Psychotherapy

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY

I

I

THE AIM OF PSYCHOLOGY

The only safe basis of psychotherapy is a thorough psychological knowledge

of the human personality. Yet such a claim has no value until it is entirely

clear what is meant by psychological knowledge. We can know man in many

ways. Not every study of man's inner life is psychology and the careless mix-

ing of different ways of dealing with man's inner life is largely responsible

for the vagueness which characterizes the popular literature of psychother-

apy. It is not enough to say that a statement is true or not true. It may be

true under one aspect and entirely meaningless under another. For instance,

a minister's discussion of man's energies may be full of deep truth and may

be inspiring; and yet it may not contain the slightest contribution to a really

psychological knowledge of those energies, and would mislead entirely the

physicianwere he to base his treatment of human energies on such a religious

interpretation.

3 HUGO MÜNSTERBERG

Can we not look from different standpoints even on any part of the outer

world? I see before me the ocean with its excited waves splashing against the

rocks and shore, I see the boats tossed on the stormy sea and I am fascinated

by the new and ever new impulses of the tumultuous waves. The whole

appears to me like one gigantic energy, like one great emotional expression,

and I feel deeply how I understand this beautiful scenery in appreciating its

unity and its meaning. Yet would I ever think that it is the only way to un-

derstand this turmoil of the waters before me? I know there is no unity and

no emotion in the excited sea; each wave is composed of hundreds of thou-

sands of single drops of water, and each drop composed of billions of atoms,

and every movement results from mechanical laws under the influence of the

pressing water and air. There is hydrogen and there is oxygen, and there is

chloride of sodium, and the dark blue color is nothing but the reflection of

billions of ether vibrations. But have I really to choose between two state-

ments concerning the waves, one of which is valuable and the other not?

On the contrary, both have fundamental value. If I take the attitude of ap-

preciation, it would be absurd to say that this wave is composed of chemical

elements which I do not see; and if I take the attitude of physical explana-

tion, it would be equally absurd to deny that such elements are all of which

the wave is made. From the one standpoint, the ocean is really excited; from

the other standpoint, the molecules are moving according to the laws of hy-

drodynamics. If I want to understand the meaning of this scene every rem-

iniscence of physics will lead me astray; if I want to calculate the movement

of my boat, physics alone can help me.

As long as we deal with outer nature, there is hardly a fear of confusing the

various attitudes; but it becomes by far more complex when we deal with

man and his inner life. We might abstract entirely from aesthetic apprecia-

tion or from moral valuation, we might take man just as an object of knowl-

edge; and yet what we know about him may be entirely different in accor-

dance with our special attitude. Each kind of knowledge may be entirely

true, and yet true only from the particular standpoint. Let us