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The Normal Personality: A New Way of Thinking about People
Many Psychologists regard personality and mental illness as closely related. The shadow of Freudian analysis looms over modern psychopathology, driving many psychologists to try to understand their clients' personal troubles and personalities using constructs developed to study mental illness. They believe that dark, unconscious mental forces that originated in childhood cause personality traits, personal troubles, and mental illnesses. Steven Reiss thinks problems are a normal part of life. In The Normal Personality, Reiss argues that human beings are naturally intolerant of people who express values significantly different from their own. Because of this intolerance, psychologists and psychiatrists sometimes confuse individuality with abnormality and thus over-diagnose disorders. Reiss shows how normal motives, not anxiety or traumatic childhood experiences, underlie many personality and relationship problems, such as divorce, infidelity, combativeness, workaholism, loneliness, authoritarianism, weak leadership styles, perfectionism, underachievement, arrogance, extravagance, stuffed shirt-ism, disloyalty, disorganization, and overanxiety. Based on a series of scientific studies, this book advances an original scientific theory of psychological needs, values, and personality traits. Reiss shows how different points on motivational arc produce different personality traits and values. He also shows how knowledge of psychological needs and values can be applied in counseling individuals and couples. The author describes new, powerful methods of assessing and predicting motivated behavior in natural environments including corporations, schools, and relationships.
212 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 29, 2012
One of psychology’s greatest shortcomings is that, although typically positioned as such, it is not a science. In fact, psychology is, by and large, best guess. What Steven Reiss does in “The Normal Personality” is cast aside the causational model of unconscious drives—a “best guess” model generally unsupported by empirical evidence—suggested by Freudian psychodynamic theory and the general misapplication of Fechner’s perspectives on psychology, commonly known as Fechner’s Law.
Reiss instead suggests a revolutionary model that describes human behavior not as a collection of neurotic habits as psychodynamics would have it, but a collection of normal habits that support the satisfaction of both intrinsic needs and extrinsic goals.
His notion moves us away from a perspective of illness and toward one of wellness. It is also in stark contrast to the now almost universal tendency to immediately view an individual's reactive response to personal issues and life experiences as some kind of dysfunction, or even a personality disorder.
Reiss suggests that we move away from our culture of victimhood—blaming parents, peers, childhood experience and even the unconscious—and toward a culture of personal responsibility. From there we can learn how unfulfilled desires, unexpressed values, interior conflicts among values and instances of social dissonance provoke and promote the stresses we often experience in our everyday lives.
This book is not one that deals explicitly with personality theory per se, but more the application of a new and empirically substantiated theory of motivation (outlined in Reiss’ book “Who Am I?”—and what Reiss calls “motivational analysis”, or a description of consistent goal-motivated behavior—that provides a new way for thinking about personality. It’s well-organized, easy to read and, while a serious academic work, accessible to those readers with even a casual interest in psychology.
Reiss instead suggests a revolutionary model that describes human behavior not as a collection of neurotic habits as psychodynamics would have it, but a collection of normal habits that support the satisfaction of both intrinsic needs and extrinsic goals.
His notion moves us away from a perspective of illness and toward one of wellness. It is also in stark contrast to the now almost universal tendency to immediately view an individual's reactive response to personal issues and life experiences as some kind of dysfunction, or even a personality disorder.
Reiss suggests that we move away from our culture of victimhood—blaming parents, peers, childhood experience and even the unconscious—and toward a culture of personal responsibility. From there we can learn how unfulfilled desires, unexpressed values, interior conflicts among values and instances of social dissonance provoke and promote the stresses we often experience in our everyday lives.
This book is not one that deals explicitly with personality theory per se, but more the application of a new and empirically substantiated theory of motivation (outlined in Reiss’ book “Who Am I?”—and what Reiss calls “motivational analysis”, or a description of consistent goal-motivated behavior—that provides a new way for thinking about personality. It’s well-organized, easy to read and, while a serious academic work, accessible to those readers with even a casual interest in psychology.
May 31, 2009
Although Steven Reiss doesn't really go into the details of personality per se, he does outline a new and profoundly exciting way of thinking about personality in general. Too much of personality research has focussed on 'abnormality' and this is the first time since The Big Five model of personality, that someone has come up with an easy and clear new model. For obvious reasons Reiss cites his own work, which is profound, and thereby shows the validity (both face and construct) and reliability of his model.
His motivational and value based model is lightyears ahead from the 'Galenus-like' personality model currently used in psychiatry (derived from the haluciogenic mind of cocain-addict Sigmund Freud), I therefor like it a lot!
Although just a start of a new way of thinking about personality, I hope it will bring a fruitfull new line of research into this field...
His motivational and value based model is lightyears ahead from the 'Galenus-like' personality model currently used in psychiatry (derived from the haluciogenic mind of cocain-addict Sigmund Freud), I therefor like it a lot!
Although just a start of a new way of thinking about personality, I hope it will bring a fruitfull new line of research into this field...
August 4, 2020
So it turns out needs are an entire subset of psychology that don't seem to get any research and this theory from Havercamp and Reiss is the best attempt at it. Probably there will be some modification to their theory in the future, like what will be on the list, maybe an A- and B-list for universal and non-universal but frequent needs. In any way, this is a must read for anyone interested in psychology and human needs. Finally there's a language and concepts to understand and discuss this. Also, it's very useful for understanding people and taking other's perspectives.
November 6, 2023
Excellent book
I love his writing style. Rarely have a book made me laugh a lot reading it, I felt like I having a conversation with the author.
About the content, it is helpful and easy to understand about 16 basic desires, how to determine what my strong/average/week intensive desires are and use it to decide regarding career, job and life.
Highly recommend!
I love his writing style. Rarely have a book made me laugh a lot reading it, I felt like I having a conversation with the author.
About the content, it is helpful and easy to understand about 16 basic desires, how to determine what my strong/average/week intensive desires are and use it to decide regarding career, job and life.
Highly recommend!
May 18, 2015
The book claims to make a strong argument for a normal approach to personality as against the more commonly held pathological view. The idea is great, but the outcome is not as good as expected.
The book appears more or less like an extensive manual of the RMP test. As a reader, reading the description of every trait is not of much interest. Rather, the book should have held consistently to the theme.
Where the author does put his ideas across, he explains them well. The illustrations with real life examples are excellent. But then he steps into the territory of oversimplifying everything. So he moves to the other extreme of over-pathologizing, over-normalizing.
This is a good one-time read, and must be surely important if you wish to conduct the RMP.
The book appears more or less like an extensive manual of the RMP test. As a reader, reading the description of every trait is not of much interest. Rather, the book should have held consistently to the theme.
Where the author does put his ideas across, he explains them well. The illustrations with real life examples are excellent. But then he steps into the territory of oversimplifying everything. So he moves to the other extreme of over-pathologizing, over-normalizing.
This is a good one-time read, and must be surely important if you wish to conduct the RMP.
November 23, 2021
It was back in 2013 when I read Steven Reiss’ book Who Am I?. Reiss, a professor emeritus of Ohio State, proposed that there were 16 motivations that can be used to describe a person and how they’ll react. Shortly after reading Who Am I?, I picked up The Normal Personality – another of his books. However, it sat in my virtual bookshelf as my curiosity (one of his characteristics) led me in other directions. However, after finishing The Cult of Personality Testing and Science and Pseudo Science in Clinical Psychology, I felt like I needed to get back to Reiss’ work on personality testing and more importantly motivations.
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June 19, 2010
I have not read a lot of other books on personality out there but I found this one quite normalizing (i.e. we all don't have some psychopathology) That said I wonder about the author's methodology when he uses his undergraduate psych. class to test his inventory. I was also concerned by how subjective his classifications seemed to be; I imagine that I might have a different construction of what personality trait fit into one of his 16 categories. His writing was also repetitive. He could have accomplished the same with less.
July 3, 2014
Wydaje mi się, że gdybym wiedział nieco więcej w tym temacie a nie był nowicjuszem w zakresie psychologii motywacji to wystawiłbym książce niższą ocenę. Mam przeczucie, że jest w niej nieco nieuprawnionych tez, ale są one postawione w taki sposób, że w razie czego łatwo byłoby wykazać ich nieprawdziwość. Stopień zakorzenienia w danych empirycznych jest dość mały. Lista 16 motywacji sprawia wrażenie nieco arbitralnej. Zgaduję jednak, że w działach psychologii takich jak psychologia osobowości, trudno o twardą naukę. Pomimo zastrzeżeń daję 4/5.
November 22, 2009
good insights but seriously negative in attitude. also, the author comes off as a little arrogant. I gave it up.
June 12, 2012
Interesting topic. Tries to break apart what motivates people. Not a simple extrinsic/intrinsic motivation split
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews