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The theme of this decidedly readable volume is that human conduct is the dynamic and determined behavior of an integrated personality. The fact that the behavior of the individual is the determined result of native traits, of structure in action, and of previous and present experiences is not, Dr. Leary believes, an occasion for pessimism but rather for promise; if the factors are not incalculable the results can be understood and perchance Controlled or modified.
The author evidently leans strongly toward the school of Behaviorism, a fact that the reviewer suspects he would not admit, although Dr. Leary is not timid in expressing his views which are commendably catholic and liberal. He stresses the biological basis of behavior but shows the futility of attempting to explain it in terms of atomistic physiology. If Dr. Leary would hesitate to be called a behaviorist in the full Watsonian sense he would hasten to deny the theory of psychoanalysis. Yet with one of those inconsistencies exhibited by virile thinkers, the author in one breath designates psychoanalysis as a figurative scheme, an anthropomorphic speculation, while in the next he describes it as a dynamic, integrated exposition of personality, and characterizes its technique as a practical and valuable therapeutic device for the reshaping of personality or for the forming of a good one. In seeking for the dynamics of the personality Leary is impatient with the libido of Freud, the purpose of Jung and the will—to—power of Adler, evidently having them in mind when he alludes to “a disincarnated power, an entity having independent existence, or a species of freely floating or circulating energy.”Of the various psychoanalytic schools which, in spite of his indictments as to nomenclature and demonstrability, Leary asserts “have been among the very few really fruitful sources of psychological theory for some years,” the author sees that of Kempf as most rational, as most nearly conforming to biological postulates b