D. Westen, A CLINICAL-EMPIRICAL MODEL OF PERSONALITY - LIFE AFTER THE MISCHELIANICE-AGE AND THE NEO-LITHIC ERA, Journal of personality, 63(3), 1995, pp. 495-524
A theory of personality should lead to both accurate prediction and in
terpretive understanding. Aside from its empirical uses, a personality
theory should provide a grammar that allows personality psychologists
to infer meaning from overt behavior with more sophistication than a
layperson, and the best laboratory for testing the interpretive utilit
y of a personality theory remains the clinic. With respect to the appr
opriate data for constructing and evaluating theories of personality,
an overreliance on questionnaire data is problematic for several reaso
ns: It assumes that understanding people requires no training, it mist
akes research on the conscious serf-concept for research on personalit
y, it conflates implicit and explicit knowledge, it fails to address d
efensive biases, and it lacks interrater reliability. Consideration of
both empirical and clinical data points to three questions that defin
e the elements of personality necessary for a comprehensive assessment
of an individual: (a) What psychological resources-cognitive, affecti
ve, and behavioral dispositions-does the individual have at his or her
disposal? (b) What does the person wish for, fear, and value, and how
do these motives combine and conflict? (c) How does the person experi
ence the self and others, and to what extent can the individual enter
into intimate relationships?