ABSTRACT
The concept of motivation useful for the psychology of human behavior can never be completely objectified. An enormous amount of confusion has been created by the failure to recognize and accept this fact. Psychology has been vigorously pursuing the goal of objectivity by defining in operational terms as many of its concepts as possible, but "motivation" has successfully resisted all attempts. When the operational trap is sprung the concept has vanished. In Parts II and III, we followed some of these attempts and emerged noting the inability of either the affect explanation or the thought-action paradigm to result in a comprehensive and completely objective explanation of motivated behavior. We continually felt the need to resort to the concept of personal knowledge. We have now arrived at the point at which we must return to some of the concepts presented in Part I and try to explain in more detail the problems inherent in objectivity and operational definitions, present the concept of personal knowledge, and state as succinctly as possible the concept of personal causation. In so doing we shall restate and elaborate what was implied in Part I.
