Frustration: Theory and practice

Frustration is often dismissed as a transient by-product of thwarted aspirations, a disruptive and uncivilized mark of Cain. Amsel’s work, however, shows the creative and enabling role that frustration can play in the behavior of organisms. The book epitomized here first clarifies the basic phenomenon and its causes, and then extends it by mapping its development, along with that of other behavioral markers, against the development of brain structures. One may take exception to the particulars: Are the chosen variables the best ones to measure? Is frustration an autonomous motive or is it the liberation of the arousal normally focused on the instrumental response? Is the best reading always given to the large and heterogeneous literature? But the whole of Amsel’s work transcends these particulars and exemplifies, as do few other curriculum vitae, the ideal of systematic scientific inquiry that is praised more often than practiced.