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Chapter 15

ample the philosopher Vvedensky and the physiologist Pavlov, but with a coinci-

dence of the basic assumptions, starting-points and philosophical premises of du-

alistic idealism. This “coincidence” is presupposed from the very start: Bekhterev

presupposes Vvedensky—when the one is right, the other is right as well.

Einstein’s principle of relativity and the principles of Newtonian mechanics, in-

compatible in themselves, get on perfectly well in this eclectic system. In Bekhterev’s

“Collective reflexology” he absolutely gathered a catalogue of universal laws. Char-

acteristic of the methodology of the system is the way imagination is given free

reign, the fundamental inertia of the idea which by direct communication, omitting

all intermediate steps, leads us from the law of the proportional correlation of the

speed of movement with the moving force, established in mechanics, to the fact of

the USAs involvement in the great European war, and back again—from the ex-

periment of a certain Dr. Schwarzmann on the frequency limits of electro-cutaneous

irritation leading to an association reflex to the “universal law of relativity which

obtains everywhere and which, as a result of Einstein’s brilliant investigations, has

been finally demonstrated in regard to heavenly bodies.” [14]

Needless to say, the annexation of psychological areas is carried out no less

categorically and no less boldly. The investigations of the higher thought processes

by the WUrzburg school, like the results of the investigations of other repre-

sentatives of subjective psychology, “may be harmonized with the scheme of cere-

bral or association reflexes.” [15] Never mind that this very phrase strikes out all

the fundamental premises of his own system: for if we can harmonize everything

with the reflex schema and everything “is in perfect accord” with reflexology—even

what has been discovered by subjective psychology—why take up arms against it?

The discoveries made in WUrzburg were made with a method which, according to

Bekhterev, cannot lead to the truth. However, they are in complete harmony with

the objective truth. How is that?

The territory of psychoanalysis is annexed just as carelessly. For this it suffices

to declare that “in Jung’s doctrine of complexes we find complete agreement with

the data of reflexology.” [16] But one passage higher it was said that this doctrine

was based on subjective analysis, which Bekhterev rejects. No problem: we live in

the world of pre-establisbed harmony, of the miraculous correspondence, of the

amazing coincidence of theories based on false analyses and the data of the exact

sciences. To be more precise, we live in the world—according to Blonsky (1925a,

p. 226)—of “terminological revolutions.”

Our whole eclectic epoch is filled with such coincidences. Zalkind, for example,

annexes the same areas of psychoanalysis and the theory of complexes in the name

of the dominant. It turns out that the psychoanalytic school developed the same

concepts about the dominant completely independently from the reflexological

school, but “in our terms and by another method.” The “complex orientation” of

the psychoanalysts, the “strategical set” of the Adlerians, these are dominants as

well, not in general physiological but clinical, general therapeutic formulations. The

annexation—the mechanical transposition of bits of a foreign system into one’s

own—in this case, as always, seems almost miraculous and testifies to its truth.

Such an “almost miraculous” theoretical and factual coincidence of two doctrines,

which work with totally different material and by entirely different methods, forms

a convincing confirmation of the correctness of the principal path that contemporary

reflexology is following. [17] We remember that Vvedensky too saw in his coinci-

dence with Pavlov a testimony of the truth of his statements. And more: this co-

incidence testifies, as Bekhterev more than once showed, to the fact that we may

arrive at the same truth by entirely different methods. Actually, this coincidence

testifies only to the methodological unscrupulousness and eclecticism of the system