Allport's Life and Allport's Psychology

ABSTRACT This article addresses some of the relations between Gordon Allport's life and his psychological theories, focusing on two themes: (a) Allport's junior-year prize-winning recounting of Harvard's “Rinehart” legend–the changes and distortions he introduced in his version of the core legend suggest altruistic sublimation of motives for power and prestige; and (b) Allport's relationship with “Jenny,” the mother of “Ross,” his college roommate (he twice published her letters to him as Letters from Jenny.). I suggest that the need to differentiate himself from Ross was one contributing factor to such Allportian theoretical notions as the functional autonomy of motives and the sharp differentiation between “normal” and “abnormal.”