The unconscious. The Fusing of disparate theories

Precisely what the dependency of each psychological operation upon the general

formula means can be illustrated with any problem that transcends the boundaries of

the special discipline that raised it.

When Lipps [1897, p. 146] says about the unconscious that it is less a psychological problem than the problem for psychology, he has in mind that the unconscious is a problem of general psychology. By this he wished to say, of course, no more than that this question will be answered not as a result of this or that particular investigation, but as a result of a fundamental investigation by means of the general science, i.e., by comparing the widely varying data of the most heterogeneous areas of science; by correlating the given problem with several of the basic premises of scientific knowledge, on the one hand, and with several of the most general results of all sciences, on the other; by finding a place for this concept in the system of the basic concepts of psychology; by a fundamental dialectical analysis of the nature of this concept and the features of being that it corresponds to and reflects.

This investigation logically precedes any concrete investigation of particular questions of subconscious life and determines the very formulation of the problem in such investigations.

As Munsterberg [1920, p. v], defending the need for such an investigation for another set of problems, splendidly put it: “In the end it is better to get an approximately exact preliminary answer to a question that is stated correctly than to answer with a precision to the last decimal point a question that is stated inaccurately.” A correct statement of a question is no less a matter of scientific creativity and investigation than a correct answer – and it is much more crucial. The vast majority of contemporary psychological investigations write out the last decimal point with great care and precision in answer to a question that is stated fundamentally incorrectly.

Whether we accept with Munsterberg [1920, pp. 158-163] that the subconscious is simply physiological and not psychological; or whether we agree with others that the subconscious consists of phenomena that temporarily are absent from consciousness, like the whole mass of potentially conscious reminiscences, knowledge and habits; whether we call those phenomena subconscious that do not reach the threshold of consciousness, or those of which we are minimally conscious, which are peripheral in the field of consciousness, automatic and unnoted; whether we find a suppression of the sexual drive to be the basis of the subconscious, like Freud, or our second ego, a special personality; finally, whether we call these phenomena un-, sub-, or superconscious, or like Stern accept all of these terms – it all fundamentally changes the character, quantity, composition, nature, and properties of the material which we will study. The question partially predetermines the answer.

It is this feeling of a system, the sense of a [common] style, the understanding that each particular statement is linked with and dependent upon the central idea of the whole system of which it forms a part, which is absent in the essentially eclectic attempts at combining the parts of two or more systems that are heterogeneous and diverse in scientific origin and composition. Such are, for instance, the synthesis of behaviorism and Freudian theory in the American literature;

Freudian theory without Freud in the systems of Adler and Jung; the reflexological Freudian theory of Bekhterev and Zalkind; finally, the attempts to combine Freudian theory and Marxism (Luria, 1925;

Fridman, 1925). So many examples from the area of the problem of the subconscious alone! In all these attempts the tail of one system is taken and placed against the head of another and the space between them is filled with the trunk of a third. It isn’t that they are incorrect, these monstrous combinations, they are correct to the last decimal point, but the question they wish to answer is stated incorrectly. We can multiply the number of citizens of Paraguay with the number of kilometers from the earth to the sun and divide the product by the average life span of the elephant and carry out the whole operation irreproachably, without a mistake in any number, and nevertheless the final outcome might mislead someone who is interested in the national income of this country. What the eclectics do, is to reply to a question raised by Marxist philosophy with an answer prompted by Freudian metapsychology.

In order to show the methodological illegitimacy of such attempts, we will first dwell upon three types of combining incompatible questions and answers, without thinking for one moment that these three types exhaust the variety of such attempts.

The first way in which any school assimilates the scientific products of another area consists of the direct transposition of all laws, facts, theories, ideas etc., the usurpation of a more or less broad area occupied by other investigators, the annexation of foreign territory.

Such a politics of direct usurpation is common for each new scientific system which spreads its influence to adjacent disciplines and lays claim to the leading role of a general science. Its own material is insufficient and after just a little critical work such a system absorbs foreign bodies, submits them, filling the emptiness of its inflated boundaries. Usually one gets a conglomerate of scientific theories, facts, etc. which have been squeezed into the framework of the unifying idea with horrible arbitrariness

Such is the system of Bekhterev’s reflexology. He can use anything:

even Vvedensky’s theory about the unknowability of the external ego, i.e., an extreme expression of solipsism and idealism in psychology, provided that this theory clearly confirms his particular claim about the need for an objective method. That it breaches the general sense of the whole system, that it undermines the foundations of the realistic approach to personality does not matter to this author (we observe that Vvedensky, too, fortifies himself and his theory with a reference to the

work of Pavlov, without understanding that by turning for help to a system of objective psychology he extends a hand to his grave-digger).

But for the methodologist it is highly significant that such antipodes as Vvedensky-Pavlov and Bekhterev – Vvedensky do not merely contradict each other, but necessarily presuppose each other’s existence and view the coincidence of theft conclusions as evidence for “the reliability of these conclusions.” For this third person [the methodologist, Russian eds.] it is clear that we are not dealing here with a coincidence of conclusions which were reached fully independently by representatives of different specialties, for example the philosopher Vvedensky and the physiologist Pavlov, but with a coincidence of the basic assumptions, starting points and philosophical premises of dualistic 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, incompatible in themselves, get on perfectly well in this eclectic system. In Bekhterev’s “Collective reflexology” he absolutely gathered a catalogue of universal laws. Characteristic 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 USA's involvement in the great European war, and back again – from the experiment of a

certain Dr. Schwarzmann on the frequency limits of electrocutaneous 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.”

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 representatives of subjective psychology,

“may be harmonized with the scheme of cerebral or association reflexes.” 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.” 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-established 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. We remember that Vvedensky too saw in his coincidence with Pavlov a testimony of the truth of his statements. And more: this coincidence 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 within which such a coincidence is observed.

“He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled,” as the saying goes. He who