210 American Anthropologist [60, 19581
CULTURE AND PERSONALITY
Ittterpersonal Diagnosis of Personality: A Functional Theory and
Methodology for Per- sonulity Evaluation. TIMOTHY LEARY. New York:
The Ronald Press, 1957. xix, 518 pp., appendix, 58 tables, 62
figures. $12.00.
Reviewed by BERT WLAN, University of Kansas This important
volume attempts to derive from the brilliant but generally
unsys-
tematized insights of the psychiatrist, Harry Stack Sullivan, a
system of variables and concepts suitable for the workaday problems
in the description and diagnosis of per- sonality. As such, its
direct importance to anthropologists is somewhat limited. Never-
theless, anthropologists will regard with interest an attempt to
introduce precision and operational rigor into a theoretical schema
which places the interpersonal and communicative dimensions of
behavior in the foreground. Leary does not consider systematically
the sociocultural contexts of personality processes, but rather
tries to understand the significance of behavior by focusing on its
communicative aspects, that is, on the meaning which it has, or is
intended to have, for some other person or per- sons. Therefore,
the reader who is looking for a new liaison between psychiatric and
sociological theory is apt to be disappointed.
The honesty, rigor, and methodological sophistication of this
work are impressive. Especially valuable to the culture and
personality worker is a technique for summariz- ing a number of
personality ratings as a single point which can be plotted in
relationship to the mean of the group. The extent and location of
clustering of such points will in- dicate modes within the group.
This device seems directly applicable to the description of the
nature of uniformity and variability within groups, a key empirical
problem in the culture and personality area.
Despite these positive features, the reviewer must confess to a
certain amount of uneasiness about certain aspects of the book. The
use of the term interpersonalJ to modify a strange assortment of
nouns such as emotions, motives, fantasies, percep- tions, roles,
diagnoses, gestures, purposes, is not only disconcertingly
ungrammatical but leaves the reader to figure out for himself what
might be meant by such a phrase as, for example, interpersonal
fantasy. In following this usage throughout his book, Leary labels
any personality phenomenon which involves or refers to a second
person as in- terpersona1,despite the fact that its major
significance may becompletely intrapsychic. One wonders why a
theory emphasizing interpersonal relations cannot simul tane- ously
develop concepts for phenomena which are only superficially
interpersonal.
Remotivating the Mental Patient. OTTO VON MERING and STANLEY H.
KING. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1957. 216 pp. $3.00.
Reviewed by MARVIN K. OPLER, Cornell University Medical
College
This book by an anthropologist and a social psychologist, both
of the University of Pittsburgh, appears in a series of excellent
works on patient care published by the Russell Sage Foundation. One
by M. Greenblatt, R. York and E. L. Brown, From Custodial to
Therapeutic Patient Care in Mental Hospitals, had greater
historical and psychological scope. Another by M. S. Schwartz and
E. Shockley was on The Nurse and the Mental Patient, and there was
also the Basic Books publication by A. H. Stan- ton and M. S.
Schwartz on The Mental Hospital, with its larger theoretical
structure and more generous testing of hypotheses.
The present book is a welcome illustration of how an
anthropologist and a psychol-
