| Summary: | "When I first met Dr. Meyer in his Baltimore home and told him of my desire to preserve and present his basic papers, he put a fresh log on the fire, seated himself near by, and folded his hands in his lap. He suggested that the book be an expression of my own needs and urges. Like many others who regard the world as a postgraduate education in life, I had been seeking clarity on the subject of psychiatry. The literature contained many illuminating answers attributed to Adolf Meyer. From the footnotes I turned to the sources. There, distinct from a psychiatry on a basis of psychoanalysis, was his concept of mind and behavior and organs as a biological whole. I looked for a complete statement, for a textbook, or at any rate a full-bodied volume, in which possibly he unfolded his findings; but though he had written close to two hundred papers, there was no such book. "The main thing, " the doctor continued, "is that your point of reference should always be life itself and not the imagined cesspool of the unconscious." In this book I have undertaken, as Dr. Meyer put it, "to give the average person a better practical understanding of my material"--As a help to himself and myself and "the many I should like to be helpful to." He has given me the liberty to make such use of it as will "aid in the receptivity of the reader." Fifty-two selections are presented here in a setting meant to portray the evolution of a psychiatrist and of his thinking and work. It is an exposition of American psychiatry and at the same time a picture of a physician in action. The papers have been edited with a view to integration and abridged where necessary to avoid repetition and preserve continuity. As a whole, it may stand as Dr. Meyer's declaration of independence from dogma. I also hope it fulfills his expectation that I would produce "very much what is needed to awaken in others a respect for the person and his behavior." Social workers, educators, clergymen, personnel directors, nurses, all who are interested in man, and all who are interested in medicine will find in Meyer, as I have found, a source of growth and a stimulating, steadying philosophy. I am especially interested in reaching the general practitioner, for Meyer has always kept in mind the fact that psychiatry is a branch of medicine and the intention that its fruits should return to the general body of medicine"--Foreword. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
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