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Chapter 15

tortion of the whole matter. The symposium on the unconscious showed that a

fundamental solution of this matter transcends the boundaries of empirical psy-

chology and is directly tied to general philosophical convictions. Whether we accept

with Brentano that the unconscious does not exist, or with Munsterberg that it is

simply physiology, or with Sehubert—Soldern that it is an epistemologically indis-

pensable category, or with Freud that it is sexual—in all these cases our argumen-

tation and conclusions transcend the boundaries of empirical psychology. [31]

Among the Russian authors it is Dale who emphasizes the epistemological mo-

tives which led to the formation of the concept of the unconscious. In his opinion

it is precisely the attempt to defend the independence of psychology as an explana-

tory science against the usurpation of physiological methods and principles that is

the basis of this concept. The demand to explain the mental from the mental, and

not from the physical, that psychology in the analysis and description of the facts

should stay itself, within its own boundaries, even if this implied that one had to

enter the path of broad hypotheses—this is what gave rise to the concept of the

unconscious. Dale observes that psychological constructions or hypotheses are no

more than the theoretical continuation of the description of homogeneous phenom-

ena in one and the same independent system of reality. [32] The tasks of psychology

and theoretical-epistemological demands require that it fight the usurpationist at-

tempts of physiology by means of the unconscious. Mental life proceeds with in-

terruptions, it is full of gaps. What happens with consciousness during sleep, with

reminiscences that we do not now recollect, with ideas of which we are not con-

sciously aware at the moment? In order to explain the mental from the mental, in

order not to turn to another domain of phenomena—physiology—to fill the pauses,

gaps and blanks in mental life, we must assume that they continue to exist in a

special form: as the unconscious mental. Stern [1919, pp. 241-243] as well develops

such a conception of the unconscious as both an essential assuniption and a hypo-

thetical continuation and complement to mental experience.

Dale distinguishes two aspects of the problem: the factual and the hypothetical

or methodological, which determines the epistemological or methodological value

of the category of the unconscious for psychology. Its task is to clarify the meaning

of this concept, the domain of phenomena it covers, and its role for psychology as

an explanatory science. Following Jerusalem [33], for the author it is first of all a

category or a way of thinking which is indispensable in the explanation of mental

life. Apart from that, it is also a specific area of phenomena. He is completely right

in saying that the unconscious is a concept created on the basis of indisputable

mental experience and its necessary hypothetical completion. Hence the very com-

plex nature of each statement operating with this concept: in each statement one

must distinguish what comes from the data of indisputable mental experience, what

comes from the hypothetical completion, and what is the degree of reliability of

both. In the critical works examined above, the two things, both sides of the prob-

lem, have been mixed up: hypothesis and fact, principle and empirical observation,

fiction and law, construction and generalization—it is all lumped together.

Most important of all is the fact that the main question was left out of con-

sideration. Lenz and Luria assure Freud that psychoanalysis is a physiological sys-

tem. But Freud himself belongs to the opponents of a physiological conception of

the unconscious. Dale is completely right in saying that this question of the psy-

chological or physiological nature of the unconscious is the primai’y, most important

phase of the whole problem. Before we describe and classify the phenomena of

the unconscious for psychological purposes, we must know whether we are oper-

ating with something physiological or with something mental. We must prove that

the unconscious in fact is a mental reality. In other words, before we turn to the