ABSTRACT
The cultural pattern covers a multitude of influences—home, school, religion, government, way of life—in fact, the whole environment except those aspects which have only a minor influence, such as physical environment and climate. Physical defects and diseases have their significance for personality; they do so through affecting the individual’s relation to society and his work and may be considered with the cultural pattern. The psycho-therapist working with the adult has, so far, restricted his work to the consulting room, believing that the moulding force of family upon personality has largely ceased by the adult years. The parental attitudes which seem fraught with most consequence for the child’s personality, and for which measuring scales have been designed in clinical practice, are: affectionateness, rejection, hostility, dominance, jealousy and over-protection. There are many kinds of deviants from that typical majority of personalities which comfortably assume, more or less, the form required by the cultural pattern.
