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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
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