The purpose of this study was to identify issues in personality psychology education, and explore the paths we were to take. It was found, in our questionnaire study of the members of Japan Society of Personality Psychology, that only 53% teach personality psychology, and only 63% took a course in the field of psychology during their undergraduate education. While some wrote that teaching personality psychology with other related fields of psychology was effective and recommended, others indicated their dissatisfaction in the fact that personality psychology was not fully established as a field of its own. Based on the survey results as well as the discussions at the society’s annual meeting, we would like to suggest the following: (1) Introductory personality psychology could be taught as a course that facilitates self understanding. (2) It could be an excellent introductory course to the whole fields of academic psychology. (3) Teaching various personality theories in an upper-level course could contribute to establishment of the discipline’s identity, at the same time to promotion of interdisciplinary studies around personality psychology. And (4) such an upper-level course has the role as the basis for clinical psychology and industrial and organizational psychology. Toward these goals, personality psychology theories that incorporate interpersonal relationship as well as social situation and environment are especially valuable for the education of personality psychology.

Key words: personality psychology education, education to understand the self, introduction to academic psychology, personality theories