The Psychology of Adjustment
An Objective Approach to Mental Hygiene.
- Author:
I1. Shaffer, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, Carnegie Institute of Technology.
Harrap. 10/6.
This essay in positive mental hygiene is meant by its author to serve as a text book for students. It is in part a statement of the problems of human adjustment from the standpoint of objective psychology; and in part an attempt to give some technique for dealing with those problems. Actually the book is much too diffuse to do either. It is not exact enough to be a scientific text book and is too banal when it applies its “principles.” The author admits that he has no original contribution to make, but for 600 pp. he gives a rehash of theories and adds more or less pleasant truisms about conduct, e.g., ” some practical hints concerning the treatment of worries will not be out of place.”
The prospect of a generation brought up on Dr Shaffer’s concluding chapter ” Mental Hygiene for one’s self ” would be forbidding if it were remotely possible! Nothing could prevent such unfortunates from being ” psychologically-minded ” in a pale self-regarding sense; but at least they would have been told, as the concluding statement in their instruction that ” the person who is able to secure a balanced satisfaction of his motives by carefully planned courses of action will achieve adjustment and effective living, which is good mental health.” And so on … and so on … L.M.P.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.