Author Description

Concern for the self with all its contributing attributes and potentials is rapidly becoming a central focus of contemporary psychological inquiry. More and more the interest is in the understanding of health and creativitiy as the exploration, expression, and realization of human talents. There is a gradual but definite movement throughout the world to understand individual well-being more fully.Until recently studies of abnormality, deviation, and illness have dominated psychological and psychiatric investigations. But conventional Freudian concepts, evocative as they are in attempting to explain hidden dynamics, have proved less than totally effective in application to healthy behavior, and frequently fail to correspond to actual behavioral patterns as seen in reality.The selection of writings in this book portrays the fundamentalunity of personality and presents a framework for understanding healthy behavior. The emphasis is on knowing, exploring, and actualizing the self. The various papers represent uniqure theories of personality. The fact that so many people in different fields are arriving independently at the same theoretical conclusions proves their significance more effectively than any argument could. In these papers are referented many disciplines, arts, and schools of psychiatric, psychological, and philosophic thought which seem to be converging (and all at one point in time) upon an understanding of the self which is essentially the same in all cases. The approaches and vocabularies are different, yet a clear and fresh kernel of common awareness and positive insight into the self is coming to characterize current knowledge of the human individual.