The Normal Personality
A New Way of Thinking about People

In this book, Reiss shows how normal motives - not anxiety or traumatic experiences - underlie many personality and relationship problems.

Steven Reiss (Author)

9780521707442, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 June 2009

212 pages, 2 b/w illus. 29 tables
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.4 cm, 0.31 kg

'… In a time when children, and even household pets, swallow Prozac, Reiss revives a neglected diagnosis for worrywarts, wallflowers, daydreamers, pessimists, and eccentrics alike: normal. He broadens normality by outlining how abnormal behaviors can arise when life motives are obstructed or personal values contradicted. Reiss lists how various combinations of 16 basic desires lead to dilemmas that eventually bring people to counseling. He offers a way to manage personal problems, without cracking the medicine cabinet or the skeleton closet.' Science News

In The Normal Personality, Steven Reiss argues that human beings are naturally intolerant of people who express values significantly different from their own. Because of this intolerance, psychologists and psychiatrists sometimes confuse individuality with abnormality and thus over-diagnose disorders. Reiss shows how normal motives - not anxiety or traumatic childhood experiences - underlie many personality and relationship problems, such as divorce, infidelity, combativeness, workaholism, loneliness, authoritarianism, weak leadership style, perfectionism, underachievement, arrogance, extravagance, pompousness, disloyalty, disorganisation, and over-anxiety. Calling for greater understanding and tolerance of all kinds of personalities, Reiss applies his theory of motivation to leadership, human development, relationships, and counselling.

1. My wife thinks something is wrong with me
2. The sixteen basic desires
3. Intensity of basic motivation
4. Normal personality types
5. Overcoming personal troubles
6. Six reasons for adolescent underachievement
7. Self-hugging and personal blind spots
8. Relationships
9. Reinterpretation of Myers-Briggs personality types
10. The sixteen principles of motivation
Appendix A. Dictionary of normal personality traits
Appendix B. Reiss Motivation Profile Estimator
Appendix C. The sixteen basic desires at a glance.

Subject Areas: The self, ego, identity, personality [JMS], Psychology [JM]