There are two kinds of biologically oriented scientists who study behavior – nowadays we call them behavioral neuroscientists. One of these is interested in animals in the way a naturalist is, and often the question is, What can the animal do and how well can the animal do it? Or how intelligent is the animal, in terms of the way we understand cognitive abilities in humans? The other kind of investigator of behavior, or of brain–behavior relationships, uses one of a few animal species, in biological psychology predominantly the rat, pigeon, rabbit, or monkey, as an animal model for general – and specifically human – function and is not much interested in the animal in the naturalist's or cognitivist's way, except insofar as this kind of interest or knowledge affects his or her research and its interpretation. It will become obvious that the orientation of this book is of the latter kind: The experimental animal of choice is overwhelmingly Rattus norvegicus, and its study is designed to further the comprehension of what I have called dispositional learning and memory – systems that ordinarily have a long-term historical etiology and in which learning is relatively reflexive and memory implicit and not strongly episodic.

This is a book on frustration theory and not a book on frustration theories; I try to underscore this in Chapter 3, where I provide a brief review of theories of frustration.