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PSAR 74(1):135-139 (1987)

Observations on the Meeting Between Allport and Freud

Author: Leslie C. Morey PhD

Abstract

Gordon Allport, a leading personality theorist, was significantly influenced by his brief visit with Sigmund Freud. Allport related the story of this visit many times, and claimed that it caused him to rethink the importance of manifest motives, which he believed were grossly underemphasized in Freud's theory. The meeting took place in 1920 when Allport had finished a brief tenure of teaching in Constantinople following receipt of his bachelor's degree from Harvard. In Allport's words:

With a callow forwardness characteristic of age twenty-two, I wrote to Freud announcing that I was in Vienna and implied that no doubt he would be glad to make my acquaintance. I received a kind reply in his own handwriting inviting me to come to his office at a certain time. Soon after I had entered the famous red burlap room with pictures of dreams on the wall, he summoned me into his inner office. He did not speak to me but sat in expectant silence, for me to state my mission. I was not prepared for silence and had to think fast to find a suitable conversational gambit. I told him of an episode on the tram car on my way to his office. A small boy about four years of age had displayed a conspicuous dirt phobia. He kept saying to his mother, “I don't want to sit there … don't let that dirty man sit beside me.” To him everything was schmutzig. His mother was a well-starched Hausfrau, so dominant and purposive looking that I thought the cause and effect apparent.
When I finished my story Freud fixed his kindly therapeutic eyes upon me and said, “And was that little boy you?” Flabbergasted and feeling a bit guilty, I contrived to change the subject. While Freud's misunderstanding of my motivation was amusing, it also started a deep train of thought. I realized that he was accustomed to neurotic defenses and that my manifest motivation (a sort of rude curiosity and youthful ambition) escaped him. For therapeutic progress he would
Page 135
have to cut through my defenses, but it so happened that t

PSAR 74(1):135-139 (1987)

Observations on the Meeting Between Allport and Freud

Author: Leslie C. Morey PhD

Abstract

With a callow forwardness characteristic of age twenty-two, I wrote to Freud announcing that I was in Vienna and implied that no doubt he would be glad to make my acquaintance. I received a kind reply in his own handwriting inviting me to come to his office at a certain time. Soon after I had entered the famous red burlap room with pictures of dreams on the wall, he summoned me into his inner office. He did not speak to me but sat in expectant silence, for me to state my mission. I was not prepared for silence and had to think fast to find a suitable conversational gambit. I told him of an episode on the tram car on my way to his office. A small boy about four years of age had displayed a conspicuous dirt phobia. He kept saying to his mother, “I don't want to sit there … don't let that dirty man sit beside me.” To him everything was schmutzig. His mother was a well-starched Hausfrau, so dominant and purposive looking that I thought the cause and effect apparent.
When I finished my story Freud fixed his kindly therapeutic eyes upon me and said, “And was that little boy you?” Flabbergasted and feeling a bit guilty, I contrived to change the subject. While Freud's misunderstanding of my motivation was amusing, it also started a deep train of thought. I realized that he was accustomed to neurotic defenses and that my manifest motivation (a sort of rude curiosity and youthful ambition) escaped him. For therapeutic progress he would
Page 135
have to cut through my defenses, but it so happened that t