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DO PEOPLE SHARE COMMON TRAITS OR IS EACH ONE UNIQUE
Jum Nunnally ‘Psychometric Theory’ (1967) a preeminent psychologist, had this to say : For some years now there has been a controversy as to whether or not general traits of personality exist. The controversy has been between those who espouse a nomothetic and those who expouse an idiographic point of view, the former referring to "general laws" applicable to all people, and the latter referring to a personalized approach. Essentially, the idiographic point of view is that each person is a law unto himself. In terms of factor-analytic approaches, this means that there are either no general factors among personality characteristics or those that do exist, fail to capture the "essence" of the individual. In the 40 years since these thoughtful and candid remarks, attempts to identify general laws governing traits common to human-beings have failed. Emergence of the ‘big five’ touted as an answer continues the failure of traits to clue the way real people function in real lives. It is further abstraction which can’t be correlated with reality. HISTORICAL RECOGNITION OF INDIVIDUAL UNIQUENESS Venerated in ancient civilizations as the means for creative human endeavor and established as the Biblical measuring stick for examination of fruits produced from God-given talent, the model of persons as being endowed with a unique design and a destiny to pursue has been effectively buried in this century. The phenomena underlying MAPs have been alluded to by many religious and philosophers, but not apparently explored as a phenomenon. For fifty years, a few respected psychologists have resisted the dominant reductionistic physical science model of persons as a reactive, evolved organism lacking will or unique makeup, and have sought a model reflecting individual differences. These acknowledged authorities insisted that such a model be true to a fact observed by them that each person possessed a certain and unique motivational structure and dynamics which required understanding if one sought to effectively counsel or predict the behavior of that individual. Super (1949) insisted on the need "to describe the individual in dynamic terms" and arrive at a "genuine understanding of a person,' (citing Miehl, McArthur and the Pepinskys in support). David Rappaport (1967) called for testing procedures which could "accommodate maximal expression of the structuring principles of the ordering personality." Abraham Maslow (1966) wrote "you must make epistemological peace with the fact that people have purposes and goals of their own though physical objects do not." Henry Murray (1973) sought to support the concept of "internal driven forces." Karen Horney (1950) referred to "the unique alive forces of (the person's) real self." Gordon Allport (1968) argued that "Everyone knows each human neurophysic system is unique" and that psychologists must "focus on the morphogenesis of the single pattern as it exists." Bray, Campbell and Grant (1974) of assessment center fame attributed the reason for success to be the presence in certain of their participants of "a developed pattern of abilities and motives which tended to actualize itself in the organizational environment." J. McVicker Hunt (1977) refers to "a highly important system of motivation which is inherent in the organism's informational interaction with the environment." Sandra Scarr (1981) citing Chomsky and Fodor has made similar discoveries in her work with children. Counselors who work with individuals on real life problems and decisions would be hard pressed to doubt that persons have what Allport (1968) referred to as a “patterned uniqueness”. Unfortunately, few investigators or practitioners have explored in a useable way, the content, structure, and dynamics of their client's patterned uniqueness. There are two ancient streams of thought which directly support the model we are presenting. One line of thought attributed the presence in persons of a daimon (Greek for "genius") to unknowable sources emanating from a spiritual world of mythical, yet experienceable of equally unknown qualities. Possessed of great power, these inhabitors of our souls have played a major, guiding and enabling role according to many illustrious personages: Cicero, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, Yeats, Jung. Both James Hillman's The Soul's Code (Random House 1996) and David L. Norton's Personal Destinies (Princeton University Press 1976) provide excellent overview and insight into eudaimonism and some of its implications for contemporary living. To my knowledge, none of those named, or others in their field have made a study of individuals to ascertain the content or structure of "genius qualities". The other, somewhat more ancient line of thought, attributes a presence in persons of certain giftedness and motivation to the hand of God. Although the Judeo-Christian world was slow in confronting the reality of bestowed giftedness, it has picked up speed in this century and increasingly is addressing the many issues and implications involved. Scriptural references abound in both the Old and the New Testament to the unique make-up of persons and the claim by God that He is responsible for designed giftedness and the passion driving it. A book by Art Miller with William Hendricks,’The Power of Uniqueness’ (Zondervan 1999) elaborates on the spiritual dimensions of the subject and cites the writings and words of the Patristic fathers, the Puritan diviners, many other religious professionals, thinkers and authors: St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Clement of Alexandria, St. Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, William Perkins, John Calvin, Sister Helen Marie (Judith Stein), Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, Germaine Grisez, Dorothy Sayers, Ernest Becker, The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reverend George Carey. These references to the thinking of prominent men and women throughout the years of recorded history which supports the fact of uniqueness is meant to encourage readers to approach the issue as a fact, not a theory. Consider the company you would keep! "But this I do believe…That at each man's birth there comes into being an external vocation for him, expressly for him." Soren Kierkegaard "The acorn theory proposes, and I will bring evidence for the claim, that you and I and every single person is born with a defining image." James Hillman "Within each person at his birth…Hidden masterful something…Unique… Unalterable." Friedrich Nietzche "The primal fact is that each human being is separate, distinct, and a unique individual, with a nervous system as particular as are fingerprints." Frederick Herzberg "We have, each of us, an essential biologically based inner nature, which is to some degree 'natural', intrinsic, given, and…unchanging." Abraham Maslow "In every concrete individual, there's a uniqueness that defies all formulation…We can feel the touch of it and recognize its tasks, so to speak…But we can give no ultimate account of it, and we have in the end simply to admire the creator." William James "No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him." J. R. Lowell "Each human being has some original and unrepeatable 'measure'. We are all called to live up to our originality." Charles Taylor "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Jeremiah 1:5 SIMA - THE IDIOGRAPHIC PARADIGM The contribution of SIMA to this dispute appears to resolve it. Staff of the People Management Companies have probed the personal achievement history of over 50,000 people one-at-a-time, exhausting their recollection of everything they could remember doing that they believe they did well and enjoyed or found satisfying. Pressed by the interviewer over 2-3 hours to expand on how they did what they did, they typically generate transcripts of 15-25 pages from the taped interviews. No leading. No other structured questions. A phenomenon was pursued of absolute consistency regardless of race, religion, gender, education, social background or other cultural influences. Every time any one reported doing something found satisfying and done well, the person repeated some or all of the same pattern of behavior. Conclusions were drawn by thematic analysis of recurring words and phrases. People Management Biographers performed such analyses for hundreds of thousands of pages and never reported encountering any universal trait or behavior. Admittedly, they were dealing with mainly empirical data from which they derived motivated behavior. In other words. it isn’t what people may possess as a trait or attribute or characteristic but the expression of it in some observable or measureable form that is identified. The predilection by psychologists over the last century of trying to tease out general laws by identifying abstract traits from tests and correlating them with the reality of the person, has led to the tenuous position now occupied by psychology. The apparent fact that thereby they could measure those abstractions rather than the reality seems nonsensical in the retelling. These attempts to reify traits as measureable attributes has run its course.The whole edifice of the nomological paradigm and psychometrics appear to be without substance when it comes to understanding the nature and predicting the behavior of the individual person. You really can’t observe it, or measure it until it is expressed in some observable behavior which is the essence and stuff of SIMA. People Management appears to be the first organization (circa 1961) which ever sought scientifically to understand the individual person, as such. They conducted a form of operational research by systematically probing the phenomenon of lived achievement experience and harvested fruit beyond imagining. They ploughed a field never before disturbed because studying individuals was believed not scientific in nature since the results couldn’t lead to generalizations useful to science. Yet they found every person and personality studied had the same structure, the same kind of content, and the same kind of behavioral dynamics. So the rigorous, systematic study of individuals yielded a definition of the person; structure and content of the personality; laws governing the person’s motivated behavior; and a new psychology of giftedness. Yet within that context, each person had been endowed with a unique mix of those ingredients (25 to 35). Initially called a Motivated Abilities Pattern (MAP) it was ultimately titled a Motivational Pattern of Giftedness (because it was an endowment not the result of a lot of effort once on the planet). Details of the SIMA process developed by Art Miller, are thoroughly described in 'Designed For Life' written by him (www.arthurfmiller.com) and recently published by The Helixx Group. Copyright 2007 Arthur F. Miller
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