Interpersonal Behavior: History and Practice of Personality Theory

This book represents an inquiry into an area of humanbehavior at once fascinating and exasperating. It isfascinating because it is a class of behavior that, whilepeculiarly resistant to cognitive analysis and clarificationit remains, for most of us throughout our lives, a subjectivelycrucial issue. In Interpersonal Behavior Carsonanalyzes, describes, and explains the transactions thatoccur between persons. The analysis focuses upon thesmallest possible unit of social interaction, the dyad, ortwo-person group.This book is as important today as when it first appearedin 1969 because it forces us to recognize that attributionsto others are incomplete without reference tothe circumstances in which a particular behavior occurs.Carson posits that, while personality characteristics maynot be ephemeral, any observed stability is the product ofwhatever propensities can accurately be identified as existing"inside" the person, and the interpersonal situationin which they are expressed. Carson urges us to examinemore carefully the effect of noncomplementarity on whatappears to be stable personality characteristics.Carson introduces us to the principal interpersonaltheorists in a series of expository chapters that are bothlucid and authoritative. His long experience as a clinicalpsychologist enables him to make a telling application ofinteraction concepts of personality to the field of mentaland emotional "illness." He makes clear that manypeople designated as "mental patients" have suffered realharm because they are perceived as having a "diseased"personality, rather than as people who, under certaincircumstances, behave deviantly.