Andras Angyal (1902–1960) was an American psychiatrist, born in Transylvania (then Hungary). Angyal proposed a holistic theory of personality, initially in 1941 and in a book edited by his colleagues in 1965 after his death.
Angyal’s first principle was that the personality is an organized whole and not a mere aggregate of discrete parts. We cannot understand the mind simply by studying its parts. Angyal used the term whole for the concrete organized object and the term system for the organization (or arrangement) of the whole. The system principle is the basis according to which the whole is organized. Every system has one and only one system principle.
Of course, the whole can be conceptually divided into parts, subsystems, each of which has a system principle, and subsystems can be conceptually divided into subsubsystems, and so on. Thus, there is a hierarchy, all the way down to the individual elements of the mind – wishes, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
The Biosphere
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References
Angyal, A. (1941). Foundations for a science of personality. New York: Commonwealth Fund.
Angyal, A. (1965). Neurosis and treatment: A holistic theory. New York: Wiley.
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Lester, D. (2020). Holistic Theory of the Mind. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_2309
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