Introduction and General Overview

Abstract

The science of psychology seeks to understand and explain human thought, feeling, and action. As James (1890) noted, it is the science of mental life. The routes chosen by psychologists to achieve explanation and understanding are many and varied. Some approaches focus upon particular psychological processes such as sensation, perception, and cognition. Others adopt a particular viewpoint, such as a biological or developmental perspective. The psychology of personality follows neither of these paths. Rather, personality psychologists attempt to retrieve, from the study of psychological processes from various perspectives, a picture, or an account, of persons. This endeavor requires more than a categorization of the findings of “process” or “perspective” psychologies. A listing of these findings would provide a mass of detail from which the important aspects of thought, feeling, and action, which constitute the very lives of persons, could not be restored.