With the many dynamic changes going on in today’s world, a new prototype of the human personality is needed to guide people’s future actions, behaviour, lifestyles, and overall development. This new prototype is the cultural personality. It is grounded in the belief that people should be holistic, centred, creative, altruistic, and humane if they are to achieve more happiness, fulfillment, and spirituality in their own lives as well as live in harmony with other people, cultures, species, and the natural environment as a whole.

In this enlightening book, author D. Paul Schafer explores the background, ramifications, and promise of this exciting new personality concept. In Chapter One, an assessment is made of the context within which people find themselves in the world today. In Chapter Two, the cultural personality is examined as a concept, largely by juxtaposing the two interdependent concepts of culture and personality. In Chapter Three, the main characteristics of the cultural personality are revealed. In Chapter Four, the cultivation of the qualities and abilities that are most required to constitute the cultural personality are provided. And in Chapter Five, attention is given to the way the cultural personality can function most effectively in the world in practical terms.

In his latest book, The Cultural Personality, Paul Schafer offers a most introspective diagnosis of the two traditional personalities that we are quite familiar with, namely the ‘economic personality’ and the ‘specialist personality’. He argues that both are breaking down. The former is breaking down because ‘it treats people as producers and consumers of goods, services, and material wealth at a time when these practices are having a devastating effect on the natural environment and not bringing the satisfaction and happiness people expected to find in them.’ The second is breaking down because we have encouraged people to develop only a single skill and occupation at a time when change is accelerating so rapidly that their skills are, or soon will be, out of date or obsolete due to developments in digital technology, ever more rapid communications, and the introduction of artificial intelligence. To address these challenges, Schafer suggests we should pay more attention to what he describes as the ‘cultural personality’. As he sees it, we need to cultivate a person who is able to live life as an ‘ordered whole’. This is a person who is capable of functioning in a disordered world of increasing complexity, frustration, and anxiety, such as the world we are currently experiencing. He supports his arguments with a wide range of valuable and thoughtful quotations. While this is a challenging book, I highly recommend it, as it is filled with practical advice on how human beings can function most effectively, both now and in the increasingly complex world of our children and grandchildren. – John Hobday, former director, Canada Council for the Arts