Textbook of abnormal psychology

The present work is a textbook, the chief aim of which is to introduce the student to the facts and existing theories ordinarily subsumed under the category of abnormal psychology or psychopathology. First of all, let us indicate what the book is not. It is not a grandiose treatise that attempts to formalize an elaborate theory with profound "dynamisms" or "mechanisms" purporting to explain the data of abnormal psychology or of psychopathology. Neither is an attempt made to delineate the "psychopathological" or "the abnormal" from "the normal" or to arbitrate between "the neuroses" and "the psychoses." Nor is the subject matter usually subsumed under the terms, psychopathology or abnormal psychology, presented as settled. After many years of struggling with these problems, the writer is of the opinion that we may have stated our basic questions in the wrong terms. The recent literature would seem to bear this point out. Newer and different questions are being formulated in our times.