Introduction to Personality and Psychotherapy: A Theory-Construction Approach

by Joseph F. Rychlak

Used in Personality Psychology class. Theories of different personality theories within psychology from the beginning of time to modern day schools of thought.

Genres: Psychology, Reference, Philosophy

869 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 1981

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I took Joseph Rychlak for an honors class in Personality during the spring semester of 1997. Rychlak was a funded chair in the psychology department, had been around forever (he even corresponded with Carl Jung and his letter is the the Jung collection). Rychlak also had a joint appointment in the philosophy department for some time, though I don't think he ever taught courses for them. Anyway, he rarely taught undergraduate classes, and so I was lucky to get into his personality class. The book was organized around whether or not theories were Kantian, Lockean, or some mix of Kanian-Lockean, which roughly corresponded to whether theories were top-down or bottom-up. I could go on more about this, but won't for now -- maybe in some review of another Rychlak book. He read the entire collected works of Freud before he wrote the Freud chapter, the entire collected works of Jung before writing the Jung chapter, etc., so the text is extremely thorough, and the source for each idea is documented in the text.

The reason that this book is important to me is only in part about the ideas in it, but in greater part because of the small world psychology is. Rychlak had been a student of Julian Rotter's -- the guy who came up with the notion of locus of control, which is a small part of Rotter's social learning theory (which pre-dates Bandura's). Rychlak also had a book on Logical Learning Theory, his own theory of personality. Sam Catanzaro was Julian Rotter's last student. When I was applying to graduate school, I applied to Illinois State, where Sam was a faculty member -- I didn't know him or his work. While in graduate school, Sam took a class in learning theory and one of their projects was for each student to present on a "modern theory of learning." As Sam saw Rychlak as largely restating Rotter and Sam loved Rotter, he presented on Logical Learning Theory. When I applied to Illinois State, Rychlak had written a recommendation letter for me, and I'm convinced that it was because of this recommendation letter that Sam read that I was accepted to graduate school at all. While I was in Rychlak's class, I had been dating someone who went off to Loyola's Rome center. While there, she broke up with me and my coping mechanism was to study Personality as much as possible. On tests, Rychlak would comment how I received the highest score. On papers, he loved my analyses. All in all, I think that turned out for the best and at that time, I coped a lot better than I think I'd coped with anything else. I think doing well because of that led him to like me, to respect my work, and to write me a good rec letter.

Incidentally, his wife was his assistant at Loyola, and good friends with Judy Sobiesk, mother of Dan and Bill savage. Rychlak's still alive and lives in Indiana. His health isn't great. I corresponded with him while in grad school, but not since. I wonder if he remembers me. Anyway, I attribute a lot of my psychology career to this book and that class.