The term 'anatomy' is used to signify a critical examination of any subject or thing, physical or metaphysical. Galdston presents the history of a paranoid schizophrenic with early rejection of affect experiences, overinvestment in the intellectual faculties and ultimate delusions. This individual was given 'large doses of explanation and interpretation, and his experiences were discussed on a purely intellectual plane and quite abstractly'.

Galdston believes that psychiatry has suffered from an 'all too exclusive devotion to the study of the whole man'. He advocates a fractional study which enables him to regard the psychopathies as if they were 'the resultant of some foreign body, toxic or otherwise'. This is only one of several unproductive parallels which he draws between psychodynamics and pathological anatomical data.