as other quite specialized tests, that hold out promises of value in these directions.
It will be appreciated that a dynamic psychology has no exclusive relation to the pathological, but rather seeks the recasting of psychological problems into a form more applicable to the uses not only of pathological psychology, but of normal psychology and society in general. It is in no way specificially referred to pathological material. Because psychiatry has to deal, on the mental side, with personality, it desires a psychology of personality. The study of normal personality, as such, has its obvious and necessary relation to the pathological. The university is in quite as favorable position to make essential contribution to a psychology of personality as is the hospital or clinic. Research in this direction encounters certain difficulties that are avoided in the customary lines of psychological investigation, but this is so by very virtue of its having personal applicability, its bearing upon more intimate and vital issues.
To adequately cover the teaching field of psychological medicine one should therefore, on the one hand, be conversant with and able to judge of the methods of experimental psychology in reference to their application to the analysis and interpretation of symptoms; and, on the other hand, able to recognize and elucidate the more general questions now stated dynamically. First-hand acquaintance with psychiatric conditions and problems is everywhere implicit, which involves the close and continual association with clinical material that is also necessary for research. Here then the problem of research merges with the problem of teaching, and we shall consider some phases of the subject also from this standpoint. It is proposed to discuss in this connection not the further special topics of investigation,[1] but the practical conditions under which such research takes place, and the most effective means of furthering it.
The essential clinical material of psychopathology is derived from various sources, approachable from different angles. According to social stratum, the neuroses and various border-line and neurological conditions are most seen either in the private practise of the specialist, or in the appropriate departments of the general hospitals; the psychoses, as the term is generally understood, in the state or private hospitals devoted to their care and treatment. Special institutions, as a rule, care for the graver congenitally defective (feeble-minded) while in some instances it has been found advisable to provide special institutions for the management of such conditions as epilepsy and alcoholism. Much the greatest amount of material, and in its most accessible form, exists therefore in the institutions; though it does not so greatly
- ↑ Some of which the writer has dealt with elsewhere; cf. "The Experimental Method in Psychopathology," N. Y. State Hospitals Bulletin, December, 1910.
