recreated the situation in which these complexes were originally established. And the experiment succeeded. I consider the methodological technique at the basis of this experiment to be an example of the right approach to Freud’s theme and to claims by others in general. Let us try to describe this technique. First of all, the problem was raised in the course of Pavlov’s own investigations of the nature of internal inhibition. The task was framed, formulated, and understood in the light of his principles. The theoretical theme of the experimental work and its significance were conceived of in the concepts of Pavlov’s school. We know what a trace reflex is and we also know what an actual reflex is. To transform the one into the other means to banish inhibition etc., i.e., the whole mechanism of the process we understand in entirely specific and homogeneous categories. The value of the analogy with catharsis was merely heuristic: it shortened the path of Pavlov’s experiments and led to the goal in the shortest way possible. But it was only accepted as an assumption that was immediately verified experimentally. And after the solution of his own task the author came to the third and final conclusion that the phenomena described by Freud can be experimentally tested upon animals and should be analyzed in more detail via the method of conditional salivary reflexes.

lb verify Freud via Pavlov’s ideas is totally different from verifying them via his own ideas; and this possibility as well was established not through analysis, but through the experiment. What is most important is that the author, when confronted with phenomena analogous to those described by Freud’s school, did not for one moment step onto foreign territory, did not rely on other people’s data, but used them to carry through his own investigation. Pavlov’s discovery has its significance, value, place and meaning in his own system, not in Freud’s. The two circles touch at the point of intersection of both systems, the point where they meet, and this one point belongs to both at the same time. But its place, sense and value is determined by its position in the first system. A new discovery was made in this investigation, a new fact was found, a new trait was studied—but it was all in the [framework of the] theory of conditional reflexes and not in psychoanalysis. In this way each “almost miraculous” coincidence disappeared!

One has only to compare this with the purely verbal way Bekhterev [1932, p. 413] comes to a similar evaluation of the idea of catharsis for the system of reflexology, to see the deep difference between these two procedures. Here the interrelation of the two systems is also first of all based on catharsis, i.e.,

discharge of a ‘strangulated’ affect or an inhibited mimetic-somatic impulse. Is not this the discharge of a reflex which, when inhibited, oppresses the personality, shackles and diseases it, while, when there is discharge of the reflex (catharsis), naturally the pathological condition disappears? Is not the weeping out of a sorrow the discharge of an impeded reflex?

Here every word is a pearl. A mimetic-somatic impulse—what can be more clear or precise? Avoiding the language of subjective psychology, Bekbterev is not squeamish about philistine language, which hardly makes Freud’s term any clearer. How did this inhibited reflex “oppress” the personality, shackle it? Why is the wept- out sorrow the discharge of an inhibited reflex? What if a person weeps in the very moment of sorrow? Finally, elsewhere it is claimed that thought is an inhibited reflex, that concentration is connected with the inhibition of a nervous current and is accompanied by conscious phenomena. Oh salutary inhibition! It explains conscious phenomena in one chapter and unconscious ones in the next!

All this clearly indicates the theme with which we started this section: in the problem of the unconscious one must distinguish between a methodological and an empirical problem, i.e., between a psychological problem and the problem for psychology. [30] The uncritical combination of both problems leads to a gross dis