Personality development and psychopathology

About this book

The purpose of this book is to present a picture of the inner life of man, as it interacts with the surroundings, as it is experienced, and as it is expressed in normal behaviour and psychopathology. Man's inner life is always a significant source of action; and it arouses in other persons, through its behavioural expression, some of their most important experiences. The dynamic interplay of each person's inner life, his behavioural expressions, and the experiences he arouses in others, are the major forces that constitute society and go to form the culture in which human beings live. Comparisons with the circumstances of animal life, where the environment is much simpler and the reactions to it far less flexible, bring out sharp contrasts as well as some similarities. Throughout this book the importance of infancy and early childhood is strongly emphasized.