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Boring's letters and papers, introduced by an autobiographical
sketch, are stimulating and entertaining and, though the papers have been previously published separately, they are informative. Sceptical about genius, he believes that conscientious effort and the historical process are the ingredients for productivity.
The autobiography presents an open invitation to the reader (and perhaps to the future biographer) to study the personal history of the author and compare it with the work which he produced for a better understanding of both. The revelations contained in it are not those of a vain, self-centered man, but are rather those of one who has measured his worth carefully, having withstood the demands of his own lashing needs and ideals, as well as the ravages of time and the onslaughts of criticisms from contemporaries (he was even the object of a witch hunt).
Boring devoted his life to teaching. He was attracted by Titchener's lectures into the field of psychology and became an experimental psychologist, an introspectionist, though perhaps (later) a reformed one. The history of psychology became his special interest. Much of his energy seems to have been devoted to developing skills of communication and he wanted more than all else to be understood in his 'struggles for maturity and wisdom'. He was aware of 'paradoxical needs of ambition and of acceptance' which he felt interfered with the attainment of the wisdom he sought. He not only tells us his somatotype (according to Sheldon's classification) but also gives details which may serve the purposes of psychologists of every persuasion including the Jungian, the Adlerian, and the freudian. The reader will be rewarded by the feeling of having become intimately acquainted with the author, of understanding him in his candid self-appraisal which is offered with dignity and humor in a lucid and communicative style. Boring, the man, emerges and one is almost convinced that man is an 'agent of history', a