Psychology has still to invent its own specific language.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF CONSTITUTION AND HEREDITY IN PSYCHOLOGY 1
In the opinion of scientists today, there is no doubt that the individual psyche is in large measure dependent on the physiological constitution; indeed, there are not a few who consider this dependence absolute.
I would not like to go as far as that myself, but would regard it as more appropriate in the circumstances to grant the psyche a relative independence of the physiological constitution.
It is true that there are no rigorous proofs of this, but then there is no proof of the psyche’s total dependence on the constitution either.
We should never forget that if the psyche is the X, constitution is its complementary Y.
Both, at bottom, are unknown factors, which have only recently begun to take on clearer form.
But we are still far from having anything approaching a real understanding of their nature.
Although it is impossible to determine, in individual cases, the relations between constitution and psyche, such attempts have frequently been made, but the results are nothing more than unproven opinions.
The only method that could lead to fairly reliable results at present is the typological method, applied by Kretschmer to the constitution and by me to the psychological attitude. In both cases the method is based on a large amount of empirical material, and though the individual variations cancel one another out to a large extent, certain typical basic features emerge all the more clearly and enable us to construct a number of ideal types.
These ideal types, of course, never occur in reality in their pure form, but only as individual variations of the principle underlying them, just as crystals are usually individual variations of the same isometric system.
Physiological typology endeavours first and foremost to ascertain the outward physical features by means of which individuals can be classified and their residual qualities examined.-
Kretschmer’s researches have shown that the physiological peculiarities may determine the psychic conditions.
Psychological typology proceeds in exactly the same way in principle, but its starting point is not, so to speak, outside, but inside.
It does not try to enumerate the outward characteristics; it seeks, rather, to discover the inner principles governing typical psychological attitudes.
While physiological typology is bound to employ essentially scientific methods in order to obtain results, the invisible and non-measurable nature of psychic processes compels us to employ methods derived from the humane sciences, above all an analytical critique.
There is, as I have said, no difference of principle but only of the nuance given by
the different point of departure.
The present state of research
justifies us in hoping that the results obtained on both sides will
show a substantial measure of agreement with regard to certain
basic facts.
I personally have the impression that some of Kretschmer’s main types are not so far removed from certain of the basic psychological types I have enumerated.
It is conceivable that at these points a bridge might be established between the physiological constitution and the psychological attitude.
That this has not been done already may well be due to the fact that the physiological findings are still very recent, while on the other hand investigation from the psychological side is very much more difficult and therefore less easy to understand.
We can readily agree that physiological characteristics are something that can be seen, touched, measured.
But in psychology not even the meanings of words are fixed.
There are hardly two psychologies that could agree, for instance, about the concept of “feeling.” Yet the verb “to feel” and the noun “feeling” refer to psychic facts, otherwise a word for them would never have been invented.
In psychology we have to do with facts which are definite enough in themselves but have not been defined scientifically.
The state of our knowledge might be compared with natural philosophy in the Middle Ages—that is to say, everybody in psychology knows better than everybody else.
There are only opinions about unknown facts.
Hence the psychologist has an almost invincible tendency to cling to the
physiological facts, because there he feels safe, in the security of things that appear to be known and defined.
As science is dependent on the definiteness of verbal concepts, it is incumbent
upon the psychologist to make conceptual distinctions and to attach definite names to certain groups of psychic facts, regardless of whether somebody else has a different conception of the meaning of this term or not.
The only thing he has to consider is whether the name he uses agrees, in its ordinary usage, with the psychic facts designated by it.
At the same time he must rid himself of the common notion that the name explains the psychic fact it denotes.
The name should mean to him no more than a mere cipher, and his whole conceptual system should be to him no more than a trigonometrical survey of a certain geographical area, in which the fixed points of reference are indispensable in practice but irrelevant in theory.
Psychology has still to invent its own specific language.
When I first started giving names to the attitude-types I had discovered empirically, I found this question of language the greatest obstacle.
I was driven, whether I would or no, to fix definite boundaries to my concepts and give these areas names which were taken, as far as possible, from common usage.
In so doing, I inevitably exposed myself to the danger I have already mentioned—
the common prejudice that the name explains the thin^.
Although this is an undoubted survival left over from the old belief in the magic of words, it does not prevent misunderstandings, and I have repeatedly heard the objection, “But feeling is something quite different.” ~Carl Jung, CW 8, Para 220-224
