Description and Measurement of Personality.

Abstract

Pp. xx+602. Price 15s. Dr. Cattell explains that his book is the first of two volumes. Fifteen years ago, so he tells us in his preface, he left an academic laboratory to take charge of a psychological clinic where there was " an embarrassing abundance of research material mainly handled by overworked medical men untrained in research methodsHe then planned a book on " the empirical study of personality ", which was to embody " quite militantly a truly scientific approach, and make a definite break with the majority of writings having intuitive foundations such as then commanded the field in the clinical study of personality ". He began with what he calls the crosssectional approach ; and, as time went on, this has expanded into the present volume. But this is to be regarded partly as a preliminary to an equally systematic account of the " development of personality ", which will form the topic of a later volume. Dr. Cattell's approach to the problems of personality is by means of psychometric measurement, with the data interpreted throughout by factor analysis. This, as Professor Terman points out in his introduction, " does