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Psychiatry has reached a point today where knowledge and comprehension are bursting the bounds of well-established concepts and vocabulary. Semantic difficulties confront every progressive student in discussing studies which involve the comparison of diagnostic categories; they reinforce imponderable barriers between the important theoretical systems; and our terminology fails to express the basic premises of psychosomatic fact and theory, except when we resort to elaborate explanation of the meaning of each word.
This is the problem for which Dr. Angyal seeks a solution. He despairs of mere clarification and improvement of classical concepts, and courageously seeks his solution by the ingenious and carefully thought through creation of a new concept of the interrelations of personality, biology, and environment. He says explicitly: 'A set of new concepts which are appropriate to the holistic character of personality must be developed to permit discontinuance of the use of inappropriate concepts borrowed from the segmental sciences' (p. 374). This book is proof that he is fully competent to practice the dictum which he preaches.
His principles are derived chiefly from gestalt psychology. His method is the statement of basic concepts, their definition in his own vocabulary, and the careful logical analysis of their implications