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The author states in his preface that his study is primarily concerned 'with demonstrating the vast unexamined potentialities of modern man'. In this regard he questions the validity of modern psychological testing and research. He says: 'Because most psychological
work and research is done by individuals who have implicitly accepted the values of the society and whose development reveals a degree of reasonably adequate tolerance or adjustment to it, one must conclude that the norms that are involved in this tolerance and adjustment and that permit psychologists to make prudent psychological judgments about individuals in their society must be drawn from the "spirit" and norms of that society itself'. Further: 'By using limited, preformed conceptions of intelligence together with their corollary testing methods, present tests obscure whole segments of intelligence and force responses into concrete thought patterns while deterring more sensitive, theoretical, and deeper solutions'.
Whether or not the reader fully accepts these conclusions, the author's argument deserves careful consideration. He contends that to transcend the limitations he describes, it is necessary to go beyond one's immediate age and culture, to study 'what man has been in the course of Western civilization'. He notes that 'psychologically this has been in part done for the individual by psychoanalysis'.
The author here proposes to enter a field of vital interest to the student of the human mind. To what extent has man differed in different eras of civilization? Is 'human nature' fixed or does it vary under the influence of the socioeconomic environment in which the person has been reared and lives? These questions have intrigued workers in many disciplines—historians, social scientists, classicists, psychologists, philosophers, and psychoanalysts, the last to a minor extent. In the answers to these questions we may find increased understanding of contemporary man.
Rosenthal's approach i