- Abram Kardiner (1891-1981) a student of Sigmund Freud by profession was a psychoanalyst. He along with Ralph Linton argued, that while culture and personality were similarly integrated, a specific casual relationship existed between them. In response to the configurationalist approach Kardinar, along with Linton developed the concept “basic personality type” in his book, Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945).
- “The theory basic personality type is a collection of fundamental personality traits shared by normal members of a society acquired by adapting to a culture“.
- The above theory was formulated after reading Freud’s The Future of an Illusion (1928/1961) in which he argues that children’s early life experiences determine their later religious life. Similar to Freud, Kardiner understood that the foundations of personality development were laid in early stage of childhood.
- Further Kardiner argued that since basic childrearing procedures are common in a society they resulted in some common personality traits among members of a society.
- He said that the basic personality exists in the context of particular cultural institutions or patterned ways of doing things in a society. Such social institutions are of primary and secondary types.
- Primary cultural institutions include kinship, childrearing, sexuality and subsistence, which are widely shared by societies. The shared personality traits across the societies are what constitute the basic personality structure.
- The secondary cultural institutions, on the other hand, include religion, rituals, folkways, norms etc.
- Between primary and secondary institutions, individual poses the basic personality structure.
- According to him, childhood plays significant role in the formation of basic personality structure. Thus, the basic personality type expresses itself in the group’s ideologies, in emotional and cognitive orientation to life and death.
- He compared two communities the Tanala, who were horticulturists with the Betsileo, who were intensive cultivators of wet paddy. According to him, the emphasis on secondary institutions like magic and spirit possession among the Betsileo, tribe came from the anxiety that demands of irrigated agriculture produced in their basic personality structure.
- From his study he concluded that diversity in personality types in a culture increased with increased social and political complexity
| Primary Institutions | Secondary Institutions |
|---|---|
| It shapes the basic personality structure of society. | Secondary institutions are produced in the process of shaping the basic personality structure |
| It can be conflict with one another, leading to shared, unconscious conflicts and anxieties | It helps the members of a society to deal with the conflicts and anxieties |
| Child rearing practices, toilet training etc | Ritual or folk tales conflicts |