A Tale of Two Visions Can a New View of Personality Help Integrate Psychology?

John D. Mayer
University of New Hampshire
Personality psychology studies how psychological systems
work together. Consequently, the field can act as a unifying resource for the broader discipline of psychology. Yet personality’s current fieldwide organization promotes a
fragmented view of the person, seen through such competing theories as the psychodynamic, trait, and humanistic. There exists an alternative—a systems framework for personality—that focuses on 4 topics: identifying personality, personality’s parts, its organization, and its development. This new framework and its view of personality are described. The framework is applied to such issues as personality
measurement, psychotherapy outcome research, and education. The new framework may better organize the field of personality and help with its mission of addressing
how major psychological systems interrelate.
Keywords: fieldwide framework, personality psychology, personality structure, personality measurement, integrative psychotherapy
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