http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/1333925

Foundations of personality

"The experience of mankind has become crystallized in beliefs, opinions and systems of character reading which are based on physiognomy, shape of head, lines of hand, gait and even the method of dress and the handwriting. Any sober-minded student of life, intent on knowing himself or his fellows, will seek no royal road to this knowledge, but will endeavor to understand the fundamental forces of character, will strive to trace the threads of conduct back to their origins in motive, intelligence, instinct and emotion. But to know himself has a hugely practical value to every man, since upon that knowledge depends self-correction. For "man is the only animal that deliberately undertakes while reshaping his outer world to reshape himself also." Moreover, man is the only seeker of perfection; he is a deep, intense critic of himself. To reach nobility of character is not a practical aim, but is held to be an end sufficient in itself. This book does not aim at any short cuts by which man may know himself or his neighbor. It seeks to analyze the fundamentals of personality, avoiding metaphysics as the plague. It does not define character or seek to separate it from mind and personality. It is written by a neurologist, a physician in the active practice of his profession. Mainly it will, I hope, bear the marks of everyday experience, of contact with the world and with men and women and children as brother, husband, father, son, lover, hater, citizen, doer and observer. For it is this plurality of contact that vitalizes, and he who has not drawn his universals of character out of the particulars of everyday life is a cloistered theorist, aloof from reality"--Introduction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).

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