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This is the somewhat modest title of a volume which, as an exhaustive and broad enterprise, seeks to lay a foundation for a sociopsychological theory of human behavior. Nine of America's foremost scholars of the social sciences have joined in this unusual project. This work presents the results of discussions and seminars in which the editors with Tolman, Allport, Kluckhohn, Murray, Sears, Sheldon and Stouffer participated. They state that a general theory is needed to codify our present knowledge, that it can act as a guide to further investigation and study and facilitate work in specific sectors of the humanities.
The basic concepts concerning the theory of action are explained in the introductory part which represents the essence of this joint enterprise: each action is aim-directed; the object of orientation can be 'nonsocial, that is, physical objects or cultural resources or social objects, that is, individual actors and collectivities'.
In the following definitions the lasting influence of Kurt Lewin and of psychoanalytic theory, ostensibly Freud's and Hartmann's considerations, come to the fore: 'The orientation of action to objects entails selection, and possibly choice. Selection is made possible by cognitive discriminations, the location and characterization of the objects, which are simultaneously or successively experienced as having positive or negative value to the actor, in terms of their relevance to satisfaction of drives and their organization in motivation.' By drives the authors mean the organic energy component of motivation. The tendency to react in any possible way is described as the cathectic mode of orientation. 'Cathexis,