Personality Structure and Human Interaction: The Developing Synthesis of Psycho-Dynamic Theory (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Harry Guntrip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330442415 ISBN 13: 9781330442418

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from Personality Structure and Human Interaction: The Developing Synthesis of Psycho-Dynamic Theory

T H I S book is not intended to be a history of psycho-analytical theory. In any complete form that would be a far larger under taking. Many important aspects of theory here omitted would have called for inclusion, particularly in the case of Freud and Melanie Klein. I have attempted something different, something that I believe needs to be done at about this time, something that arises as a problem out of the very nature of science as hitherto under stood, as soon as it comes to be applied to human beings.

This involves making a historical survey, and I have sought to let the important writers speak for themselves. The justification for fairly frequent quotations and some lengthy ones must be found in this deliberate purpose.

But such a survey would be mere mechanical hackwork, more or 1685 complete recording, unless the writer felt he could trace the emergence of deeper understanding along certain definite lines.

The close study of psycho-analysis over many years, against the background of philosophical, religious, literary and social studies, has bred in me the conviction that here at last, and here alone, scientific enquiry has come face to face with the intimate and fully 'personal' life of man. This constitutes as big a test for science as for man. Science has to discover whether and how it can deal with the 'person', the 'unique individual', we will dare to say the 'spiritual self' with all the motives, values, hopes, fears and pur poses that constitute the real life of man, and make a purely 'organic' approach to man inadequate. On the other hand, man has to face the most penetrating searchlight focussed upon his essential nature, and must find out how to adjust to the stripping off of his psychic defences and self-deceptions, built up to hide failures in development towards maturity, while the struggle to cope with living in spite of immaturity is carried on.

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About this title

About the Author:

Harry Guntrip (1901-1975) was a psychologist known for his major contributions to object relations theory. He was a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a psychotherapist and lecturer at the Department of Psychiatry, Leeds University, and also a Congregationalist minister. He was described by John D. Sutherland as "one of the psychoanalytic immortals".

Review:

How has a theory of man as a social being to be formulated if we are to do justice to his individuality, to the subtle ways in which his love and hate compete within his relations with others and to the anxieties and resistances he shows when he seeks to change himself? To answer this question is the task which the author sets himself.From a background of philosophy, theology and social studies, he went on to take a personal psychoanalysis and to become a full time psychotherapist, and it is from this combination of wide knowledge and intensive work with people beset by conflicts in their relations with themselves and others that Dr. Guntrip evolves his views. After assessing Freud's basic principles he proceeds to make a uniquely comprehensive review of subsequent theoretical contributions to psychoanalysis with special emphasis on the work of Fairbairn and Melanie Klein, as it is in their writings that he considers the most needed developments have been made, namely, the placing of the theory of personality squarely in the realm of human interaction. In the first part of Dr.Guntrip's book all students of personality will find an arresting survey of the development of psychoanalytic thought; in the latter they will meet highly stimulating and profound views on the origins and nature of the conflicting forces in human relationships. In particular he traces the progress of research beyond the problems of guilt and depression to the deeper and graver problems of the inadequate and Schizoid personality; thus finding the causes of mental ill health not in he secondary conflicts over sex and aggression, but in the primary problem of fear, and the struggle to cope with the frightened and helpless child in the depths of the unconscious.

About this edition

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1330442415
• ISBN 13: 9781330442418
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 457