Psychology is about real human beings. Each of the perspectives in this book can be judged by how well it enables us to understand ourselves and other individuals. As an exercise for myself, I began decades ago to try out each of the seven perspectives as a framework for understanding the single most opaque person that I have known, my Aunt Lena. I did not know Lena as a psychologist knows a client, but within the intimate network of my family from my earliest childhood until her death in the year 2000, at which point this multi-perspective case study was already well under way.

Born in 1901, my Aunt Lena’s life spanned the twentieth century. She eventually died at age ninety-nine, having managed until a decade before to dress stylishly, to apply her makeup artfully, and to be amusing and convivial – as long as she had a few drinks.

Aunt Lena was married for nearly fifty years to a successful American mining executive, who the family called “Charlie.” When he died, in 1970, he left her a small but stylish home in Arizona, a summer home on a tiny island off New England, and enough money for Lena to live in modest comfort indefinitely, without depleting her capital.

Their marriage was a study in devotion and leisure. They filled albums with beautifully arranged photographs of themselves as tourists in the most famous places in Europe and Asia in the years between World War I and World War II. Aunt Lena never worked, rarely cooked, and had no children. She was a beautiful, loyal companion and ornament for an ambitious man. At parties with our large, extended family she was beautiful, charming, and innocently flirtatious. She was never, however, a brilliant conversationalist. Despite years of living abroad, Lena appeared to know almost nothing about politics, business, science, or the arts. Her occasional murky oil paintings were objects of extravagant praise within the family, but otherwise uninterpretable. As she socialized, her husband looked on: reserved, respected, private. He earned the money and made sure it was spent in a reasonably careful way.