Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1983, this title is a determined attack on personality theories current at the time. It critically examines their basic motivational constructs and rejects any that invoke goal-seeking as being inescapably teleological and therefore unacceptable as natural science. Dr Maze argues the necessity for an unqualified determinism in psychology, yet one that incorporates the role of cognitive processes in the formation of behaviour. However, action theories which profess to offer a causal account of apparently goal-seeking or voluntarist behaviour by reference to the internal states of desire for a goal and a belief about how to get it are also dismissed. For the concept of belief as an internal state is argued to be a relativistic one, defined as being intrinsically related to its object. This is an incoherent notion and one which cannot specify anything acceptable as a causal state.
The one motivational theory in dynamic psychology which offered a solution t
Table of Contents
Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Introduction 2. Teleological and Causal Explanations 3. Analysis of ‘Agency’ 4. Cognition and Determinism 5. The Constitution of the ‘Self’ 6. Drives and Consummatory Actions 7. Higher Activities and their Basic Meanings. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.
