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Chapter 15

bate is about a twofold subject: about the hypothesis and about the facts that can

be observed.

One more step in this direction, and we return to where we started: to the

difficulty that compelled us to hypothesize an unconscious.

We can see that psychology finds itself here in a tragicomic situation: I want

to, but I cannot. It is forced to accept the unconscious so as not to fall into ab-

surdities. But accepting it, it falls into even greater absurdities and runs back in

horror. It is like a man who, running from a wild animal and into an even greater

danger, runs back to the wild animal, the lesser danger—but does it really make

any difference from what he dies? Wundt views in this theory an echo of the mys-

tical philosophy of nature [Naturphilosophie] of the early 19th century. With him

Lange (1914, p. 251) accepts that the unconscious mind is an intrinsically contra-

dictory concept. The unconscious must be explained physically and chemically and

not psychologically, else we allow “mystical agents,” “arbitrary constructions that

can never be verified,” to enter science.

Thus, we are back to Høffding: there is a physico-chemical sequence, which

in some fragmentary points is suddenly a nihilo accompanied by a mental sequence.

Please, be good enough to understand and scientifically interpret the “fragment.”

What does this debate mean for the methodologist? We must psychologically tran-

scend the boundary of immediately perceived consciousness and continue it, but in

such a way as to separate the concept from sensation. Psychology as the science

of consciousness is in principle impossible. As the science of the unconscious mind

it is doubly impossible. It would seem that there is no way out, no solution for this

quadrature of the circle. But physics finds itself in exactly the same position. Ad-

mittedly, the physical sequence extends further than the mental one, but this se-

quence is not infinite and without gaps either. It was science that made it in

principle continuous and infinite and not immediate experience. It extended this

experience by excluding the eye. This is also psychology’s task.

Hence, interpretation is not only a bitter necessity for psychology, but also a

liberating and essentially most fruitful method of knowledge, a salto vitale, which

for bad jumpers turns into a salto mortale. Psychology must develop its philosophy

of equipment, just as physics has its philosophy of the thermometer. In practice

both parties in psychology have recourse to interpretation: the subjectivist has in

the end the words of the subject, i.e., his behavior and mind are interpreted be-

havior. The objectivist will inevitably interpret as well. The very concept of reaction

implies the necessity of interpretation, of sense, connection, relation. Indeed, actio

and reactio are concepts that are originally mechanistic—one must observe both

and deduce a law. But in psychology and physiology the reaction is not equal to

the stimulus. It has a sense, a goal, i.e., it fulfills a certain function in the larger

whole. It is qualitatively connected with its stimulus. And this sense of the reaction

as a function of the whole, this quality of the interrelation, is not given in experi-

ence, but found by inference. To put it more easily and generally: when we study

behavior as a system of reactions, we do not study the behavioral acts in themselves

(by the organs), but in their relation to other acts—to stimuli. But the relation and

the quality of the relation, its sense, are never the subject of immediate perception,

let alone the relation between two heterogeneous sequences—between stimuli and

reactions. The following is extremely important: the reaction is an answer. An an-

swer can only be studied according to the quality of its relation with the question,

for this is the sense of answer which is not found in perception but in interpretation.

This is the way everybody proceeds.

Bekhterev distinguishes the creative reflex. A problem is the stimulus, and crea-

tivity is the response reaction or a symbolic reflex. But the concepts of creativity