Psychology of Personality: Six Modern Approaches: Edited by J. L. McCary, Ph.D. New York: Grove Press, Inc., n.d. 383 pp.

There is a temptation in reviewing this paper-bound book to take cover from reporting its collective impact by focusing on its separate contents, for it is written by the six participants in a symposium on personality held at the University of Houston in 1954. Each was asked to state his position in the terminology and organization best suited to his own theoretical approach. The methodological differences of the statistician, the culturalist, and the psychoanalyst as depicted are such that the smattering of familiarity which these essays offer will more than likely have the effect of tachistoscopic exposures.

A valiant attempt is made by David McClelland in the final chapter to close ranks. Similarly the introduction maintains that the various dichotomous combinations beginning with biological and ranging to societal are breaking down; yet the view of each approach is so closely delimited that with the exception of a few cross-references by name only, hardly a pseudopod is extended from one field toward another.

Psychoanalysis is spoken for by Leopold Bellak. It is a sixty page exposition of theory, subtitled Notes Toward a Systematic Textbook of Psychoanalysis.