Barber's treatise was seminal and has been quite well-received. It is well-written and interesting. However, the psychology is archaic. Barber postulates two dimensions of presidential personality: Activity and positive vs. negative orientation. This is an arbitrary and very incomplete perspective on personality - which incidentally, has been studied very extensively in psychology over the past 50 years or so. The assessment of a given president's standing on each trait is entirely Barber's, not the result of any formal attempt at measurement or a consensus of experts. In sum, this is an armchair psychological analysis, with virtually no connection to other attempts to understand personality or its relationship to leadership.