[Undated]: Dispositions. Cogitations

A man may be disposed to envy, or to violence of emotion, or to regard truth or life highly, or to be intolerant of frustration. Whatever it is that causes him to be so disposed, I shall call his state of mind at the time he is so disposed, his ‘disposition’. The propositions I use as premises are all in this sense dispositions. But, as I write this, it is brought home to me how difficult it is to verbalize with accuracy without losing meaning, or to write meaningfully without losing accuracy.

‘A disposition.’ Does this mean something in the psyche? Are there such things as dispositions? At once a problem is, what does one mean by ‘thing’? He is disposed to be envious; he has an envious disposition; his disposition is to be envious. All these sentences mean something. It does not seem unreasonable to claim that there is such a thing as an envious disposition. Very well: then there are envious dispositions, truthful dispositions, narcissistic dispositions, violent dispositions, loving dispositions – to take instances from the premises I have chosen. Since I want to say that there are such things, that is to say, things in actuality, in reality, which are represented by the word, ‘disposition’, it is essential always to use the word in such a way that the reader will be correct in assuming that I mean what I meant on the previous occasion, that there is in reality something that is represented by the word, ‘disposition’.

If this were a difficulty peculiar only to this immediate context, the point would not be worth labouring, but it is inherent in psychoanalytic work and confronts the analyst at every turn. The problem is not new to the philosopher, but the analyst's position is more difficult because he is concerned with the practice of psychoanalysis, that is to say, he has to apply his theories in an empirical setting. Even so, this might amount to no more than the difficulties confronting the scientist who has to express his theories in terms of empirically verifiab