The Art and Science of Personality Development

Dan McAdams, The Guildford Press, 2018, 368 p

©2018, Guildford Press

“There is a sense in which every human life is a work of art.” How could I not immediately buy a book that starts with these words — and later on use them to start my homepage?

To me, this captures much of how to think about our human existence. Life is art. This says something about its meaning. The meaning is life itself. Like any work of art. Like the meaning of the Mona Lisa. Or Picasso’s Guernica. It is there for you to make sense of.

It also makes clear that this piece of art does not necessarily have to be liked. Neither by the artist, nor by the public. And, as with any piece of art, perceptions can change. What was not liked in the past, may be seen in an entirely different light today or tomorrow.

The statement also stresses that life is work. It does not come about out of nothing. The work can be fun, but at times it can also be hard. And, as any artist will tell, the work that goes into the art may not be appreciated, even if the resulting work of art is.

“There is a sense in which every human life is a work of art.” Now I readily admit that Dan McAdams did not necessarily have these ideas in mind when he composed his opening line. But then, again, this holds for any piece of art or, indeed, communication that we engage in.

Life stages

Dan McAdams is a professor of Psychology and Human Development at Northwestern University. His book summarises his academic research into human development for the general public.

He uses the ‘work of art’ metaphor to express his main view about personality development: That  a person’s development only becomes complete through composing and telling his or her life story.

More concretely, Dan McAdams describes three broad stages of personality development. We begin life as ‘actors’, striving to fulfill our basic physiological and psychological needs from day one. We start out with a certain temperament and from there develop our character traits, such as opennes, extraversion or neuorticism.

After the early childhood phase, we start to develop our own goals and values, mostly deriving from the interaction in our immediate social environment. Our values in combination with our dispositional character traits guide our behaviour.

So far, this view of personality development is akin to other established development models, such as those by Piaget or Erik Erikson.

We are the authors of our own unique stories

The novel aspect of the book lies in the author’s focus on the third stage, when the individual starts to compose a life story. Developing a life story is key for developing a personal identity, binding together our past, our present behaviour and our plans and projects for the future. This ‘narrative identity’ starts to develop at the transition to adulthood and remains key for making sense of our life course to the end.

And this, to me, is the beauty of McAdams’s approach. ‘We are the authors of our own unique stories’. It is our right, and indeed, our task to compose our life story – and we may amend and develop it over time as we, and only we, see fit. What we saw as an unmitigated disaster when it happened, such as failing in an important grade at school, we may well turn into the first step of a different, and successful, journey in our narrative later on. At times, our life’s narrative may evolve subconsciously and without our immediate attention. At other times, we may need the support from friends or family, or relevant outsiders, to develop a new coherent life story. But in the end, we remain the sole authors of our individual life stories.  

A humane view of personal development

Overall, this book to me presents a solid academic foundation to a very humane view of personal development. In contrast to the classical development models, it discusses in some detail the ongoing personal development after middle age, acknowledging that development does not stop at any particular age.

Given its academic background, it presents thorough discussions of personality, development and motivation theories, as well as a rich set of references to the underlying academic research. A deep source for all interested in understanding the development of our individual personalities, the making of our life as a work of art.