But a reactive style of thinking which operates with a few simplifications might prove useful in the study of human personality at the present time, since both the psychoanalytical and the “itemistic” psychologies have a plethora of particulars with which they are familiar, but suffer from certain crippling viewpoints inherent in their early starting-points. Psychoanalysis is well accustomed to the use of a few orienting terms, but since these are stated in “tendency” form, there is much lack of emphasis upon rendering the objective marks of their manifestation precise. The inventory psychologies though accustomed to precision are accustomed to overlooking the woods for the trees. Can the personality be viewed as a system, and can we think of it in a few terms which can be gradually objectified, and which indicate the principal varieties of personality manifestation? If the personality is a true system, interferences which are introduced at various points ought often to produce substitutive reactions at many remote parts of the personality. Personalities may be compared from one cross-section to another, and from one personality to another, by exposing them to similar interferences, and by examining the substitutive reaction sequences which emerge. For the purpose of summing up the personality at any given period, we may consider it to be a constellation of the following action patterns: object orientations, adjustive thinking, autistic reveries, somatic reactions. The object orientations of the individual are describable as various degrees of assertiveness, provocativeness, or submissiveness toward sexual and non-specifically sexual objects in the environment. In extreme instances the individual may be abusive, insulting, domineering toward superiors, colleagues, clients, and subordinates in his profession, and toward his wife or mistress in intimate life; or he may be cowed in his work and timid in his sexuality; or he may show extreme variations between his professional and private levels of behavior. These are the differentiating reactions upon which it is hoped to throw some light by the examination of the personality system in its principal manifestations. Adjustive thinking has to do with the relationship of the individual to reality. It issues in socially relevant acts, which on the creative level mean contributions to science, art, administration, and philosophy. Autistic thinking is highly egocentric, but adjustive thinking when it dwells upon the relationship of the self to its surroundings is able to treat the self as an object among objects.