Personality: A Topical Approach

Many texts attempt to bridge the areas of theory and research. They include one or two pages dealing with important theorists—Jung, Adler, Freud, etc.—inserted into chapters focusing on academic research. In most cases, the discussion fails to do justice to these theorists, and the relationship between theory and research is often tenuous at best.

This book takes a different approach. An alternative to, not a replacement for, the author's text on theories of personality (An Introduction to Theories of Personality, 1993), this book describes and discusses an example of each major type of theory in its own chapter. Each chapter is followed by a separate chapter that discusses research, controversies, and emerging findings dealing with that theory.

Although this book incorporates a considerable amount of material from the previous text, there are substantial differences. Personality: A Topical Approach devotes more attention to psychological research and considerably less attention to the more minor and abstract aspects of various theories. Chapters are devoted to the following theories: psychoanalytically-oriented, trait, cognitive, self-humanistic, and behaviourism.

While the book focuses appropriate emphasis on major research topics (the "Big Five" personality factors, self-efficacy, self-esteem, and more), it also includes a chapter on research methods and contains discussions on material that is often omitted from other texts, including dream interpretation, cognitions and the Holocaust, scientific inquiry, and near-death experiences.

The book also provides study questions, a "help" section, and a glossary.