Dimensions of Behavior: The Psychiatric Foundations of Medicine provides the general background of the field and lays the foundations of the origins of behavior. It is a modern textbook of psychiatry written specifically for medical students and physicians. In its comprehensive scope, it contains the contributions of all the disciplines that are relevant to the behavioral, psychological, social, and humanistic aspects of medicine, as well as the contributions of clinical psychiatry that constitute an integral part of the healing art and science of medicine. The book is organized into six parts. Parts I and II are introductory and present the historical development of psychological thinking in medicine and the evolving status of psychiatry in the contemporary scene, with an emphasis on the need for a new medical model. They further attempt to sketch a general conceptualization of human behavior that transcends the disciplinary boundaries of biological and psychosocial sciences, through an introduction into the philosophical and epistemological approaches to studying man and his behavior. Part III introduces basic concepts related to an evolutionary understanding of human behavior, together with contributing extrapolations from ethological and laboratory animal studies. Parts IV through VI present the developmental dimension of behavior. Human development is discussed from the point of view of its biological foundations and genetic determinants, from the point of view of the various psychological theories of personality development, and in terms of the developmental stages of man. This longitudinal perspective of behavior provides the fundamental considerations for understanding the uniqueness of the individual.
