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In introducing a theory of behavior and consequent therapeutic applications, the author states that customary evaluations of instincts 'do not seem to consider the huge component of the human personality comprised by instincts… Man's relation to the rest of the animal group is not regarded as a primary, dynamic force underlying his behavior. It is seen as something the human organism tries to get away from; the animal components of man must be repressed and escaped from for man to fit into society. Instincts … are considered more as nuisances than as essential parts of man and as the intrinsic foundation of his individual and social behavior.'
Behavior is the expression of those 'survival functions' that have enabled the species to survive in the evolutionary struggle. Survival functions and instincts are similar concepts, but survival functions may employ many of the instincts. Examples of such survival functions are the functioning of the individual as an entity, the self-importance of the organism causing it to satisfy needs such as eating, and the ways of responding to other entities. The human brain takes over and elaborates the expression of survival functions by means of inherited and acquired telencephalizations. 'The cortex is thus not an organ for repressing primitive processes in the interests of group living; one of its main functions is the expression of these very processes of survival functions… Various cultures differ in the way they teach of telencephalizing survival functions.'
By means of purposive and plastic 'appetitive behavior', specific 'sign stimuli' are sought in order to consummate survival functions (or instincts). In man, adequate telencephalization of the survival functions enables appropriate appetitive behavior to find those sign stimuli that afford satisfaction of the impelling survival function. Thus a particular mode of behavior, such as work, is the consequence of the appetitive search for a learned stimulus to satisfy a s