Gordon Allport was one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century. He might best be described as a "moderate humanist"; he placed high value on the capacity of the conscious self to grow in positive directions and to influence purposeful behavior, but unlike Carl Rogers, he retained a respect both for the potential for irrational unconscious, and transcendent, spiritual influences on personality.
One of the crucial, formative, "pungently significant" experiences of Allport's life was when, as a recent college graduate, he had the rare opportunity for a personal interview with the great Dr. Freud at Berggasse 19 in Vienna. As Allport described it "With a callow forwardness characteristic of age twenty-two, I wrote to Freud announcing that I was in Vienna and implied that no doubt he would be glad to make my acquaintance". Freud politely provided an invitation. Trying to find a conversational opener worthy of his host, Allport opened with an anecdote about a little boy on the train to Vienna who had a persistent dirt phobia, and his domineering mother, presenting the episode as support for some of the great man's theories. "When I finished my story Freud fixed his kindly therapeutic eyes upon me and said 'And was that little boy you?'". Allport was "flabbergasted", and struck by Freud's automatic assumptions of unconscious and neurotic motivations. "This experience taught me that depth psychology, for all its merits, may plunge too deep, and that psychologists would do well to give full recognition to manifest motives before probing the unconscious" (All quotes taken from Allport, G. The Person in Psychology, pp. 383-384).
One of Allport's lifelong interest was religion. This took on particular importance for him when, in the aftermath of the prejudice, anti-Semitism and fanaticism of World War II, several empirical studies made it clear that religious people were more prejudiced than non-religious people. This puzzled and horrified Allport. How could religion, which had love of neighbor at its core, and produced such neighbor-lovers as Ghandi and Martin Luther King, also be at the heart of so much sick, destructive hate? These questions eventually led to the ideas presented in the book The Individual and his Religion, published in 1950. Central to his psychology of religion (and to his psychology in general) was the belief that Freud was right, but only half-right. Unconscious, primitive, irrational forces do determine human behavior - at first. But as the ego grows and matures, conscious, rational forces begin to dominate. Behaviors that originally developed out of and exclusively served primitive instincts become "functionally autonomous", that is, they become independent of Id motivation and become intrinsically motivating in their own right. As a primary example, religion, which, developmentally speaking, may very well begin in the life of the individual as a "fulfillment of a wish", eventually becomes, in the life of the mature person, functional autonomous of these determiners, and becomes a "master motive" capable of unifying all of one's life and giving it meaning.
Read Chapter three of Allport's book, titled "The Religion of Maturity" (on reserve in the library).
The Individual and his Religion
1. Why is it that religion is the one region of personality more prone to remain juvenile than any other? What three "voices" is it often too "awkward" to bring religion into close relationship with?
2. What are Allport's three criteria of maturity?
3. What is the "primary unit" of mental life? How does Allport define the terms habit, trait, neurosis, sentiment. In this context, what is Allport's definition of the "mature religious sentiment"?
4. Be able to list and give a brief definition and discussion of the 6 attributes of mature religion.
5. What would Allport think of a college student whose religious sentiments were symbolized by the song "God said it, I believe it, and that's good enough for me!"? Explain. Why wouldn't he think the same thing of a deeply mystical student?
6. What does Allport mean by calling religion both "highly derivative" and "functionally autonomous"? How does such a religion avoid the twin dangers of fanaticism and "intellectual decay"?
7. What is Allport's position on the relationship between religion and humanism, and between religion and science? How does Allport's stress on the comprehensive nature of mature religion not end in an intolerant dogmatism?
8. What does Allport mean by stating that "the final attribute of religion is its essentially heuristic character?" Be able to discuss this in some depth. Do you agree?