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The aim of the author of the book1 on which this paper is based is to study man's biological make-up and then to investigate what results when the disciplines and formative influences to which man is subjected are varied.2 In man the fixed types of reactions are less numerous in proportion than in other mammals and therefore the variations of cultural conditioning have a decisive developmental influence. The author's aim is to observe what constellations are formed as the result of the impact of certain institutions on the instinctual drives. The author asks what effect institutions have on the individual and to what extent individuals affect institutions, and he gives the following scheme:
1To describe the institution, which, for example, interferes with an impulse.
2To describe the effects of this interference on the individual with respect to the:
a.changes in the perception of the impulse;
b.modifications this makes on the executive functions;
c.feelings to those who impose it;
d.unconscious constellations formed by this series of conditions;
e.relations of these unconscious constellations to the actual behavior of the individual;
f.relation between those constellations to new institutions (or neurosis)' [pp. 20–21].3