Murray visited the psychoanalytic master Jung, was reborn, found the meaning of life and academic direction, and was famous for human needs research and thematic apperception test. Another psychologist also made a special trip to visit a more famous psychoanalytic master, but he did not have such a wonderful experience as Murray. However, this unpleasant visit is a rare opportunity for the parties to reflect, and a new psychological research has been made. In this sense, his fate is more enlightening.

The psychologist was Albert. The master he visited was Sigmund Freud, the founder of Psychoanalysis (1856-1939).

Gordon Allport (1897-1967) was born in Indiana, the United States. His father was a country doctor. Allport described his family as practical and humanistic, and the life of the family was plain. He is the youngest of the four brothers in his family. He spent most of his childhood alone. His language ability is very good, but he is poor in sports. After graduating from high school, Allport entered Harvard University to study both psychology and social ethics. He also participated in a variety of social activities in his spare time.

Later, Allport received a scholarship to study psychology as a graduate student at Harvard University and received a doctorate two years later (1922). Later, he won a scholarship and had the opportunity to go abroad. He chose to visit Freud.

Allport met Freud, who had long been famous all over the world. However, Freud did not take the initiative to speak. In order to break this silence, Allport told about a little boy. He said that on the train to Vienna, he met a little boy who was too afraid of being dirty. No matter how his mother comforted and explained, he would not sit in the seat where others had sat. Olport said that the child's fear of dirt may have been learned from his mother, because his mother is neatly dressed and looks like a strong person. Freud looked at Allport. After a while, he asked, "is that the little boy you?"

Olport knew very well that he was just telling a situation without words. Where did his problems involve? He could not help realizing that Freud tried to attribute the small details of daily life to subconscious events from distant childhood, while ignoring or dismissing the current motives, intentions and experiences. This makes him feel that psychoanalysis digs too deeply into the individual's past experience and subconsciousness, but ignores the individual's more important current experience and consciousness.

In short, during this visit, Allport felt very bad, so that he began to feel that Freud was wrong to attribute most behaviors to subconscious motivation. Therefore, other theories of motivation must be put forward.

After returning to the United States from Europe, Allport became a social ethics teacher at Harvard University. In 1926, he left Harvard University to become an assistant professor of psychology at Dartmouth University. In 1930, he returned to Harvard University and stayed there. He became a teacher who was deeply welcomed and respected by students.

Olport believes that adult motivation does not have to be related to the past. A particular act itself may become a goal, regardless of its original intention. Therefore, the adult's motivation is not necessarily related to the emerging motivation or activity, that is, the adult's behavior can not be affected by early experience. Accordingly, Allport put forward the concept of functional autonomy.

He believes that there are two levels of functional autonomy. One is persistent functional autonomy, which refers to activities or behaviors that are repeated even if they may have lost their original function. For example, a teenage girl, in order to resist her parents, began smoking because she knew it could annoy her parents. By adulthood, she may continue to smoke, which is far from the period when she rebelled against her parents. There are many repetitive behaviors that belong to continuous functional autonomy, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, drug addiction, alcoholism and ritual behavior.

The other is propriate functional autonomy, which refers to those acquired interests, attitudes, intentions, values and lifestyles guided by proprium [1] but really unrelated to previous motivation. Ability is often transformed into interest. Individuals choose those important values, and then organize these motives in a way consistent with their own self-image and life style.

Olport believes that there is a fundamental gap between infant motivation and healthy adult motivation. Many of the motivations of healthy and mature adults can be seen as being dominated by the self-control function. He put forward the concept of unity, self-function and autonomy in order to emphasize that people live in the present rather than in the past. Olport does not say that the present and the past are discontinuous, but that a healthy adult can live in the present and the future without the constraints of the past.

Allport is one of the pioneers of modern psychological theorists who focus on mature and healthy personality rather than immature and neurotic personality. Obviously, his unpleasant experience of visiting Freud played an important role in his academic turn.

[1] Proprium is a term coined by Allport, which is roughly equivalent to the self used by other psychologists. However, he believes that the self formed by individuals should be more active and comprehensive. The word self is not enough to express his meaning, so he carefully coined a word starting with pro -. In short, after the various functions of the self have developed, the individual unified self is formed.