Tyler, Leona E. (1906–1993): Human Multipotentiality

Leona Elizabeth Tyler was born on May 10, 1906, in Chetek, Wisconsin. Her mother, Bessie L Carver, taught in a country school before marriage to her father, Leon M. Tyler, who worked as an accountant and later as a house restoration contractor. Although no one in Leona Tyler's immediate or extended family had attended college, her mother expected all of her four children to achieve career distinction. Bessie Tyler decided that passage of the suffrage amendment had established women's equality as a given, and treated her daughter as equal to her sons. Although her mother's commitment to fundamentalist religious and moral values placed severe limits on Leona Tyler's social activity, it provided a foundation for her strong spiritual and moral principles.

An omnivorous reader, Leona Tyler progressed rapidly through school, entering Virginia Junior College at the age of 15, and completing her college education at 19. She recalled that in high school a female assistant principal cautioned her not to attend a teacher's college, but rather seek out a university. This important guidance was at a time when women generally attended teaching colleges. In 1925, she graduated from the University of Minnesota with a B.S. in English Literature.

Following graduation, Leona Tyler taught English and a variety of other subjects in junior high schools in Minnesota and Michigan. She was particularly moved by the personal accounts written by her students. Their struggles with identity and their distress associated with decisions about careers and relationships emerged as themes that sparked an interest in individual differences.

In 1937 she enrolled in a graduate course on individual differences at the University of Minnesota taught by Donald G. Paterson, an important mentor who convinced her to undertake full-time graduate study at that university. She pursued her fascination with the rich diversity of human individuality, focusing on individual differences, obtaining special training in counseling, and conducting research on the career interests of adolescent girls. The threads of her career—individual differences, counseling, and interest research—were established during this period.

Although Leona Tyler did not receive her Ph.D. until 1941, she began her university teaching career in the psychology department at the University of Oregon at Eugene in 1940. She taught a wide variety of courses, including courses on individual differences, testing, and counseling. She also supervised more advanced degree candidates than any other faculty member at her institution. In 1941, the university received funds to establish a counseling service for veterans of World War II. Tyler innovatively organized the service under the aegis of the psychology department, and thereafter divided her time between counseling and teaching. A pacifist, she also volunteered time to provide counseling to conscientious objectors.

In addition to her counseling and administrative work, Leona Tyler contributed to a number of research projects and wrote The Psychology of Human Differences, first published in 1947. Tyler distinguished the purpose of counseling as different from that of psychotherapy, with the former designed to encourage healthy lifelong developmental processes, the latter to deal with clinical disturbances of personality. She found that her teaching, counseling, research, and writing all interacted to stimulate integration of ideas about human personality, choice, and possibility. Her prolific research and writing activities—which ultimately included more than 100 articles and books—provided a desirable professional balance for Tyler in that she found research involvement alone unduly restricting. Textbook writing, which required consideration of a wider range of information, encouraged a broader view.

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