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A plea is made to save time by agreeing on definitions of important words, in particular on a semantical analysis of 'psycho-genesis'. This depends on definitions of 'mental event' and 'interpretation'. Any stimulus-object can acquire meaning. Thus a red light in certain situations means 'stop!' The meaning is an 'interpretation' of the stimulus. It is held that 'interpretation' in this sense is characteristic of mental events. And an event is mental if (and only if?) it is an interpretative reaction to a stimulus-object.
Turning to 'psychogenesis', 'we follow the common sense empirical method of asking ourselves under what circumstances do we say that a person's disorder is psychogenic'. 'Any syndrome, disorder, or disease is "psychogenic" if (and only if?) among the various etiological factors … there is at least one … called "an interpretation"'.
It is implied that a patient has at some time been aware of certain events if he has reacted to them interpretatively. The author follows Bernfeld's assumption that all unconscious thoughts must have once been conscious, so that the approach of this paper covers 'unconscious mental events'. There may be difficulties about this, 'subliminal cues', and the question whether interpretations must be 'emotionally reinforced'.
Tests are given for deciding whether an event B is psychogenic: there must be some prior interpretation A such that (i) B occurs, if and only if A occurred and (ii) if A varies, then B varies.
The following is therefore arrived at: a disorder is psychogenic if some interpretation has preceded it without which we have reason to believe the disorder would not have occurred.