Character and Personality

PTP4 Excerpts - Emotions

Excerpt

Sections

Personality Psychology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269  
      Defining Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269  
     Conceptual Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271   
     Historical Backdrop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . 274   
     Approaches to Personality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275
The Big Five . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276
Personality and Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .295    
     Three Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .296  
     A Personality Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300     
     Personality and Persona . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .301     


     “In this and the next chapter, we try to distinguish character from the notions of personality and of temperament. There are two reasons why we need to do this. The first we touched upon in the previous chapter: because the Big Book and the 12&12 do, and they do so, quite significantly, in the context of how personality and temperament can become potential stumbling blocks to our inventory. As we have argued, however, their take on the subject is unfortunately flawed. They wrongly fuse the three concepts, thereby blurring what they otherwise clearly consider to be the more fundamental notion of character.

     The second reason is the fact that in practice if not always in theory, temperament and personality are not just additional and complementary, but alternative and often competing concepts vis-à-vis character. They give a different account of human being and behavior, of why we are as we are and do as we do, and, therefore, of how we ought to look at ourselves. Moreover, as we observed in chapter 1, the idea of personality in particular has sidelined that of character and become the dominant paradigm in the culture. This has added to the confusion about exactly what it is that we are examining when we take inventory. 

Personality Psychology

Defining Personality

     On the surface, the relation between the three concepts seems straightforward. Personality is an umbrella term that covers the other two. Reflecting this, a standard dictionary refers to personality as the totality of the person and everything that affects his or her psychology, including temperament and character. The dictionary breaks this definition down into three parts. Here are the first two: A. The total qualities and traits, such as of character or behavior, that are distinctive of a particular person. B. A person’s combined pattern of character, mental, emotional, temperamental, and behavioral traits.1 This kind of comprehensive generalization is probably the reason why the Big Book and the 12&12 end up equating personality with the other two concepts, as previously noted. 

     Here is the dictionary’s third definition: C. An individual’s distinct personal qualities, particularly those unique characteristics that make that individual socially appealing.2 This is of course the understanding of personality we are most familiar with. It is reflected in the previous chapter’s Big Book quote about the alcoholic who finds it easy to make friends because his personality is so “attractive.” This kind of person is, well, personable. He is the so-called extrovert who is considered sociable and described with reference to socially advantageous behavioral attributes: funny, friendly, gabby, gregarious, and so on. His trait, extraversion, is considered one of the Big Five personality factors, arguably personality psychology’s dominant approach to the subject, as we shall have occasion to discuss. 

     In theory then, personality is a broad category that encompasses distinct components of temperament and of character. In practice, however, as studied by the academic discipline of personality psychology and as taught in the average college psychology course, we have a different picture. Typically, temperament is hardly mentioned, and when the term is used, it is basically as a synonym for personality. There is nothing conceptually distinctive about it. As for character, it is usually left out of the equation altogether. It may not merit as much as a minor entry in a textbook’s index (or in that of popular resources like, say, Psychology for Dummies). 

     As a dictionary of psychology explains,3 the term has been completely replaced by that of personality, which retains only character’s original root meaning of “mark” or “trait.” In the course of barely a century, it has been purged of the fundamental moral significance it had acquired during the previous 2,500 years. Reflecting this cultural sea change, a personality psychology college textbook defines personality as referring to a person’s characteristic patterns of thought, of emotion, and of behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms underpinning them.4 The italicized term represents all that remains of character after what has been, as we shall see, a decidedly reductionist process. 

     The question is whether such “characteristic” patterns can exclude the individual’s specifically moral ones without robbing the concept of its explanatory power. Is character in actual fact an indispensable component of personality considered in its totality? If so, how is it related to it? How is it related to temperament? What meaningful distinctions can we make between the three concepts, and what is the relevance of this to Step 4 and our practice of self-examination? 

. . .

     We can learn from personality psychology and the Big Five. We can acquire information and gain knowledge about important innate tendencies in us which can help us with Step 4 and with the inventory process in general. But what Dr. Silkworth calls “the powers of good” lie outside mere knowledge, however factual or scientific. Our two texts are emphatic about this. No amount of self-knowledge will get us sober—be it knowledge of our personality or of our character. Nor will any amount of either bring about the needed change. Not by themselves. 

     “If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will all these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn’t there. Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed utterly” (pp. 44–45). The moral psychology Dr. Silkworth wrote about was one of those resources, knowledge of the “synthetic” type, divorced from the reality of the fundamentally spiritual nature of our being. That is why it failed. 

     Though we have stressed the moral nature of our inventory and sought to distinguish between character and personality, character and morality by themselves will avail us nothing. But as the 12&12 suggests with regard to the relationship between self-examination, prayer, and meditation, when moral and spiritual principles are logically connected and intertwined in a program of action, the result is a firm foundation for life (p. 98). We can grow along spiritual lines and transcend the limitations of our personality, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, of our temperament.” 

– From Part III: Character Defects, Chapter 14: Character and Personality, pp. 269–270, 303–304

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