Behaviour Of The Species

Press, Volume C, Issue 29680, 25 November 1961, Page 3

Behaviour Of The Species

[Reviewed by R. H T ]

Human Behaviour. A New Approach. By Claire Russell and W. M. S. Russell. Andre Deutsch. 532 pp.

The human species, the authors declare is potentially intelligent, co-operative and communicative and is capable of unimaginably expanding progress. Notwithstanding, most adults live automatic and routine lives in marked contrast to the imaginative gifts and the capacity for vitality and happiness which they showed as children. Our capacity to enjoy life is corrupted by the process of rationlisation whereby we persuade ourselves that we are free and happy when our behaviour is in fact most automatic and compulsive. The continued exercise of the process of rationlisation can. the authors warn, reduce us to a condition almost as automatic as that of the lower animals. Such automatic modes of behaviour are transmitted from parent to child by defective mating and parental behaviour. Only by appreciating fully our present slavery can we become free in the future. “To this end.” the Russells assert ’’every individual among us must explore, so that the whole concept of power-group vanishes from human history and science and art become coextensive with human life. To such a species. all things will be possible ” One of the authors of this embarrassing book is a psychoanalyst, the other is a zoologist. It is not surprising that they are at their best in the accounts of the animal experiments and the vicissitudes of parent-child behaviour. The great bulk of the references on which this book is based are drawn from the fields of zoology, anatomy and physiology on the one hand and history and literature on the other. The whole field of the psychology of personality has been overlooked, together with all the major traditions and influences which have borne upon it. The contributions of the Gestalt and psychometric approaches, of experimental psychology and learning *. *■ " *

theory, of social anthropology and almost all the clinical tradition—all is ignored. The authors’ acquaintance with this field does not appear to extend beyond Freud. They have been able to build up their new approach to

“Human Behaviour” without the handicap which a knowledge of the welter of differing theories. techniques, assumptions and problems making up personality theory, would provide.

The authors believe that life should reveal a continued heightening of awareness. an unending expansion of interests, of enjoyment, of imagination and creative action. With some justification, they feel that divisions between specialist fields of study should not be treated with respect, but go further to assert that science and art must be fused until "everyone is a scientist, and everyone is an artist.” As for the study of human behaviour. by its very nature it cannot “be a specialist study, if it is to serve for the liberation of the human mind.” The suggestion that anyone who plans to produce a new approach to human personality should be aware of existing theories and inquiries is likely to seem to the authors, timid and restricted. in fact to represent the very tendencies from which they hope to free man. kind.

Apparently plans are already made for further investigations one into intelligence which the authors feel will have "wide repercussions on the whole of science.” another into the “cultural evolution of human behaviour in all its rich complexity and intricate development, from the first toolmakers to 1960.” “Human Behaviour: A New Approach” is at times painfully naive, but there can be no doubting its evangelical fervour. The Russel’s feel that they have a message of salvation for mankind and there are many visionary references to man’s future possibilities. There may be some in search of just such a message to whom this book will appeal.