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One of the central interests of prefreudian psychology was the problem of the nature and mechanism of intellectual processes.1 Psychoanalysis on the other hand has interested itself primarily in problems of motivation. Psychoanalysis started with a study of pathological symptoms and was compelled therefore to take normal behavior more or less for granted as a standard for comparison. Disturbances of the cognitive processes were studied as distortions of an adequate perception of reality. As a consequence, psychoanalysis has usually quite consistently disregarded the fact that normal cognitive processes probably require a more delicately balanced equilibrium and are therefore more difficult to explain than are the mechanisms of most pathological distortions.
In the present paper I wish to return to the earlier interest of psychology in the mechanisms of the intellectual functions. In doing so however I shall avail myself of the very rich material bearing upon problems of this sort that has resulted from the intervening development of psychoanalytic psychology. In the present paper we shall attempt to analyze some of the dynamic factors involved in the process of integration of social behavior, or in other words, in the process of integration of our behavior in relation to other people.
A report of some clinical material from the analysis of one of Dr. Helen McLean's patients, who was analyzed in our research upon bronchial asthma, will illustrate the discussion.
The patient, a forty-six-year-old laborer, had just started an analysis for bronchial asthma. He was the oldest of six children. His father was a big, powerful man, a blacksmith, who allowed on one in the home to question his authority and who