Types of Personality: A Factorial Study of Seven Hundred Neurotics

Abstract

Few psychologists or psychiatrists would object to the statement that the whole field of personality and temperament study is in a state of acute conflict and dissociation. This is as true on the psychological side, i.e. in the field of experimental tests, questionnaires, ratings and so forth (69, 1), as on the psychiatric side, i.e. in the field of the diagnosis and classification of mental disorders (39, 9). In the present paper an attempt is made to locate the fundamental trait-vectors in terms of which personality and temperament can be most parsimoniously described, and to demonstrate that the results thus obtained from a detailed analysis of psychiatric ratings and experimental tests carried out on 700 neurotics can serve to integrate findings from a wide variety of sources, which at first glance seem confused and even contradictory.