Psychological Diagnosis and the Psychonomic Orientation of Analytic Science an Epitome
The Psychologifcal Clinic Copyright, 1925, by Lightner Witmer, Editor Vol. XVI, Nos. 1 & 2 Jan.-Feb., 1925 :Author: Lightner “Wither, Ph.D.,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Man’s progress toward what we consider enlightenment and culture has come through the refinements of analytical discrimination. Though civilization, even in western Europe and America, is of romantic origin, successful thinking is predominantly analytic. Religion is a romantic emotion, but theology, like every other branch of learning is analytic, and the differentiating catechisms of the Christian churches are the joint product of romance and discernment. Mysticism struggles toward truth without analysis. Its measure of success is the prevalence of the pre-analytic generalization?what Kant called a “synthetic judgment a prioriand which many women fondly idealize as “intuition.”
Greek thought is the first to turn resolutely away from romantic and pre-analytic generalizations of Eastern origin. European science and art, in consequence, are successful in proportion as they follow the Hellenic trail to such perfection of judgment as may be evolved from discerned and discernible knowledge. *Read in part before the Section on Clinical Psychology^ ^annual meeting of the American Psychological A880^D^^ method of psychois the prologue to a formal exposition of The * <<change> Superiority, logical diagnosis-in theory and practice Ch*P ‘ti >, and Chapter 3, and Preference,” Chapter II, “Originality and “Novelty and Order,” will appear in following n The Psychological Clinic.
2 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC Whenever I think of the dead weight of obscure words defining mystical metaphors, like “the group mind,” whenever I consider the often equivocal sociological statistics which pass current as “educational psychology,” or which impose I. Q.’s with a soothsayer’s finality upon the ignorant and undiscerning, and whenever I contemplate the mountainous labors which produce the usually ridiculous mouse called “a coefficient of correlation,” I pray for all the guidance necessary to avoid futility and dullness?enough analytic discrimination to make clear a few ideas, and the artist’s choice of the best words in which to clothe them. “Orthogenics,” “diagnostic teaching” and “clinical psychology” are three terms which I introduced into the literature of psychology and education?not without reluctance, for a novel terminology seldom makes new ideas more acceptable. These terms, however, I thought necessary in order to differentiate the personal examination of clinical psychology and the orthogenic treatment of diagnostic teaching from the group tests of statistical psychology and the class teaching of our public and private schools. What passes current as educational psychology is for the most part a statistical psychology, from which the collective characteristics of conventional groups may be discerned, but not the discriminated characteristics of individuals, which are the concern of clinical psychology, diagnostic education, and orthogenics. Mathematical technique and the results of group tests have small value for orthogenic diagnosis in either psychology or education. They may serve administrators of instruction for the organization of tentative groups of pupils defined by relative ability to make progress through the grades, but a clinical diagnosis is always something more?it is an interpretation of observed behavior, and requires much insight and more experience, a few tests and only a little figuring.
Mass education will endure of economic necessity, for no one can give individual educational treatment to more than one person at a time. Strictly speaking, however, class instruction conforms and trains, but can not educate. It does little more than offer opportunity to those in the group who have the ability to profit by it.
A civilization is defined by the collective behavior of a group of people, but culture is personal, the product of intelligence and PSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS 3 skill, control and motivation, knowledge and discernment. Education is always self-education. It is defined by the individual’s autonomic control and use of the differentia or acquired knowledge. The general outcome of my research and educational practice is an analytic procedure in the diagnosis and treatment of human behavior?the clinical method in psychology and the diagnostic method in education. Clinical psychology is derived from the results of an examination of many human beings, one at a time. The analytic method of discriminating mental abilities and defects develops an ordered classification of observed behavior by means of post-analytic generalizations. Diagnostic education is the orthogenic treatment of human beings as individuals, in order that each may realize his indicated potentiality of performance. The psychological clinic is an institution for social and public service, for original research, and for the instruction of students in psychological orthogenics, which includes vocational, educational, correctional, hygienic, industrial and social guidance. In due course of time, psychological and educational statistics will be derived from the differentia and criteria of clinical research in orthogenic guidance. The premature formulae of group tests, educational psychology, and mental pathogenies, including psychoanalysis of Freudian origin, will then give way to the analyticosynthetic descriptions of clinical diagnosis. The word “clinical” I borrowed from the field of medicine, employing it to designate a method of research and instruction in psychology. “A clinic,” says Gould’s Medical Dictionary, “is a gathering of instructors, students and patients for the study and treatment of disease.” The medical clinic is defined by the differential diagnosis of disease, the prescription of drugs and an examination of the immediate and remote effects of therapeutic treatment. It is conducted, as far as possible, in the presence of patients and students for the double purpose of curing demonstrated symptoms of disease and giving instruction in the science and art of medicine. The psychological clinic is a gathering of instructors, students and those needing orthogenic guidance for the study and treatment of mental abilities, deficiencies and defects. It is defined by the post-analytic diagnosis of human competency, the recommendation of orthogenic treatment, and the examination of the immediate and remote consequences of all kinds of orthogenic guidance. The distinctive method of examination in clinical psychology is diag4 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC nostic teaching. The so-called “intelligence test,” for instance, is a test of teachability on a minimnm of instruction. The purpose of a clinical demonstration in the presence of students is to increase the ascertained ability of those examined and to give instruction in the science and art of psychology.
A psychological diagnosis is an interpretation of the observed performance of human beings. Relative ability is defined by relative superiority in competition, and the relative superiority of human beings is defined by whatever is thought to differentiate the relative superiority of successful performance from the relative inferiority of failure. The most precise diagnosis of relative superiority affirms the existence of a specified number of inferiors and a specified number of superiors. Thus an “ordinary” person may be defined for diagnostic purposes as one who belongs to a group of sixty per cent, superior to twenty per cent and inferior to twenty per cent. The diagnosis of human abilities and defects is a differential classification of men, women and children, derived from a differential generalization of the effects of performance. What some call “general intelligence,” I shall denominate competency?it may be either personal or social?and I define it as the ability of men, women and children to succeed in the competitive events of a lifetime. A logical definition?the denotative and connotative verbal definition?is in form a pre-analytic generalization: i. e., an interpretation originating in a pre-analytic orientation, and involving a pre-analytic exploration, which is observation without analysis. The scientific definition, on the other hand, is a post-analytic generalization derived from the observed results of an analytic exploration. A numerical description is the most precise form of post-analytic generalization.
The object of analytic science is to reduce pre-analytic generalization to relative insignificance, and at the same time to make post-analytic classification, and especially numerical description, relatively more significant. Nevertheless, categories of behavior in every science involve generalizations of pre-analytic interpretation as well as generalizations of post-analytic description. The theory of the conservation of energy, for example, is a pre-analytic generalization called an “assumption,” acceptable to science because, so far, analytic exploration seems to justify it. In this, as in every other sphere of thought, faith is “justified of works.” Scientific diagnosis is prophetic utterance. A diagnosis of ability or defeat is always a prognosis of behavior.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS 5
“He is intelligent” and “She is graceful”?these are preanalytic generalizations, fashions of speech maybe, not calling for scientific justification. Feeble-mindedness, insanity and criminality are defined by what I call an ‘’ ethno-dramic” diagnosis, originating, in the first instance, as the public opinion of unorganized groups of human beings, and confirmed ultimately by ‘’ due process of law,” which represents the collective opinion of organized society, expressed through the medium of judge and jury. Public opinion, the ethno-dramic diagnosis, is a pre-analytic general diagnosis. Expert opinion is a private judgment which is, or ought to be, a post-analytic general diagnosis, justified by observation, test and measurement. Feeble-mindedness, insanity and criminality are not defined by expert opinion but by a socio-legal procedure. The final diagnosis is the verdict of a jury in a criminal court, accepting or rejecting the plea of “not guilty” because of feeble-mindedness or insanity. The verdict differentiates those who are legally non compos mentis from those who are legally responsible for their criminal acts. In many states, two physicians may commit persons thought insane or feeble-minded to an institution, but only the verdict of a jury can hold them there, if the propriety of the commitment is challenged.
A definition of human competency will involve a pre-analytic interpretation of personal and group behavior which has been made to conform to the post-analytic generalizations of numerical and qualitative description. This conformity of pre-analytic orientation and scientific description I have been trying to achieve, as those sufficiently interested may discover if they will consult the pages of The Psychological Clinic, for the past few years.1 The differential diagnosis in clinical psychology is a quantitative diagnosis which puts the individual in the group to which he belongs, and defines the group in terms of a number of inferiors and a number of superiors. It is usually a qualitative diagnosis also, for it will affirm that one is more intelligent, intellectual or feebleminded than another. 1Witmer, Lightner. The Analytic Diagnosis. PSYOT. Clinic, , 1922, p. 129. Intelligence?A Definition. Psych. Clinic, X , , Per[ Training of Very Bright Children. Psych. Clinic, XIII, , Pnc ^ ^ vtt 101 CI n 145 Efficiency and Other formance and Success. Psych. Clinic, XII, 191 J, P- ” Factor, of Success. Psych. Clinic, XII, 1919, p. 241. PrMem of EducaMity. Psych. Clinic, XII, 1919, p. 174. The delation of Mergence ,o EffiT. n ‘ , ‘,5 C-, Whnt I<s Intelligence and Who Has ciency. Psych. Clinic, IX, 1915, p. 61. What is y It? Scientific Monthly, August, 1922.
The more differentiating the diagnosis demanded, the less likely is a pre-analytic diagnosis to satisfy. It is easy enough to differentiate feeble-minded children from those who are normal?in most cases, at any rate. It is not so easy to affirm that a child’s competency is to be defined by the proficiency of one in a thousand, superior to nine hundred ninety-eight in a thousand, and inferior to only one in a thousand?a differential diagnosis recently made at the Psychological Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania.2 A > X < Y
This is the formula of relative ability in competition. “A” is one person or a group of persons. “X” and “Y” are groups of persons used as differentiated grades of relative superiority in competition. Competition is an estimate of potential ability, expressed as superiority to a group, class or grade of inferiors. The larger the group of inferiors defining relative superiority, the higher the standard of excellence defining competency. What, for example, is the numerical measure of the relative superiority of genius?Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Dante, Shakespeare, Beethoven, CaBsar or Napoleon? A list of a thousand persons will comprise those whom the world distinguishes with the name of “genius.” The measure of their proficiency is to be defined by the superiority of one in many millions, and the diagnosis is only tentatively made in a man’s day and generation. Talent is discernible in the lifetime of one possessing it, but genius, only after it has ceased to exist. Genius in childhood undoubtedly exists, but how demonstrate or prove its existence? It is more likely to be found before the bar of a juvenile court than at the top of a proficiency scale defined by the Binet intelligence test.
A child who is above average is superior to 50 per cent and in the best half of his age group. If he is superior to 75 per cent, he is in the best quartile. Superior to 80 per cent, he is in the best quintile; to 90 per cent, in the best decile; to 99 per cent, in the best centile; to 99.9 per cent, in the best millile. Dr Jones has just completed an investigation of the competency of one hundred twenty superior children, belonging to a group defined by the proficiency of 1 per cent superior to 99 per cent. These children are in the best, or one hundredth, centile grade.
Competency C.G. 100=Proficiencyl per cent> 99 per cent <0 per cent aMade possible by Dr Alice M. Jones’ investigation of one hundred twenty superior children, reported in this number of The Psychological Clinic. As Dr Jones divides the whole group of one hundred twenty children into ten groups, or deciles, the best 10 per cent of her group is the best or one-thousandth millile of all children?a group, the competency of which is defined by the proficiency of .1 per cent superior to 99.9 per cent. C.M.G. 1000 = P .1 per cent > 99.9 per cent < 0 per cent An intelligence quotient or a mental age is a measure of the effects of a particular performance?a post-analytic description, but it is also a pre-analytic interpretation. The “quotient” and the “age” are numerical descriptions of observed facts. The “intelligence” and the “mentality” are not descriptions of observed facts; they originate in the pre-analytic orientation of the group tester. The arithmetical mean performance of the children of a designated age group is called the mental age. Used as an average for purposes of comparison, it has value in comparing groups, one with another, but it has relatively no value for clinical diagnosis, which is a differential classification of individual men, women and children. The mental age or an intelligence quotient is a clinical diagnosis only insofar as the average performance enables us to put a particular man, woman or child in either the superior fifty per cent or the inferior fifty per cent of designated age groups. Proficiency is the name I give to relative superiority demonstrated in a number of competitive events. Any well trained psychologist can secure measures of proficiency in the competitive tests which are used as steps to reach the vantage point of knowledge from which all the findings of an examination are surveyed and interpreted. A clinical diagnosis is an interpretation of the behavior of one individual human being?it is uno-analytic. A statistical diagnosis is an interpretation of group behavior it is ethno-analytic. A differential diagnosis in clinical psychology, at any rate in doubtful cases, demands of the diagnostician that he be more than a good psychologist, more than a good teacher, more than a good physician. He must have had clinical experience of the varieties of human superiority and inferiority, and he ought to have demonstrated his own proficiency as a diagnostician in the field of clinical psychology before he is considered qualified to make just estimates of the total relative ability of those whose partial relative ability almost any one may adequately observe, and psychometrists may precisely measure. Proficiency is relative superiority in competition, observed and if possible measured. Competency cannot be measured?it can only be estimated. The estimate of competency may be derived from ascertained measures of proficiency, but competency is relative ability defined by potential superiority in all the competitive events of a probable lifetime. Every performance must therefore be critically examined and judicially interpreted, by one who has insight and experience enough to give his interpretation the weight of authority. The ascertained results of observation, test and measurement constitute the problem of clinical diagnosis. The judgment of the diagnostician in clinical psychology begins to operate at the very point where psychometrists and group testers cease to function.
Psychonomic is a word which denotes what is in conformity to a fundamental or universal law of thought. The orientation of the clinical psychologist is, or at least ought to be, psychonomic. I hope to prove, in a forthcoming consideration of the clinical method of psychological diagnosis, that the psychonomic orientation at which I have arrived is the orientation of thought and behavior implicit in the pre-analytic generalizations of all analytic science. Psychonomics is the body of fundamental laws or axiomatic truths involved in the psycho-analytic interpretation oil, human behavior. This new term is more inclusive than the word ‘’ psychoanalysis” which in its Freudian orientation is a particular form of inquiry too much concerned with sex and the pathology of sex. Psycho-analysis of more general orientation has been for many centuries an organized procedure of investigation in introspective psychology, aesthetic criticism, medical therapeutics, the Roman Catholic confessional, and the criminal courts?wherever, in fact, inquiry is made in order to ascertain the motivation controlling the behavior of persons, whether as individuals or in groups. The psychonomic analysis of human behavior is concerned with what is considered normal and orthogenic, and only by way of exception with what is considered non-normal and pathogenic. The Freudian psycho-analysis, on the other hand, is concerned with what is non-normal and pathogenic, and only by way of exception with what is normal and orthogenic.
Psychology is not yet taught in the medical schools of this country, for one reason because professors of medicine think they can make psychonomic as well as psychopathic interpretations of human behavior without having had instruction in the psychological diagnosis of normal mentality, personality and will.3 The curriculum of the preparatory and professional courses in medicine might lead one to suppose that the graduates of medical schools were being prepared to practice medicine on animals, and not on beings having human emotions, will, intelligence and intellect. “Grandmother’s medicine” is now in full retreat before the advance of vaccines, antitoxins and serums, but “grandmother’s psychology” lingers on in the medical clinic, and is much in evidence wherever psychiatrists are gathered together to give expert testimony before judge and jury on both sides of a question involving the differential diagnosis of insanity, criminality or feeblemindedness. That instruction in the psychology of the normal mind counts for something, even in the science of mental pathology and the practice of mental therapeutics and hygiene, may be inferred from the fact that the psychological method which enabled Kraepelin to transform the science of psychiatry was not learned at his mother’s knee nor yet in a medical school, but in the psychological laboratory of “Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzic. There are always some members of the medical profession ready +o oppose every advance in medical research and instruction, not excepting the introduction of stethoscopes, antisepsis, clinics, hygiene and social service. Medical teaching, however, has achieved relative freedom from the intellectual primitivism of the “educator, ‘’ who continues to think that text books can teach science. This opinion the educator shares with the publisher of textbooks?the resulting co-operation being mutually profitable. There are university schools of education, as well as normal schools, which venture upon instruction in clinical psychology and diagnostic education without providing demonstration and research clinics, without attempting to secure instructors experienced in clinical diagnosis.4 8 At the University of Pennsylvania, on motion of Dr William Pepper, experimental psychology was offered as an elective to fourth-year students in the Medical School from 1896 to 1901.
4 At a meeting of the Clinical Section of the American Psychological Association, December 30, 1924, those who were gathered together to discuss methods of research and instruction in the field of clinical psychology resolved, with not more than one or two dissenting voices that, in the opinion of those present, the professional qualification of the clinical psychologist ought, for the future, to be set at not less than a Ph.D. from an approved graduate school, in which the professional training ought to equal in comprehensiveness the four-year course in a Class A medical school, and include at least one year of clinical practice in psychological diagnosis.
A psychological diagnosis is of psychonomic origin when the pre-analytic orientation and exploration of personal and group behavior, called an “interpretation,” is matched by the post-analytic description called a “scientific explanation.” Teleological categories of interpretation prepare the necessary foundation for the etiological categories of descriptive explanation. A psychonomic diagnosis is the pre-analytic generalization called “experience” and expressed in general or teleological language, confirmed fry the post-analytic generalization called “science” and expressed in more specific etiological language. Thus we go to war, saving civilization?then we ask, “What was it we did?” Or, we kill the mad dog, hand Socrates the hemlock, and then begin to wonder, “Was the dog really mad?” “Was Socrates a menace to morality and religion, or a guide to spiritual perfection ?’’ The chosen hero of man’s highest aspiration is the moral adventurer who rises again from the ashes of an auto da fe.
Orthogenics in the field of human psychology is defined by whatever is considered normal in the development of human personality and character. The orthogenic treatment includes any agency known to science likely to develop, preserve or restore personal competency. The potential abilities of children are given educational treatment, in consequence of which new abilities are developed through the organization and differentiation of old abilities. Efficiency of operation is increased through training. Character is conformed to acceptable patterns of behavior by correcting defects. The orthogenic teacher is one who tries to promote the normal development of personality by means of education, mental discipline and the transformation of character. The general aim is culture, skill and conformity of purpose. Vocational guidance, in order to deserve its name, must be orthogenic guidance, based on the analytic diagnosis in clinical psychology. This is true of educational guidance, also, for educational guidance is only one kind of vocational guidance. Only a little knowledge of psychology is needed for occupational placement, but those who give or sell vocational and educational guidance without having made a personal examination and without the training, knowledge and insight of the clinical diagnostician belong to the numerous, and often successful, tribe of charlatans, even though they be known professionally as a council of mental hygiene, or the faculty of a school of education.
A clinical diagnosis in psychology is the coherent product of a personal examination, a detailed individual and family history, the report of a social visitor on environmental conditions, an ascertained measure of school progress, an adequate medical report, the measured results of a number of psychological tests and anthropometric measurements, and finally, the sound judgment of an experienced diagnostician. A statistical diagnosis is a psychological diagnosis which arrives at the differential classification of human performance from the results of group tests. When the purpose of the psychological diagnosis is to provide orthogenic guidance, a statistical diagnosis may do more harm than good.
The normal development of human behavior is discerned from the record of man’s progress in civilization and culture from a beginning in pre-historic times. The orthogenics of behavior and the orthogenics of thought are co-terminous. Every form of thought is a form of behavior and every hind of performance is a form of thought. A formulation of the laws of the normal development of thought is attempted in philosophy, logic, mathematics, science and art. The outcome of my research in clinical psychology is a discovery, perhaps only a re-discovery, of the orthogenic pattern of human progress toward the perfection of thought, and, consequently, the perfection of all behavior. Man is discerned as a group of animals, differentiated from other animals by the trend of performance toward a preferred perfection. The glutton tries to eat the most possible, without discrimination; the gourmet fastidiously chooses the best. The creative artist “man” produces and then perfects diverse patterns of behavior: the saint, a performance having ‘’ merit’’?the philosopher, a thought?the scientist, a fact? the hero, a victory in the face of adverse odds?the martyr, an eternal life in the memory of man. Human psychology is an examination of man’s spiritual nature. The unit of observation is a performance, but the unit of consideration is personality, defined by the perfeptability of behavior, which is measured or estimated in the units of progress which men make toward the perfection they prefer. “Man’s soul,” says Stevenson, “is in the journey. Happinesses are but his way-side campings.” If it is human to thirst after pleasure, it is no less human to find the perfection of life in self-renunciation. Men, no doubt, display the instincts of the herd. At times they will even behave like a pack of wolves, or again, like a flock of geese. But the psychology of man is not to be defined by the observed resemblance of human behavior to the behavior of other animals, but rather by some differentiating character or characteristics. The “ethnos”?a group of human beings, large or small?is defined by whatever differentiates the behavior of men in groups from the behavior of everything else in nature. It is not a “petting party,” for example, which differentiates the sex behavior of man from the sex behavior of the monkey, but the surge of ethnic and personal motivation which eventuates in the “law and order” of organized society and which is expressed, so far as sex is concerned, in formulated customs relating to marriage and divorce. As men grow in spiritual enlightenment they make more perfect, or at any rate somewhat less conflicting, the patterns of diverse perfection they first originate in imagination and then strive to realize in fact. This is the orthogenic law of human and personal progress. Behaviorism is the psychonomic orientation of interpretive diagnosis?not the crude behaviorism of animal organization, “the conditioned reflex,” for example, nor yet the behaviorism of a dynamic system called “mechanism”?but the behaviorism of spirituality, man’s competency for progress, which is the ability ta move in the right direction, i.e., toward perfection oriented and defined by an aspiration for more of what is surely good. The pursuit of perfection is man’s effort to realize a spiritual ambition: philosophy, religion and art, an attempt to make the dream of aspiration come true: civilization and culture, the outcome of adventure. History displays man asserting competency, often enough unreasonably, but presently demonstrated in the successful outcome of a projected event. Psychology is defined by the perfeciability of nature, and human psychology by the perfectability of man in nature. If death is but the beginning of a superior life, supernatural perfectability is a component part of human competency.
My thought is that man’s ability to move toward a preferred perfection must be estimated from demonstrable progress in six directions. We live, as it were, in a room, enclosed by the floor, ceiling and four walls. The room is spacious enough?it is the whole universe?and yet it is limited in every conceivable direction. The best we can do is to explore, differentiate and measure progress as an advance from a chosen point of orientation toward discernible goals?up and down, right and left, forward and backward?three pairs of contrasting opposites?three dimensions, defined by the ultimate ends of perfectable behavior in six diversities of direction?a system of coordinates, the common property of the analytic sciences.
The form of a room in the ordinary house is a cube. It has six boundaries or sides?all of them rectangular in pattern. When any portion of space is oriented and explored, whether in imagination or in observation, as “extension” referred to a system of rectangular co-ordinates, and bounded by six planes of equal extent, the “form” is a cube. Every portion of space may be oriented as “form” and explored as “extension,” a unit complex of particulars, defined by six boundaries also having form and extension, and described in numbers by reference to three constants of direction?the three dimensions of Euclidean geometry and physics. Every form is one individual and indivisible form and also six coherent and component forms?a unit-complex?seven forms, defined by the criteria of pre-analytic orientation and exploration. Every item of behavior, every element of personality, every performance, is a form of thought and behavior, oriented and explored as one individual unit-form, and also from six different points of view?hence seven universal categories of personality, thought and behavior.
The pre-analytic forms of thought and behavior provide criteria of analytic exploration from which are derived the postanalytic categories of scientific classification. Every form of thought is a kind of performance, and every hind or class of performance is a form of thought. A post-analytic generalization of observed behavior implicates a pre-analytic generalization of interpreted behavior. The etiological explanation is woven into the mesh of teleological interpretation.
The universal room in which we live is a world of three dimensions defined by six oppositions of direction, and referred to a system of rectangular co-ordinates, because human thought is a form of three coherent forms, called “dimensions,” defined by reference to six coherent but contrasting forms, which are the “criteria” of six universal categories of behavior. All of man’s discernible ability is a number of differentiated abilities, call the ability what you may?”general intelligence or “mechanism,” “intellect” or “mentality,” the “will” or the “soul.” Analytically, every ability is a number of coherent abili14 TEE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC ties, as large a number as we have the ability and time to discriminate. The multiple diversity of nature, however, is not chaos but order?the order of discerned and discernible knowledge?an intellectual order?a scientific order. This order is defined by a fundamental law of thought?it is a psychonomic order of psychonomic origin. Everything is one thing differentiated by the unique criterion from other things and it is also a number of things? a tri-une unit of orientation and a sextuple unit of exploration?a multiple unit of three dimensions, each dimension defined by the contrast of two opposites?the six universal criteria of plural unity. This is the psychonomic formula of pre-analytic orientation arid scientific observation. I have derived from it a psychonomic plan of clinical analysis, called the Analytic Diagnosis Chart, which serves the Psychological Clinic of the University of Pennsylvania for the perfection of the psycho-analytic diagnosis.
My seven universal and general categories of behavior are categories of pre-analytic interpretation. Every unit of consideration in psychology is a single unit-complex of orientation and also six complex units of pre-analytic exploration. Human ability in general, what some call “general intelligence,” I call perfectability. It is the ability of men, women and children to make progress toward a preferred perfection. It is also the unit-complex of observed behavior?a differentiated performance measurable in one, two or three dimensions.
“General ability,” i.e. perfectability, measured in only one dimension, I shall call conf ormability. It is defined by a constant of determination, and a variable of motivation, two categories of behavior differentiated as control and value, the criteria of judgment and appreciation. They are familiarly known in the history of science and literature as the “will” and the “soul,” “character” and “personality.”
“General ability,” measured in two dimensions, I shall call trainability; it is defined by a constant measure of conformity, and by the potentiality of origination in one directon and the probability of operation in an opposite direction. These two categories are also called originality and repetition, initiative and efficiency, and are familiarly known as “intelligence” and “mechanism.” “General ability,” measured in three dimensions, is educability. It is defined by constant measures of conformity and effectuality, and by minima of differentiation and maxima of organization. These two categories are also called discernment and comPSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS 15 prehension, and are familiarly known as “mind” and intellect, ‘’ enlightenment” and ” culture
Competency is the name I give to ability considered as a unit complex of pre-analytic generalization. It is a unit-complex of seven discernible abilities. Competency is relative superiority in competition, defined and measured whenever possible l>y relative superiority in seven differentiated fields of competition. The pre-analytic categories of human behavior include one pre-analytic category of orientation,?otherwise known as spiritual perfection,” the differential of which is superiority and the criterion preference?and six categories of pre-analytic exploration: I. DETERMINATION ?Control ?Judgment ?Will II. MOTIVATION ? Value ? Appreciation ? Soul III. ORIGINATION ?Novelty ?Initiative ?Intelligence IV. OPERATION ?Quantity ?Efficiency ?Mechanism V. DIFFERENTIATION ? Particularity ? Discernment ? Mind VI. ORGANIZATION ? Order ? Comprehension ? Intellect In the first column are the preferred names of the six universal categories of pre-analytic exploration. In the second column are differentia of performance defining these categories; in the third column, criteria of personality providing pre-analytic generalizations of human behavior; and in the fourth column, conventional synonyms in current usage. Philosophers who affirm that there must be only one universal category of behavior do not agree which is the one. For some, it is the “will,” for others, the “soul.” Some consider it to be “intelligence,” others, “mechanism. ‘’ Some call it’’ mind,’’ and others, ‘’ intellect.’’ If my point of view is the right orientation, there must be seven universal categories of behavior defining human nature in general or in particular, whether it be oriented as a spiritual entity aspiring to perfection, or as a machine producing work. From these universal categories of pre-analytic generalization, I derive a psyehonomic plan of thirty-six analytic categories behavior at the first level of specification, and a muc a^?r number, two hundred sixteen, at the second level. ^ An ana diagnosis chart comprehending the psychonomic items o an analytic diagnosis at the first level of specification is m use a e University of Pennsylvania.5 The total number of ana y ic 1 ems 6 Cf. The Psychological Clinic, “Vol. XIV, Oct.-Nov. 1922, The Ana . -r. , ___. inn 7fi<ts Inconsistency, Alice M. lytic Diagnosis, Lightner Witmer, p. 129, and ? Jones, p. 138.
16 TEE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC necessary to complete a psycho-analytic diagnosis will be at least thirty-seven?how many more will depend upon the exigencies of orthogenic guidance and the analytic discrimination of the diagnostician. Science, striving to be analytic, is pluralistic. Primitive thought, accepting pre-analytic generalizations as the whole truth, is apt to be romantic and monistic. Pluralistic monism is the psychonomic orientation in every science, including Christian theology. The doctrine of the Trinity is pluralistic monism in the field of religion. The conflict between religion and science is defined by the opposition of those who are romantic without analysis, and those who are romantic with discrimination. Religious men are not necessarily theologians, for theology is a science. Theological, political and scientific truth is less likely to be proportional to the vehemence and intolerance of advocates than to their wisdom and discernment.
Thought is a form of behavior which the relative novelty of performance differentiates from the kind of behavior which is called habit. The world of habit and tradition in which we live is a conventional universe of three dimensions because thought has three dimensions. If we shall ever be able to escape into a more comprehensive universe of more than three dimensions, the trail tq this adventure will be blazed by those who use their creative imagination and the symbolic language of mathematics to rise superior to the present limits of human competency, determined as it is in one direction by the novelty of performance and the free initiative of the performer, and in the opposite direction by conformity and habit.
Culture is more than a discipline of habit, more than conformity of preference and will. The educator is a perfectioneer. Orthogenics defines the aim of normal development, which is progress toward the perfection of preferred superiorities. Diagnostic teaching is the method?the orthogenic treatment of all the possibilities of personality. Clinical psychology establishes the differentia and criteria of behavior which make diagnostic orthogenics possible.
My method of thought is the outcome of personal experience, research and reflection. The best I can say for it is that it fits the results of clinical research and the requirements of orthogenic guidance. I am not aware of any large indebtedness to the current literature of psychology,6 though I owe much to those with whom I have been intimately associated: my teachers, Francis A. Jackson, George S. Fullerton, Edmund J. James, John B. McMaster, J. McKeen Cattell, Wilhelm Wundt and S. Weir Mitchell; my colleagues, Edwin D. Cope, John A. Ryder and Simon N. Patten; the friend to whom I owe most, Joseph Collins; my wife, Emma Repplier, and not a few, both men and women, without whose intelligence and co-operation my life’s work would have been vain endeavor?of whom, in justice, and with grateful emotion, I name my first assistant in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania?Edwin B. Twitmyer. A Psychological Clinic has been in operation at the University of Pennsylvania since March, 1896. The following summer, I demonstrated, in the presence of my students in psychology, the abilities and defects of a number of children who began to make more nearly satisfactory progress in school work only after an analytic diagnosis had been made and diagnostic teaching had been prescribed and undertaken. At this time, clinical psychology gained its first adherents from the field of education: Oliver P. Cornman; a supervising principal of a Philadephia school, who later organized the orthogenic classes of the city; George W. Twitmyer, who made the first clinical examination of the children of a public school system for the purpose of perfecting the educational guidance of a city superintendent; and Mary E. Marvin, a talented teacher of deaf children, who organized and conducted, for the Department of Psychology, in 1897, the first of a number of demonstration classes for the teaching of mentally exceptional children.
8 Among those who, not being clinical psychologists, have contri u e to the original sources of clinical psychology are: Plutarch, St. ugus , Cardanus, Vesalius, Leonardo da Vinci, Descartes, Berkeley, Sha ?sPe:* ‘ Racine, Swedenborg, Voltaire, Pereire, Rousseau, Gall, Pestalozzi, ‘ Seguin, Montessori, Darwin, Huxley, Galton, Warner, Fechner, e m o , Wundt, Broca, Janet, Kussmaul, Kraepelin, Freud, and in this coun ry, Whitman, Henry James, S. Weir Mitchell, William James,^ . an ey . , J. M. Bice and Adolph Meyer. At the moment, ‘’ The American erc^ y making best use of the clinical method of psychological diagnosis n of general literature.
In December, 1896, at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, I announced my discovery of a method of research and instruction which I called the Clinical Method in Psychology and the Diagnostic Method of Teaching, and I sketched a program of practical work in orthogenics,7 some part of which I have been able to realize in the course of a life’s work at the University of Pennsylvania. Eleven years later, in 1907, when I began the publication of the results of my clinical research in a journal of orthogenics which I called The Psychological Clinic, but one psychological clinic existed?the one which I had founded. Since then, many clinics have been established, some of them called psychological clinics, others educational, orthogenic or child guidance clinics, in such number, indeed, that it would consume much time and patience to discover and name them all. Thus, it appears, I have received from my professional contemporaries that most sincere tribute?imitation, often enough without acknowledgment. Venturing upon prediction, I challenge the future with the assertion that what will be called ” modern education” after 1950 will be derived, for the most part, from the results of clinical research and diagnostic guidance. About the middle of the last century, what was then the new science of physiology transformed medical theory and practice. Today another science renders a similar service?the chemistry of metabolism.
Modern psychology was evolved as an experimental science from the technique* of astronomy and physics. It was first called “physiological psychology” because it shared, with physiology, the domain of animal behavior. The etiology of personality is now being sought, and ultimately will be found, in the differentia of metabolism.
Young men and women?would you dedicate yourselves to original research in a field of science most likely to be distinguished above all others for discoveries of importance during the latter half of this century, make ready, then, in the laboratory of physiological chemistry for work in clinical psychology and diagnostic orthogenics. TWitmer, Lightner, The Organisation of Practical WorTc in Psychology, The Psych. Review, 1897, IV, p. 116.
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