MONOCULTURE | A Recent History

Personality Theory and Perception by Else Frenkel-Brunswik in Robert R. Blake, Glenn V. Ramsey, ed., Perception: an Approach to Personality, 1951
Published by The Ronald Press
First edition
Collection M HKA, Antwerp

In 1949 and 1950, the University of Texas organised a clinical psychology symposium on the influence of perception on personality formation. Highlights were research into physical and chemical aspects of perception; social and developmental factors influencing perception; and the role of perception in the subconscious mind. The aim was to bring together various studies about how individuals, starting from their perception, construct – and give meaning to – their environment. The thirteen contributions to the symposium were compiled in Perception: An Approach to Personality. Instead of taking perception as a starting point, in her article 'Personality Theory and Perception', Else Frenkel-Brunswik reverses the order and starts with discussing developments within personality theory. Among other things, the concept of 'ambiguity intolerance’, which she first used in The Authoritarian Personality, is further elaborated. With this complex and versatile theory, Frenkel-Brunswik examines the connection between the ability to deal with an ambiguous visual language and tolerance for ambiguity in the world, the other and oneself.

“A certain inability, in the perceptual and cognitive approach of an individual to tolerate more complex, conflicting, or open structures might, it seemed, occur also to a certain extent in the emotional and social area”