Psychoanalytic theory converts correlated interview data into a personality structure

Evidence

The transformation from list to personality is accomplished in the following way. Some of the things subjects said are assumed to have historical truth, to be realistic accounts of past events and so a genetic dimension is added. Some of the things subjects said are understood literally, others are interpreted as revelations of unconscious wishes and so a dimension of psychological “depth” is added. Some of the things subjects said are set alongside other things with which they are in conflict and so dynamic forces are added. The construction as a whole is guided by a general blueprint of human personality, the blueprint is psychoanalytic theory. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 527

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains exactly the interpretive procedure by which raw verbal data get promoted into a ‘personality type’ — the load-bearing methodological move of The Authoritarian Personality.
• SEED: An essay angle on how psychoanalytic theory (or any pre-existing theory) silently supplies the organizing blueprint that turns a list of correlations into a convincing portrait — a warning for modern data-driven personality research.
• XREF: connects to: Psychoanalysis converts each behavior’s hidden revelation into conceptual form; Fromm pioneered a psychoanalytic reading of verbatim questionnaire responses — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 391