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Storr states his ideal of psychotherapy simply and expounds it clearly in this book. The goal of psychotherapy, he thinks, is to help the patient to the maximum amount of self-realization that is possible form him, 'the fullest possible expression in life of [his] innate potentialities [as an] individual, the realization of his own uniqueness as a personality'. The author argues that man is not a solitary animal. 'We are all, inescapably, members of one another, and no one can achieve independence and maturity in isolation from his fellows.' He accepts Fairbairn's concept of the final stage of emotional development as 'mature dependence', as a capacity for relationships 'involving evenly matched giving and taking between two differentiated individuals who are mutually dependent'.
After a review, starting with Freud's death instinct, of a number of theories concerning the sources of destructive urges in human behavior, the author inclines to the conclusion that 'aggressiveness is both innate and likely to become progressively less important as development proceeds. Aggression', he says, 'is necessary for development, for separateness, for the achievement of differentiation from the parents. Competitive aggressiveness, sibling rivalry, is characteristic of immaturity and should diminish as self-realization proceeds.'
Storr attributes impediments in the way of this development mostly to the immaturity of parents who cannot tolerate rebellion in their children and require their subservience and agreement with them. 'But differentiation is essential for individuality', he continues. 'The notion that it is always wrong or dangerous to oppose anyone else is easily implanted in the child, but this notion is crippling to the personality as a whole for individuality implies opposition and differentiation.'
The author is much impressed by the fact that a child's parents often lack the qualities needed to develop some of the child's most important potentialities. It is fo