Millon’s Evolutionary Model for Normal and Abnormal Personality
This is a time of rapid scientific and clinical advancement, a time that seems propitious for ventures designed to bridge new ideas and syntheses. The intersection between the study of “psychopathology” and the study of “personality” is one of these spheres of significant intellectual activity and clinical responsibility. Theoretical formulations that bridge this intersection would represent a major and valued conceptual step, but to limit efforts to this junction alone will lead to overlooking the solid footings necessary for fundamental progress, and which are provided increasingly by more mature sciences (e.g., physics and evolutionary biology). By failing to coordinate propositions and constructs to principles and laws established in these advanced disciplines, psychological science will continue to float, so to speak, at its current level, an act that will ensure the need to return to this task another day. The goal is to connect the conceptual structure of personology to its foundations in the natural sciences. What is proposed herein is a kind to Freud’s (1895) abandoned Project for a Scientific Psychology and Wilson’s (1975) highly controversial Sociobiology. Both were worthy endeavors to advance our understanding of human nature; this was to be done by exploring interconnections among disciplines that evolved ostensibly unrelated bodies of research and manifestly dissimilar languages. It is necessary, we believe, to go beyond current conceptual boundaries in psychology, more specifically to explore carefully reasoned, as well as “intuitive” hypotheses that draw their principles, if not their substance, from more established, “adjacent” sciences. Not only may such steps bear new conceptual fruits, but also they may provide a foundation that can undergird and guide our own discipline’sexplorations. Much of personology, no less psychology as a whole, remains drift,divorced from broader spheres of scientifi c knowledge, isolated from fi rmly grounded, if not universal principles, leading one to continue building the patchwork quilt of concepts and data domains that characterize the fi eld. Preoccupied with but a small part of the larger puzzle, or fearing accusations of reductionism, many fail thereby to draw on the rich possibilities to be found in other realms of scholarly pursuit. With few exceptions, cohering concepts that would connect this subject to those of its sister sciences have not been developed.
Despite the shortcomings of historic and contemporary theoretical schemas of most sciences, systematizing principles and abstract concepts can “facilitate a deeper seeing, a more penetrating vision that goes beyond superficial appearances to the order underlying them” (Bowers, 1977). For example, pre-Darwinian taxonomists such as Linnaeus limited themselves to “apparent” similarities and differences among animals as a means of constructing their categories. Darwin was not “seduced” by appearances. Rather, he sought to understand the principles by which overt features came about. His classifi cations were based not only on descriptive qualities but also on explanatory ones. Task in the evolutionary model to be that of peeling back the manifest character of the observable personological and clinical world of overt behaviors, thoughts, and emotions, to jettison its veneer, and to expose its latent or underlying functions. In discover and articulate a set of coherent principles and procedures that may advance and facilitate our understanding and assessment of both normal and abnormal subject domains. Some have said that our evolutionary model seeks “to read the mind of God” rather acquire a somewhat less presumptuous characterization, that of seeking “to read the mind of human nature.” A unifying model for personology and psychopathology must coalesce the field’s disparate schools of thought, not, however, in a haphazard way that simply identifies the alternatives or records their separate contributions, but in a manner that truly integrates each of these seemingly contradictory perspectives at a “deeper level,” that is, one that synthesizes the alternative components intrinsically. Although, random, eclectic, or broad-based theories have, as their benefit, the advantages of open-mindedness and comprehensiveness, they are likely to be generative of little more than providing a measure of illusory psychic comfort. A substantively unifying paradigm will interweave fundamental relationships that exist among the cognitive, biological, intrapsychic, and behavioral components that are inherent in the person. This will, in effect, generate integrative theoretical and assessment strategies. This desirable advantage has been achieved partially in psychotherapy by efforts to employ combinatorial treatment approaches (e.g., CBT, pharmacological/family interventions). However, even more synergy is possible and desirable. A unifi ed paradigm for the science of normal and abnormal personology must be based conceptually and pragmatically on interweaving the “whole person.”
It may be a useful digression to refer to scientific developments of t his character in other person- and treatment-oriented fields. Medicine, for example, has recently begun to focus on matters beyond surface symptomatology. Diseases in the past were “understood” and named only in accord with their overtly observable qualities (e.g., smallpox), in much the same way as we now refer to psychiatric entities such as “dysthymia” or “anxiety.” Late in the 19th century, a paradigm shift occurred when biologists andphysicians recognized that unseen “infectious agents” were central to the etiology and understanding of disease manifestation. Symptom-labeled entities such as “smallpox” were no longer to be approached with superficial palliatives (e.g., bloodletting), but as infiltrating microbial agents in otherwise healthy individuals and, as further technical knowledge advanced, to be treated at their roots with appropriately targeted antibiotics.
An additional conceptual development in medical science occurred this past quarter of a century in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Never before had the immune system been known to play so vital a role in differentiating normal versus abnormal functioning. It has been illustrated recently, for example, that constitutional differences exist among individuals in their susceptibility to the immunodefi ciency virus; some are resistant to its effects whereas others will succumb to full-blown AIDS. Here again we may draw a parallel to our personological model from our sister science of medicine. Personality disorders may be seen as representing different vulnerabilities in people’s “psychic immune system,” that is, defects or defi ciencies in a person’s longstanding pattern of perceiving and coping with the psychic stressors in his or her mental life. The different personality disorders are signs of different psychic vulnerabilities. The task of personologists is to decode (diagnose) these vulnerabilities on the basis of a patient’s symptoms, and then engage in therapy that not only removes the symptoms but also works through the individual’s underlying vulnerabilities. Assessing and understanding the vulnerabilities—the patient’s weakened intrapsychic defenses, neurochemical imbalances, cognitive misinterpretations, and interpersonal diffi culties—will enable us to take steps to effect, with all these domains of vulnerability in focus, a synergisitic and “personalized therapy.”
The desire for and potential in personological unifi cation calls for at least one additional consideration. Again, the parallel between medicine and personology points to an issue often alluded to, but rarely addressed directly: On what basis should a unifying paradigm of a “personality” science be grounded? In our view, all basic or applied sciences (physics, engineering, personology) are expressions of common functions grounded and understood from the conceptual principles of evolution theory. All disciplines of science, once achieving suffi cient maturity, are natural outgrowths of, as well as demonstrations of, the operation of evolutionary processes. Formally structured, each of these sciences is composed of subject-relevant theories (e.g., particle physics, personology), component classified taxonomies (e.g., synaptic neurochemicals, International Classification of Diseases), operational measuring tools (e.g., cyclotrons, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI]), and, when required, efficacious instruments of effecting change (e.g., locomotives, cognitive therapy). As we see it, only when all four of the preceding elements that provide a structure to a science are articulated and coordinated can our assessment tools and our therapeutic techniques demonstrate or achieve full empirical validity and instrumental efficacy. Unfortunately, most of our theories and studies have existed largely as independent and often contradictory approaches to a modestly formed science; that is, they have little to no relationship to the assessment measures we employ to identify interventional targets, nor do they stem from explanatory principles of theories employed to understand the individuals who seek our clinical efforts. We lack the means found in subjects such as physics where physicists possess the ability to apply the equations of theory to their taxonomy of elementary particles and possess measurement instruments that can test whether theoretically generated properties exist in fact. It is our belief that we are reaching a time when we can begin to systematize our knowledge of personology in a manner akin to more advanced sciences. Specifically, it is our judgment that we would do well to employ the universal principles of evolutionary theory to guide our understanding of the properties of human functioning, that is, to enable us to formulate theoretical propositions that “explain” our subject domain. These principles should also enable us to construct a taxonomic system that is derived from such a theory, which, in turn, will facilitate the development of assessment tools that identify properties composing the taxonomy, and then point to those clinical characteristics that should serve as therapeutic targets. In effect, a unified personological
paradigm such as this will serve as an ever-present guide as to where, how, and which assessment tools and interventions are best employed. A few words should be said at the outset outlining the logic and steps we will follow as we proceed in this chapter. First, let us note that the ontological position of the personality prototypes is unchanging and invariant. They are derived by a series of direct and simple deductions from the evolutionary model, resting on what we believe to be the three fundamental and indispensable essentials of life: “existential survival” (pleasure/pain), ecological adaptation (active/passive), and species replication (propagation/nurturance). As an inevitable deduction, the several derived personality prototypes are the fi nal word, real and defi nitive, given that they neither change nor can be altered by the impact of such extrascientifi c conditions as social or political considerations. That the prevalence of prototypal personalities can and will vary as a function of cultural infl uences is both possible and expected, but their enduring and inextinguishable character, as derived from
the essentials of evolution, is immutable. Second, what is variable are what we refer to as personality subtypes. Personality subtypes are essentially combinations of the several immutable prototypes. The subtypes are not derived directly from the imperatives of evolution’s processes. They take shape as the adventitious impact of life’s experiences generate admixtures of composites of the prototypes, compounds, and blendings that result from the infl uence of familial and cultural forces. Also among these mosaic amalgamations are subtype variants that differ in their degree of “normality or abnormality.” Thus, the exigencies of evolution can sequentially and ultimately generate, in interaction with sociocultural experiences, several pure prototypes, numerous subtypes, and well as any number of levels of healthy and unhealthy multiforms. Third, there is a need to develop a schema of trait characteristics and associated quantitative tools by which we can differentiate and assess the personality types and subtypes. Numerous theories have been advanced from which selective trait features are highlighted; for example, those that give primacy to interpersonal relations, or cognitive beliefs, or intrapsychic processes, or neurologically based dispositions. Each of these is productive as a source of personological or clinical study. But, the singularity of their focus is severely limiting. We believe a trait format should incorporate and subsume all of these part function characteristics in an overarching schema of trait domains, e.g., interpersonal conduct, cognitive style, mood temperament. Similarly, mathematical efforts have been employed to deduce traits from covariant data sources, the most popular of these being several factorial procedures. As will be noted later, numerical procedures, in our judgment, of either a simple arithmetic character or a more complex algebraicformula, are likely to be a more productive methodological resource than factor analysis for assessing quantitative gauges of the several trait domains. These will be touched upon in later paragraphs as well.
We humans, understandingly, have subdivided nature’s intrinsic oneness into spheres of attention and focus in order to simplify our task of understanding it; hence, we have physics, chemistry, geology, and the like. In doing so, however, we have overlooked or bypassed those deeper and essential commonalities they share. As addressed in earlier books and articles of ours, we judge that principles of an evolutionary character underlie all of them, that is, laws and processes that all our man-made distinct sciences share in common. Though “discovered” initially in the biological sciences, evolution refl ects a set of natural laws applicable to both the physical and the psychological sciences. To us, these common rudiments and universal operations of nature also undergird our science’s study of the problems of persons, as well as the logic we should follow, when needed, to select the focus and modes for their treatment.
It is our view that much of psychological science remains adrift, obsessed with horizontal refi nements and passing fads, a patchwork quilt of dissonant concepts and methods, rather than a unifi ed tapestry that interweaves (unifi es) its components to these deeper fundamental and common principles of nature. Table 1.1 provides an outline of the fi ve components the senior author has articulated as a unifying paradigm for the subject dmains of personology and psychopathology. It recommends that these fields be grounded in evolutionary principles and be designed thereby to cohere the elements and functions that comprise a science of clinical psychology. To fail to build such a unifying paradigm of personology and psychopathology will keep us on the same unprogressive course that has plagued the fi eld since time immemorial. Brilliant theoretical ideas have been proposed in the past, articulate classifi cation systems and quantitatively sensitive assessment instruments have been generated, as well as imaginative therapies developed, but we remain stuck in a babble of confl ict and confusion in which little is synthesized or structured logically. Integrating the several prime components comprising a clinically oriented personological science, grounded in the generative paradigm provided by evolutionary principles, will provide an undergirding framework for integrative assessment and treatment interventions. It is a task worthy of collaborative efforts on our part.
This is a time of rapid scientific and clinical advancement, a time that seems propitious for ventures designed to bridge new ideas and syntheses. The intersection between the study of “psychopathology” and the study of “personality” is one of these spheres of significant intellectual activity and clinical responsibility. Theoretical formulations that bridge this intersection would represent a major and valued conceptual step, but to limit efforts to this junction alone will lead to overlooking the solid footings necessary for fundamental progress, and which are provided increasingly by more mature sciences (e.g., physics and evolutionary biology). By failing to coordinate propositions and constructs to principles and laws established in these advanced disciplines, psychological science will continue to float, so to speak, at its current level, an act that will ensure the need to return to this task another day. The goal is to connect the conceptual structure of personology to its foundations in the natural sciences. What is proposed herein is a kind to Freud’s (1895) abandoned Project for a Scientific Psychology and Wilson’s (1975) highly controversial Sociobiology. Both were worthy endeavors to advance our understanding of human nature; this was to be done by exploring interconnections among disciplines that evolved ostensibly unrelated bodies of research and manifestly dissimilar languages. It is necessary, we believe, to go beyond current conceptual boundaries in psychology, more specifically to explore carefully reasoned, as well as “intuitive” hypotheses that draw their principles, if not their substance, from more established, “adjacent” sciences. Not only may such steps bear new conceptual fruits, but also they may provide a foundation that can undergird and guide our own discipline’sexplorations. Much of personology, no less psychology as a whole, remains drift,divorced from broader spheres of scientifi c knowledge, isolated from fi rmly grounded, if not universal principles, leading one to continue building the patchwork quilt of concepts and data domains that characterize the fi eld. Preoccupied with but a small part of the larger puzzle, or fearing accusations of reductionism, many fail thereby to draw on the rich possibilities to be found in other realms of scholarly pursuit. With few exceptions, cohering concepts that would connect this subject to those of its sister sciences have not been developed.
Despite the shortcomings of historic and contemporary theoretical schemas of most sciences, systematizing principles and abstract concepts can “facilitate a deeper seeing, a more penetrating vision that goes beyond superficial appearances to the order underlying them” (Bowers, 1977). For example, pre-Darwinian taxonomists such as Linnaeus limited themselves to “apparent” similarities and differences among animals as a means of constructing their categories. Darwin was not “seduced” by appearances. Rather, he sought to understand the principles by which overt features came about. His classifi cations were based not only on descriptive qualities but also on explanatory ones. Task in the evolutionary model to be that of peeling back the manifest character of the observable personological and clinical world of overt behaviors, thoughts, and emotions, to jettison its veneer, and to expose its latent or underlying functions. In discover and articulate a set of coherent principles and procedures that may advance and facilitate our understanding and assessment of both normal and abnormal subject domains. Some have said that our evolutionary model seeks “to read the mind of God” rather acquire a somewhat less presumptuous characterization, that of seeking “to read the mind of human nature.” A unifying model for personology and psychopathology must coalesce the field’s disparate schools of thought, not, however, in a haphazard way that simply identifies the alternatives or records their separate contributions, but in a manner that truly integrates each of these seemingly contradictory perspectives at a “deeper level,” that is, one that synthesizes the alternative components intrinsically. Although, random, eclectic, or broad-based theories have, as their benefit, the advantages of open-mindedness and comprehensiveness, they are likely to be generative of little more than providing a measure of illusory psychic comfort. A substantively unifying paradigm will interweave fundamental relationships that exist among the cognitive, biological, intrapsychic, and behavioral components that are inherent in the person. This will, in effect, generate integrative theoretical and assessment strategies. This desirable advantage has been achieved partially in psychotherapy by efforts to employ combinatorial treatment approaches (e.g., CBT, pharmacological/family interventions). However, even more synergy is possible and desirable. A unifi ed paradigm for the science of normal and abnormal personology must be based conceptually and pragmatically on interweaving the “whole person.”
It may be a useful digression to refer to scientific developments of t his character in other person- and treatment-oriented fields. Medicine, for example, has recently begun to focus on matters beyond surface symptomatology. Diseases in the past were “understood” and named only in accord with their overtly observable qualities (e.g., smallpox), in much the same way as we now refer to psychiatric entities such as “dysthymia” or “anxiety.” Late in the 19th century, a paradigm shift occurred when biologists andphysicians recognized that unseen “infectious agents” were central to the etiology and understanding of disease manifestation. Symptom-labeled entities such as “smallpox” were no longer to be approached with superficial palliatives (e.g., bloodletting), but as infiltrating microbial agents in otherwise healthy individuals and, as further technical knowledge advanced, to be treated at their roots with appropriately targeted antibiotics.
An additional conceptual development in medical science occurred this past quarter of a century in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Never before had the immune system been known to play so vital a role in differentiating normal versus abnormal functioning. It has been illustrated recently, for example, that constitutional differences exist among individuals in their susceptibility to the immunodefi ciency virus; some are resistant to its effects whereas others will succumb to full-blown AIDS. Here again we may draw a parallel to our personological model from our sister science of medicine. Personality disorders may be seen as representing different vulnerabilities in people’s “psychic immune system,” that is, defects or defi ciencies in a person’s longstanding pattern of perceiving and coping with the psychic stressors in his or her mental life. The different personality disorders are signs of different psychic vulnerabilities. The task of personologists is to decode (diagnose) these vulnerabilities on the basis of a patient’s symptoms, and then engage in therapy that not only removes the symptoms but also works through the individual’s underlying vulnerabilities. Assessing and understanding the vulnerabilities—the patient’s weakened intrapsychic defenses, neurochemical imbalances, cognitive misinterpretations, and interpersonal diffi culties—will enable us to take steps to effect, with all these domains of vulnerability in focus, a synergisitic and “personalized therapy.”
The desire for and potential in personological unifi cation calls for at least one additional consideration. Again, the parallel between medicine and personology points to an issue often alluded to, but rarely addressed directly: On what basis should a unifying paradigm of a “personality” science be grounded? In our view, all basic or applied sciences (physics, engineering, personology) are expressions of common functions grounded and understood from the conceptual principles of evolution theory. All disciplines of science, once achieving suffi cient maturity, are natural outgrowths of, as well as demonstrations of, the operation of evolutionary processes. Formally structured, each of these sciences is composed of subject-relevant theories (e.g., particle physics, personology), component classified taxonomies (e.g., synaptic neurochemicals, International Classification of Diseases), operational measuring tools (e.g., cyclotrons, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI]), and, when required, efficacious instruments of effecting change (e.g., locomotives, cognitive therapy). As we see it, only when all four of the preceding elements that provide a structure to a science are articulated and coordinated can our assessment tools and our therapeutic techniques demonstrate or achieve full empirical validity and instrumental efficacy. Unfortunately, most of our theories and studies have existed largely as independent and often contradictory approaches to a modestly formed science; that is, they have little to no relationship to the assessment measures we employ to identify interventional targets, nor do they stem from explanatory principles of theories employed to understand the individuals who seek our clinical efforts. We lack the means found in subjects such as physics where physicists possess the ability to apply the equations of theory to their taxonomy of elementary particles and possess measurement instruments that can test whether theoretically generated properties exist in fact. It is our belief that we are reaching a time when we can begin to systematize our knowledge of personology in a manner akin to more advanced sciences. Specifically, it is our judgment that we would do well to employ the universal principles of evolutionary theory to guide our understanding of the properties of human functioning, that is, to enable us to formulate theoretical propositions that “explain” our subject domain. These principles should also enable us to construct a taxonomic system that is derived from such a theory, which, in turn, will facilitate the development of assessment tools that identify properties composing the taxonomy, and then point to those clinical characteristics that should serve as therapeutic targets. In effect, a unified personological
paradigm such as this will serve as an ever-present guide as to where, how, and which assessment tools and interventions are best employed. A few words should be said at the outset outlining the logic and steps we will follow as we proceed in this chapter. First, let us note that the ontological position of the personality prototypes is unchanging and invariant. They are derived by a series of direct and simple deductions from the evolutionary model, resting on what we believe to be the three fundamental and indispensable essentials of life: “existential survival” (pleasure/pain), ecological adaptation (active/passive), and species replication (propagation/nurturance). As an inevitable deduction, the several derived personality prototypes are the fi nal word, real and defi nitive, given that they neither change nor can be altered by the impact of such extrascientifi c conditions as social or political considerations. That the prevalence of prototypal personalities can and will vary as a function of cultural infl uences is both possible and expected, but their enduring and inextinguishable character, as derived from
the essentials of evolution, is immutable. Second, what is variable are what we refer to as personality subtypes. Personality subtypes are essentially combinations of the several immutable prototypes. The subtypes are not derived directly from the imperatives of evolution’s processes. They take shape as the adventitious impact of life’s experiences generate admixtures of composites of the prototypes, compounds, and blendings that result from the infl uence of familial and cultural forces. Also among these mosaic amalgamations are subtype variants that differ in their degree of “normality or abnormality.” Thus, the exigencies of evolution can sequentially and ultimately generate, in interaction with sociocultural experiences, several pure prototypes, numerous subtypes, and well as any number of levels of healthy and unhealthy multiforms. Third, there is a need to develop a schema of trait characteristics and associated quantitative tools by which we can differentiate and assess the personality types and subtypes. Numerous theories have been advanced from which selective trait features are highlighted; for example, those that give primacy to interpersonal relations, or cognitive beliefs, or intrapsychic processes, or neurologically based dispositions. Each of these is productive as a source of personological or clinical study. But, the singularity of their focus is severely limiting. We believe a trait format should incorporate and subsume all of these part function characteristics in an overarching schema of trait domains, e.g., interpersonal conduct, cognitive style, mood temperament. Similarly, mathematical efforts have been employed to deduce traits from covariant data sources, the most popular of these being several factorial procedures. As will be noted later, numerical procedures, in our judgment, of either a simple arithmetic character or a more complex algebraicformula, are likely to be a more productive methodological resource than factor analysis for assessing quantitative gauges of the several trait domains. These will be touched upon in later paragraphs as well.
We humans, understandingly, have subdivided nature’s intrinsic oneness into spheres of attention and focus in order to simplify our task of understanding it; hence, we have physics, chemistry, geology, and the like. In doing so, however, we have overlooked or bypassed those deeper and essential commonalities they share. As addressed in earlier books and articles of ours, we judge that principles of an evolutionary character underlie all of them, that is, laws and processes that all our man-made distinct sciences share in common. Though “discovered” initially in the biological sciences, evolution refl ects a set of natural laws applicable to both the physical and the psychological sciences. To us, these common rudiments and universal operations of nature also undergird our science’s study of the problems of persons, as well as the logic we should follow, when needed, to select the focus and modes for their treatment.
It is our view that much of psychological science remains adrift, obsessed with horizontal refi nements and passing fads, a patchwork quilt of dissonant concepts and methods, rather than a unifi ed tapestry that interweaves (unifi es) its components to these deeper fundamental and common principles of nature. Table 1.1 provides an outline of the fi ve components the senior author has articulated as a unifying paradigm for the subject dmains of personology and psychopathology. It recommends that these fields be grounded in evolutionary principles and be designed thereby to cohere the elements and functions that comprise a science of clinical psychology. To fail to build such a unifying paradigm of personology and psychopathology will keep us on the same unprogressive course that has plagued the fi eld since time immemorial. Brilliant theoretical ideas have been proposed in the past, articulate classifi cation systems and quantitatively sensitive assessment instruments have been generated, as well as imaginative therapies developed, but we remain stuck in a babble of confl ict and confusion in which little is synthesized or structured logically. Integrating the several prime components comprising a clinically oriented personological science, grounded in the generative paradigm provided by evolutionary principles, will provide an undergirding framework for integrative assessment and treatment interventions. It is a task worthy of collaborative efforts on our part.
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