A Discussion of The Relationship of The Chemical, Physical, and Psychologic Aspects of The Personality*

Time was when the scientific circle of knowledge was small enough to enable the keen witted philosopher to acquire an understanding of all the known facts concerning several sciences and the names of many illustrious men who were specialists and made themselves famous in several sciences not directly related, may be recalled with little effort. In those days the circle of science was not so large but that the scientist's position in the center of the circle enabled him to see all of its arcs or segments of facts. Owing to the tireless efforts of thousands of investigators in scientific fields this circle has so enlarged in circumference that the student or scientist standing in the center can no longer cope with its delineations; in fact, this is true in a more narrow sense of the biological science as such, the chief object of which science is to throw light upon the functioning of the human personality as a unit, and by personality I mean all of the reacting components concerned in this highly structuralized organization.

Speaking collectively, the circle of medical knowledge, through its efforts to solve the riddle of the normal and abnormal behavior of the organism, has so increased its diameter that it has been necessary to divide and subdivide it into specialties in order to deal adequately with the ever increasing number of problems. This specialization is thought by many to be too static and narrow, but nevertheless it is a necessary artefact.

Developments along these lines have forced us, for purposes of study and description, to artificially divide the circle of personality investigation into three main arcs, designated roughly as chemical, physical, and psychological, each with its subdivisions and special workers who unfortunately have a tendency to develop causative theories excluding important facts which have accrued in other fields. The physical approach to the personality and its disorders is most