http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/104916118

A history of psychology in autobiography. Vol. IV

"It is now fifteen years since the third volume of History of Psychology in Autobiography appeared. These preceding volumes, modelled after the German series Die Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen and edited by Carl Murchison, consist of short autobiographies of prominent psychologists who had been asked by the editors to write their "intellectual histories." We felt that this series ought not to be allowed to lapse, especially now that a new generation has reached the age from which looking backward becomes profitable. The reader of this volume will see how much our autobiographers differ from one another in the nature of their efforts. Perhaps they differ most in the degree with which they find unity in their lives. Presumably every one of them would like to see his intellectual history as the evolution of a single purpose, for integrity is good and simplicity is elegant. No one, of course, fully succeeds in this undertaking, for the story of every life is constrained by the exigencies of its owner's environment. Some of these accounts are more intellectualistic than others, and it may be that they show the greater unity, either because some irrelevancies are omitted from the life history or because irrelevancies are actually, at least to a certain degree, omitted from the actual living. Other accounts are more environmentalistic, because social and institutional events and accidents have figured so largely in them. The environmentalistic autobiographer may have had a chief long-term goal, have pursued it, have achieved it with some fair degree of success, yet he may feel that the unforeseeable accidents of living have determined much of his life and have perhaps even altered his goal. The intellectualist, if such we may call him, may, on the other hand, have suffered disruption of plans less than his colleague, but it is probable that he has also been less interested in the effect of external forces upon himself"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

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