Orval Hobart Mowrer

21 collaborators have contributed 19 chapters to this textbook devoted to a discussion of theories of personality, neurosis, and psychotherapy, and to research studies of the process of psychotherapy. 18 chapters are original papers and are abstracted separately in this issue. One chapter by Dollard and Mowrer on the Discomfort-Relief Quotient is reprinted. There is extensive literature review and the bibliographies for the separate chapters are gathered together in one 21-page bibliography. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved).

The aim of this book is to achieve a high level of synthesis regarding learning theory and behavior. The author attempts to do so by examining both research and conjecture in a broadly historical context, in addition to presenting new experimental findings not available to earlier system makers and theorists. In this way, it is believed, empirical facts and divergent theories become maximally meaningful and most significantly related. The book begins with an introductory chapter that presents a historical review and perspective of the field of learning theory. Chapter 2 examines the law of effect, conditioning, and punishment. Chapter 3 discusses two versions of two-factor learning theory. In the fourth chapter, two conceptions of secondary reinforcement are presented. Chapters 5 and 6 continue the examination of secondary reinforcement with discussions of a unifying theory and reservations and complications. The topics of Chapter 7 are a revised two-factor theory and the concept of habit, followed by Chapter 8 which comparatively examines other theories and some further evidence. Hope, fear, and field theory are the focus of Chapter 9, and Chapter 10 focuses on reinforcement gradients and temporal integration. The book closes with two chapters on unlearning, conflict, frustration, courage, generalization, discrimination, and skill. The basic argument proposed by the author is epitomized in Chapter 7. Earlier chapters provide the logical and factual background from which this argument evolves; and the five subsequent chapters amplify and apply the argument in more specific ways. Thus, the reader who wishes a quick "look" at this volume as a whole may first read the chapter indicated; but the argument will unfold most naturally and persuasively if the chapters are read in the order in which they appear.--(Created by APA).

"Within the whole range of the behavioral sciences, few developments have been so striking and significant during the past decade as those pertaining to the symbolic processes. Many collateral influences, extending from technical philosophy to the new branch of engineering known as cybernetics, have importantly stimulated and shaped contemporary thought concerning the symbolic, or representational, processes. But we shall here be particularly concerned with the unfolding of potentialities which lay within Behaviorism itself. While originally repudiating all that was subjective and cognitive, this scientific movement has recently shown itself unexpectedly competent to deal therewith, in a framework which is at once more systematic and seminal than any approach previously available. /// Because the widespread interest in symbolic operations and communication is of relatively recent origin and still growing, the question of scope and organization of this book has been a difficult one.^ The reader will find that some much-publicized developments, e.g., those pertaining to so-called "information theory" and "general semantics," receive scant attention, whereas certain unconventional topics, e.g., statistics and probability theory, have been accentuated. The final chapter of the book considers the field of psychopathology. /// Because of the exploratory nature of this book and the general fomentation of the field which it represents, its "audience" cannot be precisely forecase. However, its possible uses as a supplement to the earlier book, Learning Theory and Behavior, and as a basic text in more advanced work in the psychology of learning are obvious.^ Moreover, special courses in communication and the symbolic processes ("Psycholinguistics") are beginning to appear in both the collegiate and graduate curricula, for which this book can also appropriately serve as a text; and specialists (and students) in such cognate areas as education, speech, logic, human engineering, psychiatry, and the social sciences generally should find relevant "collateral" reading here."--Preface.