Prescott Lecky was a lecturer of Psychology

Psychology

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

 at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

 from 1924 to 1934. At a time when American psychology was dominated by behaviorism

Behaviorism

Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...

, he developed the concept of self-help

Self-help

Self-help, or self-improvement, is a self-guided improvement—economically, intellectually, or emotionally—often with a substantial psychological basis. There are many different self-help movements and each has its own focus, techniques, associated beliefs, proponents and in some cases, leaders...

 as a method in psychotherapy of the self in the 1920s. His concepts influenced Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz

Maxwell Maltz was an American cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho-Cybernetics , which was a system of ideas that he claimed could improve one's self-image. In turn, the person would lead a more successful and fulfilling life...

 in his writing of the classic self help book, Psycho-Cybernetics

Psycho-Cybernetics

Psycho-Cybernetics is a classic self-help book, written by Maxwell Maltz in 1960 and published by the non-profit Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation. Motivational and self-help experts in personal development, including Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy have based their techniques on Maxwell Maltz...

. Lecky stressed the defense mechanism of resistance

Psychological resistance

Psychological resistance is the phenomenon often encountered in clinical practice in which patients either directly or indirectly oppose changing their behavior or refuse to discuss, remember, or think about presumably clinically relevant experiences....

 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

Personality psychology

Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. Its areas of focus include:* Constructing a coherent picture of the individual and his or her major psychological processes...

 and clinical psychologists. He was well known as a psychologist and counseled John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 when he was having trouble at Choate

Choate Rosemary Hall

Choate Rosemary Hall is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut...

preparatory school.

His students gathered together his ideas and posthumously published them as Self Consistency: a theory of personality in 1945.

Footnotes