| Summary: | "Understanding Human Motivation is the initial volume in a series of psychology textbooks for colleges and universities. The articles have been grouped under eight headings denoting a distinctive problem area. The first section sets the stage for the reader--history and trend analysis, some important definitions, and a great deal of problem setting. The second section gives the pros and cons of functional autonomy and points up the basic issues of learned motives. Do they or don't they get detached from their original energy sources? In Section Three, a group of articles on the ego or self in motivation follows functional autonomy. Level of aspiration and frustration and aggression, are introduced to the reader in Sections Four and Five. Motivation in perception presented in a series of classical articles rich in theory and experiment. Unconscious motivation comes to life in a sequence of articles that are mainly experimental in character. The editors' decision to present this complex and often incredible topic primarily by means of empirical demonstrations is a wise one. The final group of articles is a small but select sample of psychoanalytic and related viewpoints about motivation. They should stimulate the student to read further in the vast literature of depth psychology"--Foreword. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
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