Abstract

Stern has drawn attention to the possibility of conducting research into the psychology of individual differences in a manner that treats nomothetic and idiographic approaches as being equal and complementary. Nevertheless, many psychologists, such as Strelau, strongly deny the scientific value of the idiographic approach. Jung's conception of psychological types, as presented here, has been created using the nomothetic approach, and its basic assumptions can be verified using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Bearing in mind the fact that Adler's conception of lifestyles was formulated and verified using only the idiographic method of psychography, carried out in the context of individual courses of psychotherapy, I draw attention to the possibility of using, for this purpose, my own Action Styles Questionnaire, which offers some elements essential to the idiographic approach: e.g. a bipolar structural scale of individual preferences articulated in terms of cooperation with others on the one hand, and security and self-protection on the other - one which may be considered convergent with Adler's description of creative and uncreative lifestyles. Psychometric data obtained from the students in respect of MBTI and ASQ were subjected to statistical covariation analysis. Additionally, four homogeneous types were demarcated, using statistical cluster analysis. The final results obtained indicate that MBTI attitude scales are significantly covariant with the results for persons belonging to different types along the bipolar CO-SP scale. However, there were almost no differences between the results obtained when using ASQ scales and when using the scales for the three pairs of psychological functions measured by MBTI.