ABSTRACT
By some historical accident, the study of the unhappy or disturbed personality has been assigned to physicians, perhaps the least equipped of all investigators of man to deal with the problem. Unlike others in the biological sciences, physicians have next to no training in scientific methodology, and — more important — they are trained to look for causation in the organism rather than the organization. By reacting against their training and social heritage, and led by one of the outstanding geniuses in human history (Sigmund Freud), physicians in the psychoanalytic tradition have been able to develop a significant theory of personality disturbances. But the biologistic heritage of even these brave innovators has prevented them from examining social-psychological factors fully. The present essay offers one possible social-psychological contribution to the understanding of personality disturbance, an interactionist one.
