Horney worked primarily in the field of therapy and the nature of neuroses, which she defined as of two types: situation neuroses and character neuroses. Situation neuroses arise from the anxiety attendant on a single conflict, such as being faced with a difficult decision. Although they may paralyze the individual temporarily, making it impossible to think or act efficiently, such neuroses are not deeply rooted. Character neuroses are characterized by a basic anxiety and a basic hostility resulting from a lack of love and affection in childhood.

Sullivan believed that all development can be described exclusively in terms of interpersonal relations. Character types as well as neurotic symptoms are explained as results of the struggle against anxiety arising from the individual’s relations with others and are a security system, maintained for the purpose of allaying anxiety.

Melanie Klein

An important school of thought is based on the teachings of the British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. Because most of Klein’s followers worked with her in England, this has come to be known as the English school. Its influence, nevertheless, is very strong throughout the European continent and in South America. Its principal theories were derived from observations made in the psychoanalysis of children. Klein posited the existence of complex unconscious fantasies in children under the age of six months. The principal source of anxiety arises from the threat to existence posed by the death instinct. Depending on how concrete representations of the destructive forces are dealt with in the unconscious fantasy life of the child, two basic early mental attitudes result that Klein characterized as a “depressive position” and a “paranoid position.” In the paranoid position, the ego’s defense consists of projecting the dangerous internal object onto some external representative, which is treated as a genuine threat emanating from the external world. In the depressive position, the threatening object is introjected and treated in fantasy as concretely retained within the person. Depressive and hypochondriacal symptoms result. Although considerable doubt exists that such complex unconscious fantasies operate in the minds of infants, these observations have been of the utmost importance to the psychology of unconscious fantasies, paranoid delusions, and theory concerning early object relations.

4. Behaviriourism

The literature of this school of psychology is still awaiting its bibliographer. Though this interpretation of human actions and reactions has been strongly criticized by other psychologists, the leading figures - B.F.Skinner, J.B.Watson and E.C.Tolman - have also been recognized and respected as great scholars. Skenner`s own summary About behaviorism, 1974, contained numerous bibliographic references to this important interpretation of man’s relationship to the world around him. Strange compilation of references designed to show the errors of this school of psychology was published by A.A.Roback in 1923 as part of his critical discussion entitled Behaviorism and Psychology; it is now only of historical interest.

We have already referred to Robert 1 Watson`s The history of psychology and behavioral sciences: a bibliographic guide, 1978. in our discussion of the general background guides to psychology. It suffices to note, here, that this work, though by one of the leading scholars of the behaviorist school, is not, and does not pretend to be, a bibliography of Behaviourism. In some respects the same can be said of C.Heidenreich`s Dictionary of personality: behavior and adjustment terms, which appeared in 1968. Both these books have been compiled by leading members of this behaviorist school and unquestionably representative of the views of that school. We have mentioned these works here for that reason, but stress that these are scholarly and unbiased reference works which do not include or misrepresent references to other interpretations of human behavior.

5. Gestalt psychology

Gestalt Psychology, school of psychology that deals mainly with the processes of perception. According to Gestalt psychology, images are perceived as a pattern or a whole rather than merely as a sum of distinct component parts. The context of an image plays a key role. For instance, in the context of a city silhouette the shape of a spire is perceived as a church steeple. Gestalt psychology tries to formulate the laws governing such perceptual processes.

Gestalt psychology began as a protest. At the beginning of the 20th century, associationism dominated psychology. The associationist view that stimuli are perceived as parts and then built into images excluded as much as it sought to explain; for instance, it allowed little room for such human concepts as meaning and value. About 1910, German researchers Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kцhler, and Kurt Koffka rejected the prevailing order of scientific analysis in psychology. They did not, however, reject science; rather they sought a scientific approach more nearly related to the subject matter of psychology. They adopted that of field theory, newly developed in