A Theory of Personality

The late Prescott Lecky (1), one of the pioneers in self-image psychology. Lecky conceived of the personality as a system of ideas, all of which must be consistent with each other. Ideas that are inconsistent with the system are rejected, "not believed," and not acted on. Ideas that seem to be consistent with the system are accepted. At the very center of this system of ideas-the keystone, or the base on which all else is built-is the individual's self-image, or his conception of himself.

Prescott Lecky brought about almost miraculous improvement in the grades of school children by showing them how to change their self-image. After thousands of experiments and many years of research, Lecky concluded . that poor grades in school are in almost every case due in some degree to students' self-conception and self-definition. These students had been literally hypnotized by such ideas as "I am dumb," "I am poor in arithmetic," "I am a naturally poor speller," "I do not have a mechanical type mind," etc. "With such self-definitions, students had to make poor grades in order to be true to themselves. Unconsciously, making poor grades became a moral issue with them. It would be as wrong, from their viewpoint, for them to make good grades as it would be to steal if they define themselves as honest persons.

Lecky was a school teacher and had an opportunity to test his theory on thousands of students. He theorized that if a student had trouble learning a certain subject, it could be because (from the student's point of view) it would be inconsistent for him to learn it. Lecky believed, however, that if the student could be induced to change his self-definition, his learning ability should also change. This proved to be the case. One student, who misspelled words out of 100 and flunked so many subjects that he lost credit for a year, made a general average of 91 the next year and became one of the best spellers in school. A girl who was dropped from one college because of poor grades, entered Columbia and became a straight "A" student. A boy who was told by a testing bureau that he had no aptitude for English won honorable mention the next year for a literary prize.

The trouble with these students was not that they were dumb or lacking in basic aptitudes. The trouble was an inadequate self-image ("I don't have a mathematical mind"; "I'm just naturally a poor speller"). They "identified" with their mistakes and failures. Instead of saying "I failed that test" (factual and descriptive), they concluded "I am a failure." Instead of saying "I flunked that subject," they said "I am a flunk-out." (For those who are interested in learning more of Lecky's work, try to find a copy of his book: Self Consistency, A Theory of Personality.) Self Consistency ~ A Theory of Personality~Prescott Lecky [1945]

Lecky also used the same method to cure students of such habits as nail biting and stuttering.

In the book, Secrets of Successful Selling, John D. Murphy tells how the famous sales expert Elmer Wheeler used Lecky's theory to increase the earnings of a certain salesperson:

Elmer Wheeler had been called in as a sales consultant to a certain firm. The sales manager called his attention to a very remarkable case. A certain salesman always managed to make almost exactly $5,000 per year, regardless of the territory they assigned him or the commission he was paid.

Because this salesman had done well in a rather small territory, he had been given a larger and much better one. But the next year his commission amounted to almost the same amount as that he had made in the smaller one-$5,OOO. The following year the company increased the commission paid to all salesmen, but this salesman still managed to make only $5,000. He was then assigned one of the company's poorest territories- and again made the usual $5,000.

Wheeler had a talk with this salesman and found that the trouble was not in the territory but in the salesman's own evaluation of himself. He thought of himself as a $5,000-per-year man and as long as he held that concept of himself, outside conditions didn't seem to matter much. When he was assigned a poor territory, he worked hard to make that $5,000. When he was assigned a good territory, he found all sorts of excuses to coast when the $5,000 was in sight. Once, when the goal had been reached, he got sick and was unable to work anymore that year, although doctors could find nothing wrong with him and he miraculously recovered by the first of the next year.

Prescott Lecky's method consisted of getting subjects to "see" that some negative concept of theirs was inconsistent with some other deeply held belief. Lecky believed that it was inherent in the very nature of "mind" itself, that all ideas and concepts making up the total content of "personality" must seem to be consistent with each other. If the inconsistency of a given idea is consciously recognized, it must be rejected.

Lecky found that there were two powerful levers for changing beliefs and concepts. There are standard convictions, which are strongly held by nearly everyone. These are:

(1) the feeling or belief that you are capable of doing your share, holding up your end of the log, exerting a certain amount of independence, and

(2) the belief that there is "something" inside you that should not be allowed to suffer indignities.*

"The same attitude must be maintained in spite of environmental changes."~ Prescott Lecky

Lecky has said that the purpose of emotion is "re-enforcement," or additional strength, rather than to serve as a sign of weakness. He believed that there was only one basic emotion-excitement-and that excitement manifests itself as fear, anger, courage, etc. depending on our own inner goals at the time, whether we are inwardly organized to conquer a problem, run away from it, or destroy it. "The real problem is not to control emotion, but to control the choice of which tendency shall receive emotional reinforcement." (Prescott Lecky, Self Consistency, A Theory of Personality, New York, Island Press [1945])

From Maxwell Maltz PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS [1960]

*The revised 2001 edition of Psycho-Cybernetics also states:

Interestingly, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), which is based on extensive work by Drs. Grinder and Bandler and has been popularized by Tony Robbins, offers a tool-kit of two items: pain and accomplishment.

1 Prescott Lecky (1892–1941) was a lecturer of Psychology at Columbia University from 1924 to 1934. At a time when American psychology was dominated by behaviorism, he developed the concept of self-help as a method in psychotherapy of the self in the 1920s. His concepts influenced Maxwell Maltz in his writing of the classic self-help book, Psycho-Cybernetics. Lecky stressed the defense mechanism of resistance as an individual's method of regulating his self-concept.
Lecky's self-consistency theory, that self-consistency is a primary motivating force in human behavior. Lecky's theory concerned the organization of ideas of the self and the self's overall need for a "master" motive that serves to maintain for the self a consistency in ideas. Self-consistency theory remains relevant to contemporary personality and clinical psychologists. He was well known as a psychologist and counseled John F. Kennedy when he was having trouble at Choate preparatory school.