Abstract
"A man cannot be shown without acting." This statement admits to two radically different interpretations: that of the science of behaviourism, according to which a man is shown by his behaviour divorced from its motives and goals; and that of the art of drama, according to which a man is shown by his behaviour in the context of its motives and goals, that is in the context of the single, indivisible act of the whole drama. The contrast between these two psychologies and the superiority of the latter approach, is the subject of this thesis. It is argued that all good psychology is dramatistic by nature, being based on the conception of a person which is implicit in drama. The first part of this thesis consists in making this implicit conception explicit. A distinction is drawn between the person (the self-role), the personality (the interplay of psychological forces) and the persona (the social mask); and it is argued that the aim of psychological analysis and therapy, as of dramatic presentation, is the revealing of the person through the personality and the persona. Chapters are devoted to the implications of this approach with regard to Hamlet's self-analysis, Shakespeare' s theory of human nature and the problem of psychological language. It is argued, moreover, that this approach illuminates the holism versus compartmentalism, freedom versus determinism and idiography versus nomotheticism controversies. The relationship of this approach to those of sociological role theory, are also discussed. A concluding chapter examines the concept of rationality as the distinguishing characteristic of man in its three major modes, scientific, artistic and religious; and shows how the dramatistic approach to psychology, while having the objectivity of science, escapes the limitations of scientism, and takes account of man's artistic and religious nature.