Discussion of Warren G. Bennis's Article, A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the “Two Cultures” Dilemma

The timely topic and the content of Dr. Bennis' paper, wide in perspectives and rich in implications, merit our attention.

It is well known that the antagonism between the sciences and the

humanities has been the subject of philosophical discussions for many centuries. Wilhelm Windelband who taught me philosophy in Heidelberg expressed his ideas on the topic by postulating that the humanities (in German, Geisteswissenschaften) deal with individuals while the sciences tend to establish immutable laws of nature. The former he called ideographic; the latter, nomothetic.

Without going into the merits of this formulation, we must observe that, in its sharpness, it is hardly acceptable to the psychoanalyst. Psychoanalysis offers a synthesis of both points of view: we are most certainly interested in individuals, yet we endeavor to find laws ruling mental processes and instrumental in shaping personalities and actions.

Windelband included history among the so-called (by him) ideographic disciplines; yet application of psychoanalysis to history permits us to formulate, albeit tentatively and with caution, laws of historical processes and to explain the interaction between prominent personalities (Carlyle's heroes) and historical processes.

The conflict between the historical and the scientific Weltanschauung is an important chapter in the history of philosophy. The century-old conflict has received a new momentum in our epoch with its mass culture and the phenomenal progress of physics and technology on the one hand and the search for meaning and values on the other.

To my knowledge, Dr. Bennis' attempt at a genetic explanation of these different approaches has no precedents: it is thoroughly original.

He tries to relate the differences to the unconscious dynamics of respective scholars. Yet, at the outset he mentions Freud as an example of a passionate investigator who “transmitted his passion into inquisitiveness.” And Leonardo da Vinci is mentioned as the most illustrious e