Based on the premise that personality psychology is aimed ultimately at providing a scientific basis for understanding individuals, it is argued on several grounds that the assessment and study of individual differences is essentially useless to the discipline. The basis for an alternative approach, termed "idiothetic," is described, in which personality description is achieved in a purely idiographic fashion, and in which nomothetic prinicples are sought with respect to questions of process, i.e., change, development, etc. Some major implications of this conception of personality are briefly considered. (Author)