Psycho-Analysis and Biodynamics—-An Integration

Ladies and Gentlemen: As may be inferred from your kind invitation, a certain body of concepts to which I attached the term biodynamics about a decade ago has awakened some interest among my psycho-analytic, psychiatric and psychological colleagues in both America and Europe. In general these concepts, whether regarded favourably or unfavourably, have been correctly considered to constitute a syncretic attempt to correlate various fields of behaviour study. Occasionally, however, biodynamics has been referred to as 'a new school' of psychiatric or psychological thought departing radically from others and supposedly critical of certain Freudian 'doctrines.' This latter statement is in itself, of course, unfairly condemnatory of psycho-analysis, since the very term 'doctrine' implies that analysts adhere blindly to a faith rather than being engaged in a scientific discipline whose concepts are changing with the accumulation of knowledge and thought almost as rapidly as do those of modern physiology or physics. But the averred opposition of biodynamics to psycho-analysis is even more grievous to me as a psycho-analyst, since the truth of the