Abstract

This is an important work. It is sub-titled “Reality orion?” and makes a valiant effort to reinstate the notion of person as the keyconcept in psychology. There is a preface by Professor Oeser, of the University of Melbourne, which gives a good indication of what the book is about, and incidentally does great credit to the faculty of psychology in Melbourne. “When” says Professor Oeser, “about the middle of the nineteenth century, the science of experimental psychology was born, the infant was crippled by an array of physical and physiological instruments. It was starved on a diet of psychophysics, and later of rats….” Instead of a preoccupation with psychophysics and rats, Oeser contends that the science should concern itself with “the person”, and lauds Lafitte for the devastating way in which he has dealt with “the perversions or pseudo-sciences of some psychometricians, psycho-analysts and rat-lovers”. This is trenchant writing, and Lafitte in the substance of the work lives up to the promise of the foreword, both in ideas and in style.