An Unfinished Book
On one of those rare occasions when I rummage through the attic (figuratively speaking) of old file folders, notebooks and computer discs, I happened on the all-but-forgotten beginnings of A Theory of Self and Personal Relationships –a book I started writing in 1992. For several reasons, known to me and to the series editor, the book foundered after (or perhaps during) the completion of Chapter 3. Even so, parts of what I did complete may be interesting to several categories of relationship scholars and students. Two such categories come to mind: 1) students and younger scholars who might like a perspective on how relationship researchers were plying their trade back then (things haven’t really changed much), and 2) "older" scholars who are familiar with my past work and would like a full, frank, and (overly?) personalized account of how I was viewing the field and its output at that time (this hasn’t changed much, either).
The following outline should assist potential readers in deciding which, if any, portions of the linked manuscript they might find worth a closer look. My guess is that the greatest number of readers will be most interested in the 11 or so pages comprising the first major section of Chapter 1, i.e., "The 'Field' of Personal Relationships."
The Manuscript
OUTLINE: A THEORY OF SELF AND PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS
- Let's Be Friends ... In a Limited, Metaphorical Sense
- Moving Toward a Personal Modus Operandi
- The "Field" of Personal Relationships: A View from the Trenches
- Defining the Field
- Healthy, Bewildering Diversity
- What, Then, Makes the Field a Field?
- Stretching the "Relationship Paradigm"
- A "Private" Modus Operandi
- The Theory in Synopsis
- Origins of the Theory
- Nature of the Theory and its Niche in the Relationship Field
- Plan for the Remainder of the Book
- Whys and Wherefores of a Focus on Persons
- Conceptions of the Person: An Embarrassment of Riches?
- Current Emphases in Relationship Studies
- Exchange, Equity, and Investment Theories
- Individual Differences in Needs and Styles
- Interpersonal needs
- Attachment styles and love styles
- The Self and Self-related Concepts
- The Focus on Self Psychology
- The Field of Self Psychology and its Conundrums
- Two Hypothetical Situations and Two Basic Distinctions
- Hypothetical situation #1
- Hypothetical situation #2
- Two basic distinctions
- The Entity Identified as Self
- Self-attributes and their Development
- What is a self-attribute?
- The development of self-attributes
- The Identification and Organization of Self-attributes.
- The identification of self-attributes
- The organization and "integration" of self-attributes
- Self-referent Motivation: Where the Rubber Meets the Road
- Summing it All Up