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Pigeons, People, and Pigeon-Holes

W. Grant Dahlstrom
Published online: 10 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: W. Grant Dahlstrom (1995) Pigeons, People, and Pigeon-Holes, Journal of Personality
Assessment, 64:1, 2-20, DOI: 10.1207/s15327752jpa6401_1

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 JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT, 1995,64(1), 2-20
Copyright O 1995, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Society for Personality A s s e s s m e n t , Inc.

Distinguished Contribution Award
New York, New York
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W. Grant Dahlstrom
Bruno Klopfer Distinguished Award

Pigeons, People, and Pigeon-Holes

W. Grant Dahlstrom
University of North Carolina

Contemporary theorizing about the nature of personality has neglected typolog-

ical formulations. Instead, reliance has been placed on multidimensional geo-
 PIGEONS, PEOPLE, AND PIGEON HOLES 3

metric models that fail to capture the crucial configural nature of personality
structure and functioning. As a result, there has been little progress in the
development of a comprehensive taxonomy of human personalities or in the
establishment of a personological systematics. There is evidence that many
psychodiagnostic formulations rely on implicit sets of categories or taxa of
individuals together with the various forms of psychopathology that are associ-
ated with these types. Some reasons for this neglect are pointed out, related to
a general aversion to "pigeon-holing" people and the risk of applying stereo-
types rather than theorotypes. However, the recent development of powerful
taxometric procedures for locating personological taxa is noted and the poten-
tial benefits for the science and art of personality assessment to be gained from
a comprehensive personological taxonomy are discussed.

The award named for Bruno Klopfer appropriately honors a creative pioneer
and master teacher in our field of personality assessment. His systematic
efforts to bring the insights and inspirations of Hermann Rorschach (Ror-
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schach, 1921t1942) to practitioners in this country deserve this kind of

recognition. Klopfer's Rorschach institutes educated hundreds; his textbook
with Douglas Kelley (Klopfer & Kelley, 1942) guided thousands of students
and clinicians. His Rorschach Research Exchange evolved into our Journal
of Personality Assessment, and a small group of his devoted followers served
as core members who founded this Society.
Certainly, I am one of the thousands of psychologists in the: U.S. who were
beneficiaries of his writings and teachings. In the summer of 1947 (against
Starke Hathaway's advice and at our own expense), Paul Mieehl and I trav-
eled from Minneapolis to Bard College, a short distance north of New Y ~ r k
City, where Bruno Klopfer was giving a 2-week institute on the Rorschach
technique. At the University of Minnesota, we had both listened with consid-
erable interest to fellow student Marcella Vig-Baldwin as she summari:ted
for all interested clinical students and faculty what she had learned about the
Rorschach at a workshop given by Marguerite Hertz. Marcella also shared
with us an early version of the famous Hertz charts ~(H~ertz, 1936) for scoring
various test responses and tried her best to orient us to some ID^ the complex-
ities and nuances of appropriate Rorschach inquiry and scoring.
Thus, Paul and I both had some acquaintance with the Inkblots and the
general Rorschach methods. But it was clear that we were both candidates
for the beginning level lectures at Bard given that summer by Pauline
Vorhaus. Stephanie Dudek was also oh staff of the Rorschach Institute, the
same Stephanie Dudek who has introduced so many creative uses of the
Rorschach to identify the many personological sources of artistic and archi-
tectural creativity (e.g., Dudek & Hall, 1984).
Many others in attendance were as naw as we were to the enterprise;
others were already experienced and atteaded only the advanced semin;m.
(To qualify for them, one had to have adrhinistered and scored at least LOO
Rorschach records!) It was also clear that some came primarily to enjoy a
 4 DAHLSTROM

pleasant intellectual exercise as part of a summer holiday on a beautiful, but

vacant, college campus. For example, Walter and Catherine Cox Miles were
there from Yale University. He was an experimental psychologist who was a
former president of the APA. Back in the 1920s and 1930s, she had worked
closely with Louis M. Terman at Stanford University on both his Genetic
Studies of Genius (Terman, 1926) and the research studies appearing in their
volume on Sex and Personality (Terman & Cox, 1936). This latter volume
was a source of many of Hathaway's ideas about Scale 5 ( M a on the MMPI.
Also in attendance were Heinz and Rowena Ansbacher, who were instru-
mental in translating and organizing Alfred Adler's often quite scattered and
confusing writings into a more coherent form for the American public (An-
sbacher & Ansbacher, 1964). Werner Wolff was there, too. He was on the
faculty at Bard and, as part of the Institute, offered a brief course on
graphology in which both Paul and I enrolled. His book, Diagrams of the
Unconscious (Wolff, 1948) appeared the following year.
Still others, like Meehl, were faculty members preparing themselves to
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offer graduate-level courses on projective techniques in clinical training

programs at their home universities. (Paul also took workshops at Michael
Reese in Chicago from Samuel Beck to complete his backgrounding in the
Rorschach method.) As a graduate student, I thought it likely that I would
use the technique clinically, from time to time, but I never expected to offer
instruction to others on the Rorschach method. As it turned out, I taught
graduate courses on Rapaport (1945) at the University of Iowa and on
Klopfer, Beck (1945a), and even Exner (1969), at the University of North
Carolina in Chapel Hill. In addition, I served as a NIH site visiter both to
Zygmunt Piotrowski in Philadelphia on his proposal to computerize Ror-
schach interpretations and to John Exner on Long Island when he sought
funding for his efforts to pull together and systematize the diverse ap-
proaches to the Rorschach Inkblots.
Although we were all in various classrooms on the campus during the
morning lectures and demonstrations, and were scattered about the quadran-
gle in the early afternoons, drilling one another on the ins-and-outs of
inquiry or scoring, our late afternoons were reserved for Bruno Klopfer's
"show." Each afternoon, to the amazement and delight of all, he would work
his way through a blind interpretation of the Rorschach protocol from yet
another test subject.
After we had assembled, a slide of Card I would be projected on the
screen, the presenter would tell Klopfer the age and gender of the subject
whose test productions were to be scrutinized, and he or she would then read
to the assembled group the verbatim content and location of the first re-
sponse to that card. With pointer in hand, Klopfer would indicate the area of
the card cited, comment on the response and its scoring, note its relative
rarity or popularity, and suggest its possible personological import. He
would then proceed to the second response, the third, and so on. Insisting
that the presenter report everything (i.e., any "card talk" or unusual reac-
 PIGEONS, PEOPLE, AND PIGEON HOLES 5

tions), Klopfer would began to weave these observations into his specula-
tions, too.
Response by response, card by card, Klopfer would slowly build his
formulation of the individual's personality structure, his or her typical stylis-
tic or idiosyncratic dynamics, and the likelihood and nature of any signifi-
cant psychopathology. He appeared to be considering the series of responses
to the Rorschach rather like psychoanalytic free association material, relying
rather heavily on response sequences, on any evidence of color or shading
shock, and on any noteworthy comments about the test situation or the cards.
As he went, Klopfer would continue to tie the various lines of evidence
together, often having a rather elaborate picture of what this particular
person was like by Card VI or VII! Then, as if pressed for time, he would
hurry through the final cards, merely noting any additional evidence in
support of his already well-articulated personality fo~mulation.
The session would end with the presenter providing a brief synopsis of the
personality andlor pathology of the test-taker and indicating just how well
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Klopfer's "blind" analysis matched what was known from other sources
about that individual's personality and any emotional difficulties. As I re-
member, the fit between blind interpretation and known information on these
various subjects was quite remarkable. Of course, in 'Klspfer's formulation
there were some "Aunt Fanny"assertions (Tallent, 1963), as well as some of
the high base rate characteristics of anyone who was likely to be referred for
Rorschach testing at that time. Also, only very "rich" protocols with several
responses per card were nominated for Klopfer's demonstrations. (He would
probably have doubled Exner's minimum requirement of at least 17 or 18
total responses in order to do the kind of blind reading that he was perform-
ing for those of us in the Institute audience.)
To me, the most puzzling aspect of his blind readings was that many of the
kinds of inferences that Klopfer was drawing were supposedly based upon a
very careful quantitative analysis of the test protocol as a whole, using all of
the different response tabulations, summary scores, ratios, and balailces
included in the Rorschach Profile Sheet that we in the beginning classes
were struggling so hard to master. However, the members of the audience
were never shown a Scoring Summary on any of the Rorschach protocols
that were given to Klopfer for his blind interpretation. In fact, it seemed c:lear
to us tha.t he was drawing his inferences from an altogether different part of
the Record Form, namely, the Scoring List of individual test responses.
I wonder if Klopfer ever realized just how seriously he was undermiining
the motivation of us beginners to work hard and learn all of these intricacies
of the. Rorschach profile? I suppose, if coufronted on this apparent contra~dic-
tion between his teachings and his interpretive behavior, he would have
merely indicated that mastery of these scoring details was an essential part
of the burdens that had to be imposed on us apprentices so that he could
move us along to a journeyman level or, eventually, to a master level of
Rorschach interpretation!
 In addition to being a skillful showman and obviously playing to his
audience, it was clear that Klopfer himself sincerely believed the Rorschach
method to be a "Royal Road" to personality insights and understanding. He
even took occasion to seek out and challenge Paul Meehl in the audience to
contrast this "dynamic" approach with Paul's static "Bernreuter Test," much
to the amusement of those in the audience who knew something about the
crucial differences between the Bernreuter and the MMPI! But just how did
Klopfer manage to carry off these "miracles of personality assessment" that
he demonstrated for us each afternoon?
I have often reflected on this paradox and believe that I have an explana-
tion: Klopfer, over many years of work with Rorschach material, had elabo-
rated in his own head a typology of personality styles and their related
psychopathological features. To use this typology, he relied on an array of
quite specific cues that were provided by a Rorschach protocol, many of
which had yet to be made a part of the formal scoring in the summary profile.
Such "signs" were similar to those qualitative features used by Beck (1960),
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by Piotrowski (1972), or by Margaret Thaler Singer (e.g., Weiner, Thaler,

Reiser, & Mirsky, 1957) to carry out their marvelous "Rorschach readings."
That is, Klopfer would accumulate these signs mentally and, as soon as he
had encountered a sufficient number of them to be confident, he would
assign the individual to a specific pigeon-hole or category. Then, in order to
elaborate a word-picture of the particular individual under scrutiny, he
would begin drawing his interpretive material, not so much from the Ror-
schach protocol itself, but rather from the rich correlate-base of that particu-
lar "type." By this means, too, he would be able to anticipate the subject's
general pattern of responding to the last few cards of the test and focmulate
a coherent picture of the subject's personality and psychapathological status.
If my surmise is correct, the validity of his assertions would be a joint
function of the dependability of the Rorschach signs needed to make aproper
allocation, together with the richness and accuracy of the associated cluster
of attributes tied to that pigeon-hole. I realize that there is some risk in
employing the term pigeon-hole here, because it carries such a heavy burden
of disparagement and dismissal. Back in those days, many clinicians consid-
ered the use of a procedure like the Rorstzhach to arrive at some overall
assessment to be quite unproductive. Similar complaints at that time (and
since) have been leveled at interpreters of the MMPI, the TAT, the CAT, and
so on. In fact, back then, the whole enterprise af personality assessment was
frequently dismissed as "merely pigeon-holing the patient" (Alhee, 1970;
Rubenfeld, 1967; Toch, 1970).
In one sense, of course, there was some truth to this allegation: With only
a relatively few therapeutic techniques then available to clinicians, no matter
what was discovered about an individual's personality or his or her pattern
of psychopathology, virtually all patients received much the same treatment
without regard to the different pigeon-holes in which they might be placed
(Meehl, 1972). Judging by the long list of therapies assembled by Karasu
 PIGEONS, PEOPLE, AND PIGEON HOLES 7

(1989) and his committee for the other APA, there are now plenty of inter-
ventions available to which we should be tying our assessment schemata
(Maruish, 1994).
However, the reasons for the strong negative tone associated with cate:go-
rizing or pigeon-holing are puzzling to me; it was not always the case. For
example, entries in the Oxford English Dictionary on pigeon and pigeon-
hole refer in part to the wide variety of different kinds of pigeons found in
nature. Goodwin (1970) has documented the diversity over the globe of the
varieties and races that this species of bird has developed, either through
natural selection or as the result of the efforts of pigeon breeders and
fanciers. Some varieties, like the fruit doves, are diminutive; others rival
pheasants in size. Pouters, tumblers, mourning doves, and carrier pigeons are
probably known to almost every one (Levi, 1963). Hawever., many less well
known varieties like the white-bellied plumed pigeon (Petrophassa
plumifera) of North-Central Australia or the cloven feathered dove
(Drepanoptila holosericea) of New Caledonia, differ markedly in color,
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plumage, and behavior from these more familiar varieties; all1 differ, in tnrn,
from the common street pigeons of urban America (Simms, 1964).
Some other citations in the OED pertain to the oftein elaborate structures
made to house the pigeon. It seems that most pigeon~s,in some contrast to
other species of birds, do not typically nest in trees or close to the ground but
prefer, instead, to seek out holes in a sheer cliff. It is this attribute that makes
them particularly well suited to survival among the towering structures of
modern cities. Accordingly, then, dovecotes are made: up of a large number
of small compartments with openings large enough for the bird to enter or
leave but small enough to keep out most predatorfs. ]Each bird occupies its
own particular compartment and returns to it after feeding or when coming
in from training flights. The pigeon recognizes his or her own pigeon-hole.
By analogy, then, pigeon-hole has come to refer to an array of compartments
in a desk or cabinet that provides places for all kinds of papers or a variety
of different objects. In this context, the verb to pigeon-hole came to mean to
put away in a proper place for later reference, hence to shelve:for the present.
In the OED there are also references that do carry strongly negative
connotations. For example, in reference to shelters for the poor: "...with
plenty of little pigeon-hdes of bedrooms. There was.. .a single dormitory for
four hundred men. Each is a pigeon-hole six and one-half feet long and two
feet wide."
(It is doubtful that the equivalent shelters for the homeless today do
appreciably better in the generosity of accomodations that they provide their
inhabitants!)
Further on, the OED notes a quite different usage of the term pigeon-hole:
"He was incapable of arranging his thoughts in orderly syimmetric pigeon
holes."
This is the sense in which I apply the term to Bruno Klopfer; I believe that
he was extremely capable of just such systematic and orderly organization of
 8 DAHLSTROM

his prior Rorschach observations and experiences. I think that Klopfer was
particularly insightful and well organized in combining his cognitions with
the relevant personological and psychopathological facts about the various
kinds of subjects that he encountered while giving the test.
There is some irony in the realization that what I believe to be Klopfer's
approach to Rorschach responses and the approach that Hathaway and Mc-
Kinley (1940) made to responses given to inventory items were, in fact,
virtually identical: a sign approach rather than a sampling approach. Each
feature of the Rorschach performance that Klopfer was relying upon was
treated as a sign of some form of personality organization or some kind of
psychopathological disorder; for the constructors of the MMPI, each en-
dorsement of an MMPI item was similarly a sign of some important psycho-
diagnostic status. The MMPI "scales" that Hathaway and McKinley formed
were assemblages of signs. They were thus fundamentally different from the
ability and aptitude scales developed by educational and psychometric spe-
cialists. For the latter, the component test items provided samples of arithme-
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tic performance, verbal ability, or whatever. Only the recent developments of

Item Response Theory (Thissen, 1991; Child, Dahlstrom, Kemp, & Panter,
1992) have been able to bridge the gap between orthodox test theory and
scale development of the sort employed in the MMPI. Also, looking back at
Cronbach's classic critique of the Rorschach method (Cronbach, 1949), it is
clear now that those comments were often based on assumptions inherent in
the sampling theory of test scales. Many of Cronbach's criticisms are far less
cogent when applied to sets of diagnostic signs.
If I am correct about the general strategy that Bruno Klopfer, Zygmunt
Piotrowski, Margaret Thaler Singer, and other Rorschach savants have em-
ployed, what we should have been preserving from such wizards is primarily
their cognitive pigeon-holes (i.e., the categories, types, or taxa that are
implicit in their interpretive methods), together with the associated stable
correlates that each taxon carries with it, as well as the signs needed to
identify members of each category. However, at the present time, this way of
thinking about human personality organization is undervalued and unappre-
ciated. Types, species, or taxa seem to be quite arbitrarily dismissed as a
means of summarizing major findings about patterns of human personality
and psychopathology. Their potential for human personality assessment has
been generally neglected (Dahlstrom, 1972, 1991). Such congtructs are
sometimes equated with simple stereotypes. Although there is always the
risk that some category or other may not be a valid personological taxon but
constitute, instead, an empty and emotionally laden stereotype, this potential
for error should not keep personality theorists from employing what Rychlak
(1968) has referred to as theorotypes, legitimate categorical constructs em-
bedded in a rich array of supporting empirical data,
In the place of a set of configural taxa in an evolving theoretical structure,
we find major personality formulations tied blindly to various dimen-
sionalized scales and multidimensional geometric models. Let me cite one
 PIGEONS, PEOPLE, AND PIGEON HOLES 9

example of a multidimensional geometric model designed to summarize

what are inherently categorical data. Raymond B. Cattell (1968) applied
his famous Taxonome computer program, which he had developed1 to
generate sets of typological clusters, on an elaborate set of data ab-
stracted from Jane's Fighting Ships (Jane, 1964-1965). This source pro-
vided measurements on every vessel in the British navy at the time (i.e.,
all the battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, transports, etc.). He en-
tered this quantitative information about each ship (e.g., its length, width,
draft, etc.) into the Taxonome. The program created a variety of cluslters
in hyperspace that corresponded rather well to the various groups of
vessels just mentioned. However, even with the large amount of data that
he had employed in the Taxonome program, Cattell could not distinguish
between destroyers and submarines; these two classes of vessels were
intermixed in one "cloud" (Cattell, 1968). Finally, to separate them,
Cattell had to add one additional piece of information:
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"Is the vessel reversibly submersible? (Yes or No).'"

That is, even this elaborate geometric approach finally had to incorporate
categorical data to deal with essentially configural material (the various
classes of vessels designed to fulfill markedly differeni strategic and tactical
functions in a modern navy).
Although they are not so elaborate, many of the ways of characterizing
personality today use comparable approaches. Modelled on the two-dimen-
sional circumplex (dominancelsubmission, lovelhate) of Timothy Leary
(1957), a number of multidimensional circumplexes have been elaborated
(e.g., Goldberg, 1993, or Wiggins, 1980, the former tied to what is now
called the Five-Factor Model). Employing concentric geometric arrays to
summarize descriptions of personality and tempera~ment,they are based
essentially on how people use personological descriptors rather than how
individual personalities are organized. Nevertheless, these circumplexes are
put forward today as the latest and most comprehensive ways of summariz-
ing all that is known about human personality!
However, it is important to note that some of the oldest modes of summa-
rizing such knowledge have employed quite similar models. For example,
De La Chambre (1669) proposed a circumplex based on three orthogonal
dimensions and their associated personality features: warmlcold, moistlldry,
and masculinelfeminine (see Figure 1). Today, his terminology may seem a
little arcane but in some ways it resembles the rating dimensions that were
employed in Osgood's semantic differential as it wals used in hundreds of
studies of human judgments (Osgood, Suci, & Tann~enbaum,1957). Note,
also, that De La Chambre had the wisdom to include both Masculinity and
Femininity, which the current Five Factor Model has yet to incorporate!
A little later, Immanuel Kant in his Anthropologie (179811964) offered
circumplex of various psychopathological conditions and incorporated for
 10 DAHLSTROM

Strong, hardy, glorious,

frank, liberal, magnanimous.
just, knowledgeable

'W

Mobile,
spritely.
unfaithful,
impatient, patient.
persuadable, modest.
pitypg. faithful.
babillarde judicious
(loquacious)
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Ingrate, aware, unjust, revengeful,

weak, timid, suspicious, defiant,
fawning, pusilanimous, resCe (faking),
dissembling, lying, taking offense,
vindictive, cruel, superstitious

FIGURE 1 Three-axis typology of personality (De La Chambre, 1669).

the first time the important distinction between emotional and general intel-
lective disorders (see Figure 2). Many of these characteristics still appear in
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American
Psychiatric Association (1987).
More recently, H. J. Eysenck (H. J. Eysenck & M. W. Eysenck, 1985) used
two of his three personality dimensions (normallneurotic and extrovertlin-
trovert) to epitomize the basic features of the four classic temperament types
of Hippocrates and Galen: sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic
(see Figure 3). However, H. J. Eysenck has not always viewed extraversion
as a dimension. In the 1970 edition of his volume, The Structure of Human
Personality, he proposed it as a type with a hierarchical organization of
component attributes (see Figure 4). As shown there, the key features of a
taxon are well illustrated: at the bottom, the observational elements required
to identify an individual as a member of the category; at the top, the overrid-
ing construct, or taxon, uniting these attributes into an identifiable configu-
 PIGEONS, PEOPLE, AND PIGEON HOLES 11

Distracted, superstitious, fanatical.

dreams while awake, absence from
oneself, delirium (not from fever)

Untimely I
sorrow, Untimely
brooding, joy.
mourning ecstasy,
to excess, exhaltation.
suicide, genius
melancholia
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Cretin, simpleton, idiot. moron, fool,

buffoon, dullard, stupidity, simple-
minded, conceited ass, imbecility

FIGURE 2 Two-axis typology of personality disorders (Kant, 179811964),

ration; and, at the intermediate levels, those general and specific traits that
comprise this taxon and carry its surplus meaning.
Correspondingly, the features at the bottom level in Figure 4 are equiva-
lent to the various signs in a Rorschach performance that experienced inter-
preters like Bruno Klopfer identified and used in their pigeon-holing
maneuver. The top level is the category or taxon that has evolved inductively
from a wide range of experience with the test instrument. Finally, the inter-
mediate levels contain the elements of a correlate-base upon which the
clinician may draw once an appropriate taxon assigment has been made.
There are many more recent examples of dimensional systems that have
been developed to provide typological assignments. Long-time users of the
MMPI will recognize the early conjoint use by George Welsh (1956, 1965)
of two factor dimensions, A (anxiety) and R (repression), to define novants
that summarized various forms of psychopathology. Also, Welsh's later foray
into a study of the personality parameters of creativity (Welsh, 1980) yiellded
 12 DAHLSTROM

ANXIOUS

AGGRESSIVE
EXCITABLE
PESSIMISTIC CHANGEABLE

IMPULSIVE
UNSOCIABLE OPTIMISTIC

MELANCHOLIC CHOLERIC
- INTROVERTED EXTRAVERTED -
PHLEGMATIC SANGUINE
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THOUGHTFUL TALKATIVE
RESPONSIVE

CONTROLLED EASYGOING

EVEN-TEMPERED CAREFREE

LEADERSHIP

FIGURE 3 Relation between the four temperaments and the modem neuroticism-
extraversion dimensional system. From Table 8 of Personality and Individual Differ-
ences: A Natural Science Approach (p. 50) by H. 1. Eysenck and M. W. Eysenck, 1985,
New York: Plenum. Copyright 1985 by Plenum Publishing Corporation. Reprinted by
permission.

orthogonal dimensions of "intellectence" and "origence," which he em-

ployed in a circumplex. These dimensions, too, were specified by a set of
MMPI scales (and also by measures in several other inventories).
More currently, Gough (1987) employed a three-dimensional, or cuboi-
dal, structure, not to summarize sets of trait descriptors, but to locate indi-
viduals based on their scores on three special scales for the California
Psychological Inventory (CPI). Furthermore, Gough's cuboid schema is
merely an orienting device to guide more detailed personological inferences
about test subjects to be drawn from the traditional CPI profile form. That is,
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tolling smiling buying a fahng dancing moving planning lairghing discussing planning
pkes at mo new car math but amo"v a group at my an upcoming a church
fmishing different fishing lrip pke eleclion picnic
the test groups a1
fastesl a Party

FIGURE 4 H. J. Eysenck's hierarchical model of extraversion. From Figure l b of "The Structure of Personality Traits: Vertical and Horizontal" (p. 172)
by L. R. Goldberg, 1993, in D. C. Funder, R. D. Parke, C. Tomlinson-Keasey, and K. Widaman (Eds.), Studying Lives Through Time: Personality and
Development, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Copyright 1993 by American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission.
 14 DAHLSTROM

the significance of a particular CPI profile configuration is conditioned by

the place the individual occupies in the cuboid structure.
One of the pioneering efforts to dimensionalize the Rorschach material
also involved an early circumplex. Lodge and Gibson (1953) used a "coac-
tion compass" based on two orthogonal dimensions (fluiditylrigidity and
integratioddisintegration). They employed this compass to plot individual
responses to the Inkblots. The general "path" that the Rorschach responses
from any one subject traced across the compass was summarized by a vector.
The endpoint of the vector was then entered as a dot on the surface of the
compass to represent the Rorschach record for that subject. In this way, these
authors plotted the pattern of responses from each subject reported either by
Rorschach (192111942) or by Beck (1945b).
Similarly, to demonstrate the ability of this schema to capture the changes
in personality before and after psychoanalysis, Lodge (1953) plotted the
responses reported by Rorschach from a patient who had been examined
before and after 5 months of analysis. The vectors for the two test adminis-
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trations of the Rorschach on the Coaction Compass demonstrate a significant

reduction in rigidity but little movement in the direction of integration. Most
experienced Rorschach interpreters would undoubtedly protest that this two-
dimensional schema failed to capture the large amount of qualitative clinical
data conveyed in Rorschach's original test protocols.
It is my contention that all current geometric models of personality are
neither very new nor particularly well suited to the task of organizing the
patterning of human personalities. I believe that we urgently need a taxon-
omy based on the inherent configural nature of personality structure and
functioning. We need a schema of pigeon-holes to summarize in a faithful
and accurate way how we differ and how we resemble each other. To suggest
some of the many gdins inherent in such an approach, let me return briefly to
the listing I made of the different varieties of pigeons. As summarized in
Goodwin (1970) or Levi (1963), information is provided on each taxon of
pigeons that has been identified, cataloged in avian systematics, and studied
from a wide range of perspectives by experts around the world. Based on a
common taxonomic classification framework, information has gradually ac-
cumulated in an orderly fashion about their behavioral patterns; their diets,
diseases, and predators; their methods of reproduction; their populations and
ranges. Scientific investigators and bird fanciers alike communicate unam-
biguously with one another. Through zoological systematics, originally ini-
tiated by Linnaeus, and carried to high levels by taxonomists like Ernst Mayr
(Mayr, 1969), vast amounts of data have been cataloged about each biologi-
cal taxon.
Psychology, particularly personology, has yet to develop these kinds of
organizing frameworks (Dahlstrom, 1991).However, the picture is not en-
tirely bleak. Like many of the early zoological classifiers, we have available
various "fragments" of such a schematic framework of personality and, even
more importantly, we now have methods of taxon identification of growing
 PIGEONS, PEOPLE, AND PIGEON HOLES 15

sophistication and precision (Blashfield & Aldenderfer, 1988; Grove &

Meehl, 1993; Meehl, 1992; Meehl & Golden, 1982; Meehl & Yonce, in
press).
As an example of one available fragment, David Shapiro, in his classic
volume Neurotic Styles (1965), has described five configurations that resem-
ble closely the constructs that occupy the center of the MMPI clinical
profile: hysteroid, paranoid, obsessional, and two forms of impulsive. Read-
ing through the concise summaries that he provides for these patterns, one
gathers a clear picture of what the individuals in each of these taxa are like,
both in their normal functioning and when under stress. Unfortunately, there
is little in his write-ups to guide the placement of any one particular individ-
ual into any of his styles, although he occasionally makes reference to
relevant Rorschach material.
From the domain of normal personality studies, too, there are solme
reasonably well-developed taxa that can serve in this capacity. Block's
(1971) studies of the men and women in the Bay Area longitudinal samples
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yielded clearly differentiated and stable taxa. Quantitative data from the
California Q-sort and from the CPI (Cough, 1987) serve to identify member-
ship in each personological type. Another example comes from the work of
Gerald Bell at the University of North Carolina who has proposed a six-cat-
egory "diamond" to organize his findings from studies of employees work-
ing in various US business organizations. His volume on The Achievers
(1973) provides a system of classification based on Thematic Apperception
Test material, together with recommendations on the proper utilization of
individuals in each personality type for the most efficient operation of any
particular organization under study. Holland (1973) has advanced a compa-
rable schema of personality configurations in the American 'workplace.
We also have some important conceptual fragments captured in various
"stage" formulations. Freud's classic psychosexual developmental stages
constitute a primitive approximation to such typological groupings. As ellab-
orated by Fenichel (1945), each of the characterological clusters provides a
means of organizing a considerable body of inforination about individuals
fixated at one or another of the steps along the path to emotional maturity.
Similarly, Jane Loevinger's ego developmental stages (based more on a
Sullivanian formulation than a Freudian one, Loevinger, 1976) offers a
competing typology also couched in terms of developmental lags or fixations
along the route that she poses to greater self..efficacy and eventual self-actu-
alization. In her address last year as the Klopfer Award recipient (Loevin,ger,
1994), she skillfully pointed out some of the many limitations in the cur-
rently fashionable Five-Factor Model of personality. In that presentation, she
charactized the Conscientiousnsss factor in the Five-Factor Model as basi-
cally a conformity pattern and highlighted the crucial differences between
yielding to social pressures in conformity and standing firmly against such
pressures in the way that true conscientiousness might be manifested (cf.
Loevinger, 1993).
 16 DAHLSTROM

In addition, many adherents of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Briggs

& Myers, 1976) would advance the Jungian personality types as another
useful fragment to be incorporated into the construction of any future typo-
logical system. (Some might even propose that their schema already consti-
tutes just such a system!) They do have the clear advantage of being tied to
a simple metric and carrying a very considerable body of research. At the
moment they lack meaningful ties to various emotional disorders that might
be associated with each personality pattern, such as those envisioned by
Foulds (1965) for his psychometric patterns.
I should not close without mentioning the wealth of information on
personality patterning and related symptoms of psychopathology that is now
summarized in the wide array of MMPI configurations. Take as an example
the 24-7 code spelled out by Gilberstadt and Duker (1965) as one MMPI
pattern of male veterans who abuse alcohol. This group shows a long history
of episodic drinking alternating with periods of sobriety, guilt, and self-re-
crimination. Marital history, work history, styles of self-defense and self-de-
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ception, and so forth, are all elaborated in modern computer-based

interpretive systems utilizing MMPI configurations (Eyde, Kowal, &
Fishburne, 1988).
It is not clear just how these various fragments can be best used to begin
building the kind of edifice that I envision. However, I believe that there is
a great deal to be gained in organizing our personological research by means
of such a schema. As usual, Stephen Jay Gould says it best: "Science without
taxonomy is blind" (Purcell & Gould, 1994, p. 38).

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Minnesota Press.
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W. Grant Dahlstrom
Department of Psychology
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3270

Received May 12, 1994

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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS OF W. GRANT

DAHLSTROM

Welsh, G. S., & Dahlstrom, W. G. (Eds.). (1956). Basic readings on the MMPI in psychology
and medicine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dahlstrom, W. G., & Welsh, G. S. (1960). An MMPI handbook: A guide to use in clinical
practice and research. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Baughman, E. E., & Dahlstrom, W. G. (1968). Negro and white chiLdren: Apsychological study
in the rural South. New York: Academic.
Dahlstrom, W. G., Welsh, G. S., & Dahlstrom, L. E. (1972). An MMPl handbook: Vol. 1. Clinical
interpretation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dahlstrom, W. G., Welsh, G. S., & Dahlstrom, L. E. (1975). An MMPI handbook: Vol. 2.
Research applications. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dahlstrom, W. G., & Dahlstrom, L. E. (Eds.). (1980). Basic readings on the MMPI: A new
selection on personality measurement. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Barefoot, J. C., Dahlstrom, W. G., & Williams, R. B. (1983). Hostility, CHD incidence, and total
mortality: A 25-year follow-up study of 255 physicians. Psychosomatic Medicine, 45, 9--63.
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1985). The development of psychological testing. In G. Kimble 8~ K.
Schlesinger (Eds.), Topics in the history of psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 63-113). Hillsdale, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Dahlstrom, W. G., Lachar, D., & Dahlstrom, L. E. (1986). MMPIpatterns of American minori-
ties. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Butcher, J. N., Dahlstrom, W. G., Graham, J. R., Tellegen, A., & Kaemmer, B. (1989). Manual
for the restandardized Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory: MMPI-2. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Dahlstrom, W. G., Brooks, J. D., & Peterson, C. D. (1990). The Beck Depression Inventory:
Item order and the impact of response sets. Journal of Personalit'y Assessment, 55, 224-:233.
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1992). Comparability of two-point high-point code patterns from original
MMPI norms to MMPI-2 norms for the restandardization sample. Journal of PersonaLity
Assessment, 59, 153-164.
Peterson, C. D., & Dahlstrom, W. G. (1992). The derivation of gender-role scales GM andl GF
 20 DAHLSTROM

for MMPI-2 and their relationship to Scale 5 (MB. Journal of Personality Assessment, 59,
486-499.
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1992). Psychology from my point of view. In C. E. Walker (Ed.), History of
clinical psychology in autobiography (pp. 113-157). Pacific Grove, CA: BrooksICole.
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1993). The items in the MMPI-2: Alterations in wording. Patterns of
interrelationship and changes in endorsements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Dahlstrom, W. G., & Tellegen, A. (1993). Socioeconomic status and the MMPI-2: The relation
of MMPI-2 patterns to levels of education and occupation. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Dahlstrom, W. G. (1993). Tests: Small samples, large consequences. American Psychologist, 48,
393-399.
Rothke, S. E., Friedman, A. E, Dahlstrom, W. G., Greene, R. L., Arredondo, R., & Mann, A. W.
(1994). MMPI-2 normative data for the F - K index: Implications for clinical, neu-
ropsychological, and forensic practice. Assessment, I , 1-15.
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