Butts Text Analogy

Butt gives us a great analogy that individuals are much like books. For us to understand the content of the book, and what is it really saying, we can't just analyze every letter, or look at the materials used to make the book. We must look at how the letters relate to each other; and then how the sequences of letters relate to words; we must unpack what those words mean; we must contextualize those words with the other words that create the sentence it is involved in. Finally we must continually relate the sentences and paragraphs meanings to the chapters, and to the whole book and it central themes. As we can see, this is a complex and laborious task. The main takeaway Butt is trying to get us to understand, is that we have to interpret many pieces of personality and of the individual as a whole to really understand what is going on, and why they do what they do. Looking at the individual from an atomistic and reductionist perspective will lead us to misunderstand and improperly label different aspects of behaviour.