| Summary: | "This book was written primarily for medical students and members of the medical profession but it should also be useful to any student of psychopathology. It is a presentation of the nature and causes of personality disorder, together with a description of methods of examination. As far as possible the various aspects of psychopathology have been illustrated by clinical material. The study of psychopathology includes such a wide range of topics that it is difficult to select those most pertinent to the needs of a textbook. The clue to the selection which I have made is found in the evolution of a personality and as a natural sequence the contributions of heredity and environment are considered in the first chapter. The closely related topic of personality and constitution follows in the second chapter. For an indefinite time mental phenomena have been regarded as the result of activity within the brain, and the third chapter undertakes to scan and interpret what is known concerning brain function in special relation to personality disorder. The next three chapters deal essentially with physiological aspects and call attention to the field, relatively unexplored, intermediate between the structural and the psychological. The remainder of the book presents current psychological formulations, illustrations of maladjustment in childhood, suggestions for the recording of psychiatric data and finally a description of scientific methods of observing clinical phenomena"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
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