Basic Analysis of Inner Psychological Functions: By Endre Szekely. No. 37, Monograph Supplements, British Journal of Psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1965. 141 pp.

Since the beginning of the scientific revolution in the 1600's, the paradigm of scientific expression has been the mathematical equations brought forth by Newton and those who followed him. The aura of being scientific is assigned, in the popular mind and in the minds of many scientists as well, to the more theoretical and abstract mathematical statements that may be made about a given branch of science. The farther from such an ideal the findings of a science are, the less scientific it is thought to be. When Freud's case histories were first published the accusation was made that these were not scientific; rather, that they read like fiction, like novels. The findings in the science of psychoanalysis and in psychology in general are often not reducible or expressable in abstract mathematical terms. The resulting proliferation of verbiage often makes for complex theoretical formulations which, at one level of abstraction, are relevant but are unconnected with levels of scientific findings in other fields. Thus the data from the analytic situation are not easily converted into neurophysiologic terms. Conversely, the findings of the neurophysiologist are not easily convertible into psychologic terms.