The Process Approach to Personality

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Introduction

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 1-4

3. Theoretical Background

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 5-16

4. Development of Instruments the Serial Perspective

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 17-23

5. Development of Instruments the Visual Afterimage Perspective

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 25-38

6. Development of Instruments: Measurement of Self/Nonself Integration

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 39-43

7. Development of Instruments: Genuine Perceptgenetic (PG) Methods

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 45-58

8. Applications of the Serial Color-Word Test

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 59-64

9. Afterimage Trends in Applied Research

   • Gudmund J. W. Smith

   Pages 65-72

10. Applications of the Spiral Aftereffect Technique, the Oculogyral Illusion, and the Rod-and-Frame Test

    • Gudmund J. W. Smith

    Pages 73-76

11. Applications of Perceptgenetic Methods

    • Gudmund J. W. Smith

    Pages 77-87

12. Experiments with Subliminal Manipulation

    • Gudmund J. W. Smith

    Pages 89-95

13. Summary and Conclusions

    • Gudmund J. W. Smith

    Pages 97-107

14. Back Matter

    Pages 109-123

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Some Implications of the Perceptgenetic Studies We should be most grateful to Professor Gudmund Smith for this compilation of studies on perceptgenesis (PG). Smith and his colleagues at Lund University are part of a small insurgency in psychology that has worked gamely and in relative obscurity to document the presence of subjective phases in the process leading to a perceptual object and the infrastructure of this process in the person­ ality. Smith describes ingenious methods to probe this hidden undersurface, and of a perceptual object is, in the ordinary demonstrate that the experiential content an object sense, pre-perceptual. That is, the feeling, meaning and recognition of are not attached to things out there in the world after they are perceived, but are phases ingredient in the process through which the perception occurs. To most psychologists, this statement would appear so radical as to be hardly worth refuting. A subjective approach to perception undermines the realism, consensual validation, and objectivity of a descriptive science of the mind. It is much simpler to interpret the 'psychic contribution' to object perception as an addition to physical nature. However, the idea that objects are assemblies of sensory bits linked to feeling and meaning, associated to memories for recognition and interpretation and then projected back into the world where we see them, though at first blush appealing to common sense, is so implausible that one is mystified by its universal acceptance.

• creativity
• development
• personality
• psychopathology
• psychosomatics

• Lund University, Lund, Sweden

  Gudmund J. W. Smith

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