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The profoundly mentally retarded
BOOK REVIEWS
262 J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON : Altruism, Socialization,
and Society.
Prentice-Hall,
New Jersey (1980). 244 pp
This is a well written and very comprehensive book dealing, as few other books have done, with the more acceptable side of humanity. Psychologists have tended to concentrate on aggression, conflict, neurosis, and ah the other evils that flesh is heir to. And thus disregarding the more admirable types of human conduct, they have given a distorted and onesided picture of our nature and a book like this, which redresses the balance is particularly welcome. The book deals with the sociobiology of altruism, motivations to be altruistic, a desciiption of the altruistic personality, theories and experiments contributing to an understanding of the growth of altruism in human beings, the family as a primary socializer, the influence of the mass media and of the educational system generally in the process and ends with a consideration of altruism and society. The discussion throughout is factual and a great number of different experiments are cited, all of them relevant to the points being made. The author also considers the various theories that have been advanced and is on the whole judicious in evaluating the theories and the experiments supporting or disproving them. Altogether, the book will surprise those who are unfamiliar with the literature; there is far more known about altruism and socialization than many people would have thought and the ingenious arrangement of the contents makes it easy to go from study to study and from theory to theory. The book would serve as an excellent text in undergraduate courses, but it can also be read with profit by more advanced psychologists who have not specialized in the area. Altogether, the book can be strongly recommended to anyone interested in this important area of social studies; the choice of material is well considered and the author will be found to be a s&e guide through this complex and sometimes difficult field. H. J. EYSENCK
C. O-ELAND: The Profoundly
Mentally
Retarded.
Prentice-Hall,
New Jersey (1979). 211 p. fl1.00.
This book concerns itself entirely with profoundly retarded individuals who attain a mental age of 3 years or less when adult and who are generally described as having IQs below 20. The chapter headings indicate an intention to deal with special problem behaviours in this group of people, recreation and play, sub-group differentiation, training of staff to work with the p.m.r. and other topics. Of most interest to readers of this journal will be the chapter on sub-group differentiation where Cleland considers possible ways of grouping the p.m.r. to facilitate more individualized caring, house-parent to p.m.r. matching and placement choice for the p.m.r. The dimensions Cleland considers include response to music, odour and lights, self-awareness (as indicated by blushing), suggestibility, use of tools in problem solving, sleep patterns and voice spectography. What was really needed by those working with the p.m.r. was a careful analysis of the research literature, a gathering together of the knowledge already available on such topics as prevalence, prevention, assessment, treatment and training. This is not what Professor Cleland’s book provides. Clearly his intention was to provide an easily readable book to stimulate class discussion and encourage imaginative research and treatment approaches with the profoundly handicapped: unfortunately though, the book is so badly organized as to be extremely irritating. Occasionally, interesting questions are raised (such as “What is play for a 30-year-old with a mental age of 2 years”, p. 98) sometimes notable data are provided (for example, on the causes of death in the p.m.r., p, 9) and at times sensible suggestions are made (e.g. to halve the shift-lengths of house-parents), but these useful parts of the book are scattered about like needles in a haystack, amongst anecdotes, unfinished case histories, speculation and digression. Only the most unimaginative teacher would need this book for class discussion and if you are searching for a careful academic review of research with the p.m.r. this book is certainly not for you. G. H. MURPHY
DOMINIK PROD~HL: Gelingen und Scheitern ehelicher Partnerschuft. JOSEFSCHENK: Die Persiinlichkeit des Drogenkonsumenten. Verlag
Verlag fir Psychologie (1979). 166 pp. fur Psychologie (1979). 200 pp.
These two books, published in German and hence not readily accessible to most English-speaking readers, deal respectively with personality and marital success or failure and personality and drug addiction. The former book shows very clearly that in comparing reasonably happily married couples with couples seeking advice because of their marital difficulties, the latter are characterized by high neuroticism scores as compared with the former, while there are no differences on extraversion-introversion. These results are very clear and in line with what many other people have found, although of course it cannot be established by such a design that it is the neuroticism that causes the break-up of the marriage; it is possible, but perhaps not very likely, that the marital difficulties have caused an increase in neuroticism scores. Apart from these findings there is not much of interest in the book, which is psychoanalytic in its interpretations, and uses ‘tests’ such as the Szondi, which one would have thought had been abandoned even by the most ardent adherents of projective techniques--compared with
262 J. PHILIPPE RUSHTON : Altruism, Socialization,
and Society.
Prentice-Hall,
New Jersey (1980). 244 pp
This is a well written and very comprehensive book dealing, as few other books have done, with the more acceptable side of humanity. Psychologists have tended to concentrate on aggression, conflict, neurosis, and ah the other evils that flesh is heir to. And thus disregarding the more admirable types of human conduct, they have given a distorted and onesided picture of our nature and a book like this, which redresses the balance is particularly welcome. The book deals with the sociobiology of altruism, motivations to be altruistic, a desciiption of the altruistic personality, theories and experiments contributing to an understanding of the growth of altruism in human beings, the family as a primary socializer, the influence of the mass media and of the educational system generally in the process and ends with a consideration of altruism and society. The discussion throughout is factual and a great number of different experiments are cited, all of them relevant to the points being made. The author also considers the various theories that have been advanced and is on the whole judicious in evaluating the theories and the experiments supporting or disproving them. Altogether, the book will surprise those who are unfamiliar with the literature; there is far more known about altruism and socialization than many people would have thought and the ingenious arrangement of the contents makes it easy to go from study to study and from theory to theory. The book would serve as an excellent text in undergraduate courses, but it can also be read with profit by more advanced psychologists who have not specialized in the area. Altogether, the book can be strongly recommended to anyone interested in this important area of social studies; the choice of material is well considered and the author will be found to be a s&e guide through this complex and sometimes difficult field. H. J. EYSENCK
C. O-ELAND: The Profoundly
Mentally
Retarded.
Prentice-Hall,
New Jersey (1979). 211 p. fl1.00.
This book concerns itself entirely with profoundly retarded individuals who attain a mental age of 3 years or less when adult and who are generally described as having IQs below 20. The chapter headings indicate an intention to deal with special problem behaviours in this group of people, recreation and play, sub-group differentiation, training of staff to work with the p.m.r. and other topics. Of most interest to readers of this journal will be the chapter on sub-group differentiation where Cleland considers possible ways of grouping the p.m.r. to facilitate more individualized caring, house-parent to p.m.r. matching and placement choice for the p.m.r. The dimensions Cleland considers include response to music, odour and lights, self-awareness (as indicated by blushing), suggestibility, use of tools in problem solving, sleep patterns and voice spectography. What was really needed by those working with the p.m.r. was a careful analysis of the research literature, a gathering together of the knowledge already available on such topics as prevalence, prevention, assessment, treatment and training. This is not what Professor Cleland’s book provides. Clearly his intention was to provide an easily readable book to stimulate class discussion and encourage imaginative research and treatment approaches with the profoundly handicapped: unfortunately though, the book is so badly organized as to be extremely irritating. Occasionally, interesting questions are raised (such as “What is play for a 30-year-old with a mental age of 2 years”, p. 98) sometimes notable data are provided (for example, on the causes of death in the p.m.r., p, 9) and at times sensible suggestions are made (e.g. to halve the shift-lengths of house-parents), but these useful parts of the book are scattered about like needles in a haystack, amongst anecdotes, unfinished case histories, speculation and digression. Only the most unimaginative teacher would need this book for class discussion and if you are searching for a careful academic review of research with the p.m.r. this book is certainly not for you. G. H. MURPHY
DOMINIK PROD~HL: Gelingen und Scheitern ehelicher Partnerschuft. JOSEFSCHENK: Die Persiinlichkeit des Drogenkonsumenten. Verlag
Verlag fir Psychologie (1979). 166 pp. fur Psychologie (1979). 200 pp.
These two books, published in German and hence not readily accessible to most English-speaking readers, deal respectively with personality and marital success or failure and personality and drug addiction. The former book shows very clearly that in comparing reasonably happily married couples with couples seeking advice because of their marital difficulties, the latter are characterized by high neuroticism scores as compared with the former, while there are no differences on extraversion-introversion. These results are very clear and in line with what many other people have found, although of course it cannot be established by such a design that it is the neuroticism that causes the break-up of the marriage; it is possible, but perhaps not very likely, that the marital difficulties have caused an increase in neuroticism scores. Apart from these findings there is not much of interest in the book, which is psychoanalytic in its interpretations, and uses ‘tests’ such as the Szondi, which one would have thought had been abandoned even by the most ardent adherents of projective techniques--compared with