Despite the prestigious reputation of its senior author (who has held the Career Research Award, National Institute of Mental Health, for two consecutive five-year periods) this is a slight work. It is a pamphlet rather than a book, and not a very weighty pamphlet at that, printed in large type. There is some ground for suspicion of padding.
Ironically, and despite its title, the work itself is not well integrated. Its table of contents constitutes a miscellany rather than an organized whole. Moreover, it announces no basis, theoretical or otherwise, for its own internal organization. A possible integrative formulation is buried within the work rather than employed to organize its contents.
The work’s principal contribution lies in the emphasis which it gives to the integration of psychological science into the field of development. However, its bibliography, even in this section, is next to nonexistent. It makes no mention of McClelland’s pathbreaking work in this field, even though it does use (without credit) his concept of the “need for achievement.”
It is to be hoped that Gresham’s Law is not applicable to the study of the psychological aspects of economic development.
