The Sense of Reality

The psychopathologies of the past were all aprioristic. Even those of Greek and Roman medicine, which appeared strictly empirical and clinical, were founded on a priori standards. They took it for granted that there was a right, a correct way of thinking. Any departure from the preconceived intellectual norm was considered pathological. These deviations would not be noticeable, of course, until they became gross enough and too obvious to escape even the man in the street. Historically, rationalism, or intellectualism, was not the only standard in psychopathology. It was also assumed that man naturally follows the good and, if he should turn to evil, he becomes abnormal. In other words, depending upon the prevailing criterion, mental illness meant being irrational or bad, or both. Even today, although the common prejudice against mental diseases is no longer officially upheld by medicine, the general public is still diffusely of the opinion that a mentally sick individual is an irrational, bad, weak or degenerate person. In point of fact, it is difficult if not impossible to define proper reason, good or strong character, health, or degeneracy, but they are taken for granted.

This a priori attitude is not limited to psychopathology and does not make it, though some would argue to the contrary, an unscientific system of speculations about the behavior of man. The biologist or physiologist, for example, deals with living tissues. He takes life for granted. He cannot define it very well, or even describe it adequately. He does not doubt that all his colleagues know, in the same way that he does, what life is; or better, he supposes that none of them knows any more than he, and they all proceed with their studies of life and living tissues, unembarrassed by their fundamental ignorance. The