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(To Ella Sharpe, who wanted this paper to be written)
This paper is the last of three which, taken together, might be entitled 'Some Implications of Psycho-Analysis: a Personal Estimate'. It is described as 'Notes' because, like its predecessors (Brierley, 1944, 1945), this paper is also highly schematic. The intention of the series is not to compile a treatise reviewing the whole literature of the subjects discussed. The aim is rather to present in broad and tentative outline the general conception of human nature and the attitude towards life with its consequences for behaviour which appear to the writer to be inherent in psycho-analysis.
The term 'integration' may easily become something of a catchword, but it conveys perhaps better than any other term the sense of wholeness resulting from the organization of dynamic components, a living unity engendered by the harmonious patterning of variety. Integration, in its application to personality, is a strictly relative term. Individuals react at any given moment as functional wholes, but these functional wholes are more or less temporary and vary, according to psycho-social circumstances, within limits imposed by the total personality. Applied to the living but more permanent total pattern of mental organization, the term integration conveys the meaning of a stable and unified personality, a microcosm of harmoniously interrelated systems, as contrasted with a schizoid micro-chaos of mutually discordant sub-organizations.
Integration is a term that is useful both in metapsychology and in personology and one for which there appears to be no adequate synonym. It is indispensable in metapsychology and its use in personology is confirmed by habit. The term 'personal integrity' is too closely associated with conventional morality to be a satisfactory one,