DSM–III, as well as in the
forthcoming DSM–IV and the World Health Organization's International Classification of
Diseases (10th ed.), points to the growing clinical importance of personologic syndromes. The
organization of the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders in 1988, the
initial publication of the Journal of Personality Disorders in 1987, and the cosponsorship of an
International Congress on the Personality Disorders by the World Psychiatric Association in
1988 have all added to the worldwide status of personology as a science.
The synthesis of evolutionary personality and clinical psychology has clearly begun.
References
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Source: PsycCRITIQUES. Vol.38 (9) pp. 969-971.