Psychoanalysis and Conditioned Reflexes1

Only with hesitation have I accepted the invitation to talk about analysis and conditioned reflexes. The one reason for this hesitation lies in the fact that excellent studies about this problem have been published by Luria, Ischlondsky and French. If I overcame my internal inhibition, I was especially guided by the idea that all these authors mentioned were overwhelmed by the classical experimentation of Pavlov's and his school and by the immense material collected in their books and papers. They took, therefore, the physiology, and, I say that only with trepidation, the psychology of Pavlov's for granted. Their task, therefore, necessarily has remained unsolved. Psychoanalysis with its close touch to the problems of real life can never be completely adapted to the artificial psycho-physiology of Pavlov's which is based upon the conception of a mosaic in the organism and in the psyche. If there is any truth in the gestalt psychology and in the teaching of the personality as a whole, Pavlov's theory must be wrong. We must therefore try to come to a decision and should not try to express two different psychologies at once without seeing the inner contradictions. Other investigators have not made up their minds. Sometimes they try to explain psychoanalytic situations in the terms of conditioned reflexes and sometimes conditioned reflexes in the terms of psychoanalysis. French, for instance, uses Pavlov's investigations not merely as illustrations but as proof for psychoanalysis. Ischlondsky seems to be of the opinion that psychological processes are only understood fully when