Clinical: James Glover. Divergent Tendencies in Psychotherapy. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 1926, Vol. VI, p. 93.

This paper deals with certain broad issues dividing those practising Psychotherapy, the most fundamental of which depend on its conception as an Applied Science. Discussing certain grounds for scepticism and half-hearted reliance on psychological techniques, Glover comments on Reik's suggestion that a motive for psychologizing might be due to a desire to satisfy curiosity without uncovering the deeper determinants of our mental processes. He thinks that the reluctance to do so is not entirely due to any physiological bias in medical men, but may actually constitute a psychophobia. Emphasis on physical aspects of neurotic illnesses is probably determined by some inhibition connected with the exploration of their psychological causation. The psychotherapist tends to be influenced by a physiological bias which causes him to over-estimate environmental influences and under-estimate the importance of inner forces. It has recently been demonstrated that the fate of inner instinctual urges plays a far more important part in the ætiology of neuroses than environmental factors prevailing at the onset of the illness. Glover believes that man's capacity for achieving profound modification of instinct is now in part inherited. Neurosis is the expression of failure to establish a compromise between certain instinctual claims and the counterclaims