| Summary: | "This volume, it is needless to say, is the work, not of a psychologist but of a personalist. A student of the nineteenth century, taught to reverence what has been called the soul, finds himself, as a teacher of to-day, confronted by developments in the field of psychology which seem to give the lie to much, one might almost say to all, of that body of philosophy, ethics, and religion upon which a working and sustaining theory of life has been built, grounded upon the stability and worth of the individual person. It would be quite possible to pass this by as the idle wind which one respects not, ascribing whatever mutterings of an approaching storm assail the fortress of tradition to ephemeral winds of doctrine which will in time die away in the distance leaving the structures of the past secure. Or one might, on the other hand, exercise that anxious professional hospitality, now becoming a vogue, which avidly seizes the newest theory and holds it fast without first proving it to be good, --an attitude which is neither truly religious nor truly scientific. Indeed certain demonstrations of this kind, which have appeared here and there, have been among the incentives which have led the writer to submit whatever findings of the new psychology he has been able to gather to the test of such rational examination as in him lies, in order to learn if they are in fact either so threatening to established conceptions of the soul as they appear to be, or so full of promise as many would fain find them. The results of this study and reflection appear herein. The volume does not pretend to be a discussion of the new psychology, except in its attitude toward the self. None of the forms of the new psychology discussed receives either a sufficient statement or a sufficient criticism. It might seem better to have selected one or two of these and to have devoted the entire discussion to them. But on the other hand there is an advantage in confronting the entire phalanx of a movement, in order to get the situation as a whole before one, endeavoring to meet it not only in certain of its detailed aspects but as a whole. The outline of selfhood, which constitutes the first part of the volume, seemed to be essential for constructing a pou sto upon which to wrestle with the problems which follow. It is not intended, however, to be a mere preliminary to the criticism that ensues but to be a summary account of selfhood--in part restating and in part supplementing the author's "Personality and the Christian Ideal""--Foreword. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved)
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