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Whenever a new method is introduced into science one of the inevitable results is a bringing out of all the old material and submitting it to reexamination by the new procedures, a recasting of the old formulas in the new molds, in short, an examination of all of the positions hitherto attained and their revaluation on the basis of the newer concepts. Many of the concepts which had always been taken for granted and used uncritically in the process of reasoning must now be submitted to critical scrutiny to see just where they stand in relation to the new order of things and whether their previous use has been altogether warranted.
Such a concept is that of “individual” as it has been used in the domain of psychopathology. What constitutes an “individual” and what defines and limits the “individual” has never been formulated because it was so obvious that the questions never were asked, and so the concept “individual” has gone the broad and easy way toward static concreteness and must needs be rescued, shaken up, rejuvenated, born again in a more plastic state so that it can be moulded and made to fit, in a useful way, into the new structure that is being raised.
The necessity for this has arisen as a result of the introduction of the genetic concept into practical psychopathology. This genetic concept, while it has been recognized for a long time by psychologists as well as by biologists in general, has only lately come to have an actual place in the workaday world of the practicing psychiatrist and so has only recently been in a position to necessitate a revaluation