| Summary: | "The book was conceived as a statement of the physical basis of personality and the dynamics of its energy in terms of the chemistry of the body. The ductless glands and their chemical products, the internal secretions, as dominators of the expression of personality, interested me early in my studies of biochemistry. The data of physiology and pathology concerning them as well as the clinical phenomena presented when they were hyperactive or defective seemed to be overwhelming in their multitude and complexity. I proceeded to collect them, to coordinate and to classify them. At the same time I studied my patients, children, women, and men, under all sorts of conditions and circumstances, with the most varied ailments and illnesses and peculiarities, for signs of underlying deviations of their ductless glands. I became convinced of their fundamental importance, as controllers and regulators of that ensemble of forces, attributes, habits, and attitudes which is sometimes known as character, individuality, or disposition: but for which I think the best name in English, used as well as in German, French, Spanish, and Italian, is--personality, defined in the dictionaries as the sum of one's qualities of body, mind, and character regarded as a patterned whole"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
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