Since the inception of the psychology of personality, psychologists have been trying to account for regularities in behavior. The preferred construct has been the personality trait as an inner disposition that directs conduct and which is common to all people. Although found lacking during the 1970s, the search for sources of direction from within has been resurrected in the form of the five-factor theory. According to this approach there are five underling structural factors common to all people and independent of cultural influences-an asocial, ahistorical, biologically based conception. Examination of the theory finds it to be dealing with traits of temperament rather than personality and judges it insufficient on that basis. Rather than conceiving of personality as fixed and universal, it is argued that personality is an adaptation worked out in the cultural and historical context of the individual life. It is further contended that a reconsideration of the personality theory of Gordon Allport will provide a better basis for understanding personality and personality traits specifically.

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A brief introduction to the developmental history of personality psychology is given. Two trends, the clinical, holistic approach and the experimental, elemental approach, lay the foundation for issues that would confront the field into the present. While the accepted mandate has been the study of the whole person, the experimental paradigm has been hegemonic. Emphasis has been placed on knowledge of individual differences across variety of abstract constructs. The person and the situation, two central concepts, have been decreed independent, alternative, competing factors in accounting for individual conduct. John Dewey’s psychology, based on organicism and person environment mutualism, is presented as challenging basic assumptions and theories of personality psychology. For Dewey, personality is a product of individuals being incorporated into the sociocultural milieu that is their life context, and from which they cannot be disengaged. Kritische Psychologie is discussed as sympathetic to some of Dewey’s propositions.