Total Man, by Stan Gooch

Preface

Contact with colleagues and editors rapidly, and rightly, shatters every author’s belief that his book speaks so clearly for itself that no introduction is necessary. He eventually comes to accept that afew words of preface are not merely advisable, but essential.
    The book should be thought od in first place more as the scaffold which makes the building possible than the building itself – the outline or projection of a theory more than a finished theory. The genesis of this theory dates from my attempts as a psychology undergraduate twelve years ago to reconcile the approach of learning and conditioning theorists with, for instance, that of the psychoanalysts. In the years which followed my conclusions expanded to take in such fields of human activity as politics, art, religion, mythology, anthropology and still others.
    Were the book then anything other than an outline, the fifteen chapters would necessarily have become at least fifteen volumes. I am myself only too aware of how much has been left unsaid and unconsidered. I have necessarily omitted important writers – some on the one hand who would be inimical to my position, but equally others who would be supportive. Even where a writer is in fact considered, I can only be said to have sampled, not exhausted his views. My deliberate policy throughout has been to stop short in the pursuance of any theme or argument whenever I felt a first case had been established – a sufficient brief to justify bringing the matter before the court, if not to make the result of the trial a foregone conclusion.
    The subject of the book is personality. This term is used in its broadest possible sense to refer to the totality of man’s psychological, emotional and intellectual life. As the word ‘body’ includes a man’s total physical characteristics, so the term ‘personality’ should be understood here to embrace his entire psychological being. [A theory of personality, in psychology, is one which attempts to accommodate all the differing moods and functions – feeling, thinking, learning, dreaming, continuity of identity and so on, the changes and permanences of human psychological life – in terms of some overall, unifying structure.]
    The coin of the book is generalization. In stating this I hope I have disarmed those who would wish to use that fact as a criticism. One should hardly complain if the villages of England do not appear on a map of the world.
    Essentially, the view I have taken of other ‘theories of personality’, such as those of Marx, Christianity, Freud, Pavlov, Nietzsche and many others, is not that all, or all but one, are wrong, but on the contrary that all are correct. I was, and am still, unable to escape the implications of the fact that each of the theorists in question was concerned with one and the same human being. Instead of rejecting all such views, I found myself essentially rejecting none. This shift of emphasis is, I believe, crucial. The task is therewith changed from one of selection, to one of assembly.
    The arguments of the book are certainly speculative. No data has been considered to broad or too extreme to warrant exclusion on those grounds alone. Additionally, since all barriers between areas of study are of man’s, and only of man’s, making, I have dismantled these whenever it seemed useful to do so. Established or generally accepted fact of course also plays a major part in the book: and I have throughout been at pains to distinguish between such fact and my own speculations. Specific reference to particular authorities is made where I felt doubt might arise as to the authenticity of the evidence cited, or where my own interpretation of an author’s views alone might seem unduly biased. Occasionally it has been necessary to draw on some learned source not readily available to the general reader, but whenever possible, I have deliberately given preference to popular accounts, literary works, magazine articles, encyclopaedias and so forth – not simply on the grounds of their available, but because I believe that these more reflect the general mood in society than do narrowly professional or academic journals. Why, one might ask, am I concerned with the more general, rather than the academic, mood?
    The social scientist, erroneously, as I believe, has adopted many of the practices of the physical scientist on the implicit, often explicit, assumption that psychology and sociology are sciences. I myself on the other hand, together with some other psychologists, consider the wholesome application of the methods of the physical sciences to the study of human behaviour to be among the major disasters of our time. This does not mean, however, that I believe those methods have no place at all in behavioural studies – though I have not space here to outline my precise position. The point I do wish to make very briefly – a slightly different one – is this. Because of the fact that we ourselves are the object of the psychologist’s or the sociologist’s study, we can not grant the psychologist the same automatic authority that we grant the professional physicist or chemist. Rather, the position resembles that which pertains in democracies in respect of Parliament. The people elect representatives to govern them – individuals whom they consider particularly suited to do so – granting them by such election a mandate to run the affairs of the country as they think best. It is when a point is reached that government behaves in ways deeply unacceptable to the people that the mandate is withdrawn. So it must be, I think, with the social sciences. We in a sense grant, or have granted, a mandate. But we do not thereby lose our inalienable right as human beings – the objects of the psychologist’s study – to reject not merely his findings but, if necessary, even his methods.
    My personal feeling, then, is that the focus of the psychological instrument has currently been adjusted to a level below that necessary for an adequate view of man to emerge. For example, I find present accounts of the human psyche and human society by social scientists, with rare exceptions, to be in almost every way inferior to those of the novelist, the poet and the playwright. This is of course my personal view. But if matters are so, how might the position have arisen?
    the situation is best approached from the standpoint that psychology and sociology, whatever else they may be(and along with all the physical sciences), are themselves human behaviours. objectivity itself is likewise not some property of the universe, but also only a human behaviour. we must not hesitate to study it and them as just that. indeed, to take the position to its extreme, i suggest that the universe may profitably be regarded as a galactic Rohrscharch test, on to which we project and in which we perceive our own, and only our own, inner processes. here one includes, as emphasized, the so-called objective processes. what we, then(with an odd pride at having apparently excluded ourselves from the equation), call the laws of the universe, are at most the laws of our interaction with it. so, for example, while the universe manifests something termed wavelengths of light, it is itself no colour at all, not even black.
    one or two final comments can be made. if reactions obtained to the book while in manuscript are typical, it seems that it and the central arguments would have enjoyed a far less turbulent passage, had i chosen to confine them to the area of general psychology. . approval of my main conclusions at this level has been voiced by several authorities, amongst them Sir Cyril Burt. (This statement, of course, in no sense necessarily implies the agreement of those authorities with any specific conclusion.) i am extremely grateful to the people concerned for their generosity and encouragement, particularly in view of the fact that the book can hardly be said to flatter the image of the professional social scientist. however, my conclusions do not stop short at psychology. on the contrary they have led and indeed forced me into far-reaching physiological speculations. it is here that criticism has been marked, and it must certainly go on record that the views i express are wholy novel - that is to say, are not currently envisaged by any professional physiologist. that, however, is not quite the same as saying that no hints towards my position exist in the professional literature - and i have quoted extensively from the writings of physiologists in support of my speculations. it remains to be seen how these will fare.
    with this i ahve probably sufficiently prepared the ground for the book which follows. its development will be found to be idiosycratic. that is, it is selective towards its own ends. it asks of the reader, though not unreasonably, a willingness to follow a line of argument where the arguemnt happens to lead.

Re-produced here with the author's kind permission.