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In this study Angyal comes across as enviably assertive. He insists on finding his own conceptualizations of his patients and on developing from them an appropriate style of treatment. Employing a Gestaltholistic
orientation, he has screened the ideas of others, mostly neo-Freudians and third-force psychologists, for parts to build his own carefully wrought, distinctive system.
Angyal's approach depicts personality in terms of broad principles which organize functions and traits into a hierarchy of systems and subsystems. The author describes how subsystems may be used by the organizations. However, multiple use of part functions, while generally economical, is vulnerable to an interference of competing systems, and segregation or disjunction may occur when a system cannot properly integrate the part functions, e.g., when surface and depth become disjointed so that expression is shallow and superficial.
Angyal asserts that there are two major personality organizations: one of health and one of neurosis. The healthy self accepts itself, has a high level of self-confidence, constructively grapples with problems, and feels that humanity is benign and receptive. The neurotic system in each individual, states Angyal, takes form as a potentially healthy self is damaged by traumas which are generalized so that the self sees itself as weak and unloved and the world as overpowering.
Delineating the personality in this dualistic fashion leads Angyal to pay special attention to supporting, underscoring, and refurbishing the healthy system early in therapy. He also seeks the healthy but warped nucleus in a neurotic subsystem in order to facilitate its being taken over by the healthy system. The goal is to have a healthy system in a well-developed state to take over when the individual is ready to banish the neurotic system from its dominant position.
Angyal, like most personality theorists, seems to gloss over the readiness of destructive behavior to spring forth with what seems