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Omslag gaaf, kleurecht en vanuit de rug en randen minuscule beduimeling. Bladzijden schoon gaaf, licht verkleurd en met sporadische vage roestvlekjes. Een stevig exemplaar.
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Linksboven stempeltje: “With The Author’s Compliments”.
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Tekstfragment (blz. 1)

The basis of psychological information is the natural, even if quite complex faculty by which we obtain information about other people's psychological processes in every-day life. Psychological understanding of another person's mental processes is based on a unique circumstance that is specific in psychology, namely the similarity of the observer and the observed object.
Both the observer and the observed express their emotions and all their psychological processes with the same or at least very similar motor innervations and with the same word symbols. In human psychology, both the observer and the observed object are human beings, and in so far as animal psychology exists, there too, both are at least living beings. Through this similarity we can reconstruct what is going on in the mind of another individual by (1) communication through speech and (2) observation of external behaviour (i.e. motor expression).

Naturally the observation of behaviour is always considered, even in such psychological methods in which communication through speech is the primary source of information, but in such studies it plays only an auxiliary role. It becomes important in the observation of animals, where communication by words is not possible, and also of young children.

As Melanie Klein has shown with young children, even if they can speak, expression through play activity is more genuine than expression through speech, which they cannot yet utilize for expressing their emotions to the same extent as adults. However, one must bear in mind that such psychological studies have a disadvantage in comparison with studies of adults where the observer and observed have more similarity.

External behavior, i.e. motor expression, serves as the basis for certain reconstructions or interpretations of what it may express in the child or in an animal. The reliability of this reconstruction depends upon the degree to which the observed and the observer are similar to each other, because the basis of this interpretation is the resemblance in the way by which the observed expresses his mental states to the observer's methods of expressing himself. Therefore in animal psychology and child psychology we have to deal with greater methodological difficulties than in the study of adult personalities. Not even the argument that in these cases we have to deal with more primitive and less complex psychological
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Recensie Samuel Z. Orgel

Alexander discusses the faults of the statistical approach in psychiatry and psychology, pointing out that replies given are rationalizations, which hide active unconscious motives. The questionnaire method is valid in the investigation of problems where the conscious attitudes are decisive. Where personal relations towards the same or opposite sex are involved unconscious factors are of primary importance and the psycho-analytic approach is necessary.

Of scientific investigation the first place belongs to the experimental technique, the second to comparative analytic studies, and the third to statistics which are the least satisfactory.
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methodologie, motorische expressie, observatie, reconstructie, spraak, wetenschappelijk artikel, Melanie Klein, external behaviour, mental states,