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In widely different fields of modern science, such as Medicine, Psychology, Philosophy, Sociology and Anthropology, a change has taken place in much the same direction.
The work of Goldstein is chosen in this article in order to shew the essentials of this view in one of its best representations. In general terms the essence of this 'Ganzheitsauffassung' is the realization that no biological phenomenon can be understood or even described in isolation. It has to be taken in connection with the whole condition of the organism (society), present and past, with the whole sphere to which it belongs, in short, with the 'whole situation'. The idea that an organism could be thought to be built up from isolated parts or that the function of the nervous system could be explained on the assumption of reflexes as elementary facts and many other ideas still tacitly accepted as axiomatic are proved to be incorrect. It is shewn that what strikes us as 'facts' is dependent on what we consider to be remarkable on the ground of a preconceived idea or theory. So, for instance, a reflex turns out to be not an element on which the nervous system is built up, but an 'answer' to a stimulus in a highly differentiated state of development of the whole N.S. The same is true for an 'association'. Any living being can at any time only be understood as a whole, and the world in which it lives is inseparable from its own constitution and condition. There is abundant proof for the slogan: the whole is earlier than the part. If this is true it must be of high interest to the analyst and influence our theoretical conceptions considerably. The author shews that by the example of condensation, ' and claims that we must think in terms of differentiation as well as assume an 'analytic function of the ego' besides the synthetic one. But he shews also that in actual fact analysis respects and always has respected these criteria. It cannot therefore be set aside only because it expresses its f