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This book is an interesting attempt to delineate the forces working to produce the American character of today. The authors believe that Americans have a character different from the people of other nations and societies. Everywhere there are signs of great care to elaborate this hypothesis, and signs of great industry in collecting a large amount of data and references. Like many writers in the field of socioanthropology, the authors have devised some labels for the people about whom they are talking. They speak of 'tradition-directed', 'inner-directed', and 'other-directed' types. Careful students of personality, particularly clinicians who work daily with a variety of personalities, will find it hard to accept the rather casual labeling as types, such as the 'other-directed', of numbers of their own patients. Of course, the authors may well argue that it is only those people who fail to develop into the modern type they speak of (and so live in harmony with their environment) that require help from the psychiatrist. But their lack of awareness of existing theories of personality, established by a tremendous volume of case material and study, hampers in large measure the efforts of the authors to make their proposals convincing.
Furthermore, this reviewer is inclined to the opinion that recourse to types often seriously interferes with a clear and inclusive study of personality or character, since by their nature and use they tend to exclude a great many aspects of the personality which do not fit the criteria assigned to the type. For example, the authors say, 'For many reasons the child reader does not identify himself with the comic strip hero so frequently. For one thing, many children prefer comics where the hero is not man but Superman or Plasticman, possessing powers that are obviously unique' (p. 105). One wonders whether the authors have ever been made aware of the reluctance with which children give up their self-love, narcissism, or wish to be