Unbehagen in Individual Differences - A Review

• Published in: Journal of individual differences 2007-07, Vol.28 (4), p.252-253
• Main Author: Hofstee, Willem K.B.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Group Differences; History of Psychology; Human; Individual Differences; Individuality
• ISSN: 1614-0001; 2151-2299
• DOI: 10.1027/1614-0001.28.4.252

Reviews the book, Beyond individual and group differences: Human individuality, scientific psychology, and William Stern's critical personalism by James T. Lamiell (see record 2003-88303-000). The hero in this book is William Stern, whose ideas were brought to Lamiell's attention by German colleagues in the 1980s and made him refresh his German, spend sabbaticals in Heidelberg and Leipzig, translate Clara and William Stern's "Erinnerung, Aussage und Lüge in der ersten Kindheit" into English, and rethink and rewrite his case. Chapter 1 is devoted to a biographical sketch of the Stern family; Chapter 2 sets out Stern's approach to the problem of individuality, emphasizing what he meant and did not mean by differential psychology. Stern was out to describe and explain individuality in terms of basic functions, and was critical of Binet-style mental testing, which he found atheoretical and premature. He warned against a mechanistic view that degrades persons into things, and against the illusion that individuality could ever be fully grasped through objective methods: A genuine "biography" of the individual emerges only through "artistic, emphatic synthesis" of "psychographic" material. This book probes into the uneasiness that any differential psychologist should have in the face of psychology's most fundamental problem, which is coming to terms with the subject-object dialectic. It presents a rich historic and systematic account of the many guises in which the problem has been discussed. It invites dispute or even contradiction. But it does make one pause and think. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)