Comprehensive Personality Theory (An Old And Rare Book)

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It gives me great pleasure to write a foreword to this book on "Comprehensive Personality Theory" by Dr. R. M. Shah. The work comprises of a study undertaken by Dr. Shah in the Department of Psychology of this University for his Ph.D. degree.

In this work, Dr. Shah has approached the problem of Personality from purely scientific point of view and tried to develop a comprehensive Theory of Personality. He has supported his theory by means of two case studies taken by himself one recorded case being a Harvard Study and the other a direct case. He has successfully applied the theory to life phenomena and actual case studies. He has also compared his theory with several operational personality theories and specially the Indian psychological thought.

The work is marked by comprehensiveness of outlook, courage of thinking and effective presentation. He has attacked a difficult problem in a clear, lucid and scientific manner. I am sure that the work will stimulate and guide other to carry out precise and scientific research in this important field.

We are greatful to the University Grants Commission for financial assistance towards the publication of this work.

This work originated as a thesis for Ph.D. Degree. The work is of rather unusual nature and dimensions. It is therefore thought that a short historical background as to how this came about may help see it in its proper perspective.

The original idea was to take a statistical type of study to link up specific childhood experiences with the nature of personality and personality attitudes in later life. For this purpose, it was envisaged to adapt a suitable personality tests to measure personality attributes from the test already available, and to develop an inventory on childhood experiences separately. After considerable exploratory work, it was felt that the ground that can be covered by way of size of sample etc. at an individual level would not be adequate to give good results, nor would such a study lead to a basic understanding of the correlations between the childhood experiences and personality development.