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In spite of its unprepossessing title, this is an important book—not because it presents something startlingly new and revolutionary, as the publishers, and even the author, seem to think (it is no new idea that the neurosis serves a purpose in the personality), but because it offers a fresh point of view concerning the neuroses, as well as some very suggestive theories concerning mental function. Its author is a psychologist with psychiatric training and extensive experience with neurotic personalities. In developing his theory of the neuroses, he starts from the same point as the social psychologists—that is, he goes back to innate dispositions, and uses the philosophical rather than the scientific approach. Not that the book does not show respect for sound scientific method, for it does, but because, in our present state of knowledge, a comprehensive theory of the neuroses can not be built upon a really scientific foundation.
All human activity, says Dr. Fisher, can be subsumed under three heads: that which relates to bodily welfare; that which relates to the welfare of the species, of which propagation is the outstanding fact; and that which aims at self-enhancement or individuation. To these three groups of activities correspond three fundamental motives or motive-systems—three basic drives which direct all human behavior, and which he names the somato-motives, the racial or selfless motives, and the ego or selfish motives. The integration of these motives and their direction of behavior toward the same life-goals result in a balanced