234
Chapter
15
still are,
but
they should not and
will
not remain this way since this situation does
not follow from the very nature of the science, but
is
determined
by
external, ex-
traneous circumstances. As soon
as
these conditions change, the psychology of the
normal person will lose its leading role.
To
an extent
we
are already beginning to
see this happen. In the psychological systems that cultivate the concept of the un-
conscious, the role of such a leading discipline, the basic concepts of which serve
as
the starting points for the related sciences,
is
played
by
psychopathology. These
are, for example, the systems of Freud, Adler,2 and Kretschmer.
In the latter, this leading role of psychopathology
is
no longer connected with
the central concept of the unconscious,
as
in
Freud and Adler, i.e., not with the
actual priority of the given discipline
in
the elaboration of the basic idea,
but
with
a fundamental methodological view according to which the essence and nature of
the phenomena studied by psychology can be revealed in their purest form in the
extreme, pathological forms.
We
should, consequently, proceed from pathology to
the norm and explain and understand the normal person from pathology, and not
the other way around, as has been done until
now.
The key to psychology
is
in
pathology, not only because it discovered and studied the root of the mind earlier
than other branches, but because this
is
the internal nature of things, and the nature
of the scientific knowledge of these things
is
conditioned
by
it. Whereas for tradi-
tional psychology every psychopath
as
a subject for study
is
more or
less-to
a
different
degree-a
normal person and must be defined in relation to the latter,
for the new systems each normal person
is
more or less insane and must be
psy-
chologically understood precisely
as
a variant of some pathological type.
To
put it
in more straightforward terms, in certain systems the normal person
is
considered
as
a type and the pathological personality
as
a variety or variant of this main type;
in others, on the contrary, the pathological phenomenon
is
taken
as
a type and the
normal
as
one of its varieties. And who can predict how the future general
psy-
chology
will
decide this debate?
On the basis of such dual motives (based half on facts, half on principle) still
other systems assign the leading role to zoopsychology.
Of
this kind are, for exam-
ple, the majority
of
the American courses
in
the psychology
of
behavior and the
Russian courses in reflexology, which develop their whole system from the concept
of the conditional reflex and organize
all
their material around
it.
A number of
authors propose that animal psychology, apart from being given the actual priority
in the elaboration of the basic concepts of behavior, should become the general
discipline with which the other disciplines should be correlated. As the logical be-
ginning of a science of behavior, the starting point for every genetic examination
and explanation of the mind, and a purely biological science, it
is
precisely this
science which
is
expected to elaborate the fundamental concepts of the science and
to supply them to kindred disciplines.
This, for example,
is
the view of
Pavlov.
What psychologists do can in his opin-
ion have no influence upon animal psychology, but what zoopsychologists do de-
termines the work of psychologists
in
a very essential
way.
The latter build the
superstructure, but the former
lay
the foundation [Pavlov, 1928/1963,
p.
113]. And
indeed, the source from which
we
derive all our basic categories for the investigation
and description of behavior, the standard
we
use to verify our results, the model
according to which
we
align our methods,
is
zoopsychology.
Here again the matter has taken a course opposed to that of traditional psy-
chology. There the starting point was man; one proceeded from man
in
order to
get an idea
of
the mind
of
the animal. One interpreted the manifestations of its
soul
by
analogy with ourselves.
In
so doing, the matter was
by
no means always
reduced to a crude anthropomorphism. Serious methodological grounds often dic-
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