Personality, Social Psychology, and Psychopathology

Abstract

This chapter considers the roots of the tripartite marriage of personality, social, and abnormal psychology. It calls for rekindling the conjunctive hopes to put normal and abnormal behavior, thought, and feeling on the same continua. Lewinian field theory and its definition of locomotion forces in the life space provide a frame. It illustrates the overlap of personality and social psychology with ideas and questions of abnormal behavior scholars. The analyses turn to Person × Environment interaction dynamics in life space. Meaning-making and multiple “worldview” existential models are defined as forces constituting the dynamics defining permeability of adaptive regions of the “life space.” Human adaptation in critical regions or domains of life experience in the behavioral field illustrate dynamics: the domains of regulatory transactions and of acceptance, social affection, and relationships. These are pertinent for parsing continua of normal-to-abnormal adaptation and conjoining psychopathology with humans’ struggles of personal and social significance.