Return to the Main Menu of Personality Psychology...

Further Detail: Fieldwide Frameworks of Personality Psychology

What are Fieldwide Frameworks: An Introduction

• What is a Fieldwide Framework? (Begin Here)
• Are Fieldwide Frameworks Important?

Frameworks Popular Between 1957 and the Present

• Theory-by-Theory Framework (c. 1957)
• Maddi's Comparative Theories Framework (c. 1968)
• Perspective-by-Perspective Framework (c. 1978)

New Frameworks for the Field

• McAdams' "Levels of Knowing" Framework (c. 1996)
• The Systems Framework: A New Vision (c. 1994; 1998; 2005)
• Lluís-Font's Systems Net Framework (c. 2006)

Theory-by-Theory Framework (c. 1957)

In the 1950's, Hall and Lindzey (1957) introduced a textbook that revolutionized the field of personality psychology. Their book took a theory-by-theory approach to the field. They argued that the field could be portrayed through an impartial review of the field's theories – Freud's, Jung's, Maslow's, and so on – and the research to which they gave rise. Hall and Lindzey organized the discipline beautifully, but left it divided theory-by-theory, with little apparent means of bridging their differences.

Their framework used an outline approximately like this:

1. The nature of personality theory
2. Freud's psychoanalytic theory
3. Jung's analytic theory
4. Social psychological theories: Adler, Fromm, Horney, and Sullivan
5. Murray's personology
6. Lewin's field theory
7. Allport's psychology of the individual
8. Organismic theory
9. Sheldon's Constitutional psychology
10. Factor theories
11. Stimulus-response theory
12. Roger's self theory
13. Murphy's biosocial theory
14. Personality theory in perspective