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Here is a virtual handbook of the comparatively recent branch of psychology that deals specifically with human motives and motivation. Occurring at the juncture of Freud, Murray, and Lewin, this particular psychology is devoted to the assessment and study of human motivational entities—e.g., achievement, affiliation, power, sex, fear, aggression—that are, in the authors' view, sufficiently discrete to be identified and measured and that possess significant consequences for broad human affairs. Originating a little over ten years ago in studies of the influence of hunger on the human thought process, the psychology of motivation has gone on to develop a distinct literature, a representative sample of which John Atkinson has collected here. Atkinson, along with David C. McClelland, has played a very notable part in shaping and inspiring the nature of the forty some odd investigations presented.
The volume is in six parts and succeeds quite well in portraying the evolution of this special field. The several investigations comprising Part I involve essentially the content analysis of thematic apperceptive