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The author's aim is to shew that psycho-analysis as a method of fact gathering has a sound basis in accepted physiologic laws. Pavlov has demonstrated that the process of synthesis or association may take place subconsciously, and that under favourable conditions the unconscious synthesis may enter the field of consciousness. In establishing an excitatory conditioned reflex a state of instinctual craving is required. There is simultaneous inhibition of the cortical areas which are not involved in the reflex as well as a generalized cortical inhibition during the period of lag between the stimulus and the response. Pavlov has also demonstrated that a conditioned stimulus, which signals to an expectant animal that nothing is going to happen to it, exerts a spreading inhibitory action on cerebral function that leads to sleep. To study spontaneous cortical functions one must reduce to a minimum the mass of stimuli which impinge on the central nervous system, so as to avoid the distortion of accumulated inhibitory effects. Thus, the analyst in being passive is guided by a physiologic principle of keeping out 'external inhibitions'. The patient, with external stimuli at a minimum, works by free associations using the latter as both stimulus and response. Each response becomes in turn the stimulus for new responses, new speech and new feelings.
Pavlov has also shewn the importance of the time factor in conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. The analyst, likewise, assumes that the appearance of two ideas in the patient's mind in a definite sequence or relationship to time points to some dynamic relationship. The necessity of instinctual tension for the establishment of a conditioned reflex also has a parallel analogy in analysis. Here, too, libidinal tension is essential. Pacification or gratification of the patient spreads inhibition.