Abstract

Eighteen of Straus' papers, published in various journals and anthologies between 1930 and 1962, are included in this volume. They are divided into three sections: Phenomenological Studies, Anthropological Studies, and Clinical Studies. But cutting across these divisions is the recurring philosophical theme of the inadequacy of the behavioristic ideal in psychology and the similar inadequacy of the reductionistic mentality of that strain of contemporary philosophy which nurtures this ideal. Straus' critical moments are often more whimsical and polemical than philosophical. But the real strength of the organic approach he defends are his specific analyses of such phenomena as memory, wakefulness, hallucinations, and human action. His phenomenological methods join up with rather than defer to the more rigorously philosophical versions thereof, and "make sense" out of the phenomena in a way that a logically, or ontologically, straightjacketed method might find impossible. This is not to make the trivial point that, in the end, Straus is a scientist, not a philosopher; he is a scientist, but one who has something philosophical to say. Among other important papers are included "The Upright Posture," "Lived Movement," and "Descartes' Significance for Modern Psychology."—E. A. R.