David Keirsey’s approach to personality is rooted in the principles of Gestalt psychology and organismic wholism, as articulated by figures like Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, Karl Bühler, Kurt Goldstein, George Hartmann, David Katz, and Raymond Wheeler. These thinkers emphasized that psychological phenomena, including personality, cannot be reduced to isolated elements or traits combined through association, as earlier theories suggested. Instead, Gestalt psychology posits that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and personality emerges as an integrated, coherent system through a process of differentiation within an already unified organism.
In Please Understand Me II, Keirsey explains his adoption of this perspective, contrasting it with Isabel Myers’ Jungian framework. He argues that personality does not develop through the integration of independent traits but through differentiation within an inherently integrated whole, akin to biological processes like the growth of an acorn into an oak tree. This metaphor underscores his belief that personality is an organic, evolving system, with traits cohering due to a “common origin and common destiny” rather than being mechanically pieced together. This view directly reflects Gestalt principles, particularly the emphasis on holistic patterns and the dynamic organization of psychological systems.
Keirsey’s reference to “organismic wholism” further aligns with Gestalt theorists like Goldstein, who applied holistic principles to both biology and psychology, and Lewin, who developed field theory to describe behavior as a function of the person and their environment as a unified system. By grounding his temperament theory in these ideas, Keirsey positions personality as a dynamic, emergent configuration rather than a collection of static traits. A clear nod to Gestalt’s focus on systemic coherence and structural unity.
Correcting the Behaviorist Mislabeling
Keirsey explicitly distances himself from behaviorism, emphasizing his focus on “human action” rather than “human behavior” to underscore the “vast and unbridgeable gulf” between his approach and the behaviorist paradigm. Behaviorism, as represented by Ivan Pavlov, John Watson, Edward Thorndike, and B.F. Skinner, reduces psychological phenomena to observable stimulus-response patterns, often derived from animal studies (e.g., “rat-facts”). Keirsey critiques this approach as overly simplistic and irrelevant to the complexity of human personality, which he sees as driven by purposeful, intentional actions within a holistic system.
Behaviorists, according to Keirsey, ignored the configurational theories of Gestalt psychologists, who tackled the “enormously complicated” problem of defining human action as an expression of an integrated whole. By aligning with clinical psychologists like Pierre Janet, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, Harry Sullivan, and Milton Erickson—who recognized the purposeful and systemic nature of human psychology—Keirsey rejects the behaviorist tendency to “confine” human action within mechanistic frameworks. His emphasis on “configuration theorists” (Gestalt and organismic psychologists) over behaviorists highlights his commitment to a holistic, non-reductive understanding of personality.
Implications for Keirsey’s Temperament Theory
Keirsey’s debt to Gestalt psychology shapes his temperament model, which categorizes personality into four temperaments (Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, Rational). These temperaments are not mere collections of traits but coherent, differentiated patterns that emerge from an integrated whole, consistent with Gestalt principles. His rejection of behaviorism ensures that his model prioritizes intentional, goal-directed actions over conditioned responses, aligning with the Gestalt focus on meaningful, organized wholes rather than fragmented behaviors.
Keirsey’s intellectual foundation thus lies in Gestalt psychology and organismic wholism, not behaviorism, which he explicitly critiques as inadequate for understanding human personality. His debt to Gestalt thinkers like Wertheimer, Köhler, and Lewin is evident in his holistic, configurational approach, which views personality as an emergent, differentiated system rather than a sum of independent elements. Correcting the mislabeling of Keirsey as a behaviorist is essential to appreciating his alignment with 20th-century holistic psychology and his contributions to temperament theory.