Toward a Critically Personalistic General Psychology in Consideration of Its Unifying Potential

Abstract

At a time of renewed interest in the possibility of unifying psychology, the present article suggests that the personalistic perspective might warrant consideration as a possible framework within which to pursue this objective. The reference here is an approach set forth by the German psychologist and philosopher William Stern (1871–1938) in his General Psychology From the Personalistic Standpoint, a work first published in German in 1935, and in an English translation by Howard Davis Spoerl in 1938. The article first discusses some of the historical context within which Stern's work emerged, and then elaborates on certain of the key aspects of the personalistic view, including Stern's notion of the person as a psychophysically neutral unitas multiplex, or multifaceted whole. It is suggested that Stern's personalistic perspective might be especially valuable today, at a time when, in the view of some, the person is disappearing from view in psychology, as the discipline focuses its attention to an ever greater degree on the neuroscience of brain functioning at one end, and on large-scale statistical studies of populations at the other end.