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Psychology 247
H. Sinclair was able to show that there was a close relationship. There is, in
particular, between the stages that accompany seriation or the stages in the
constitution of retention concepts and in speech analysed from the ‘vector’ and
‘scalar’ point of view (in the sense that Bull gives it), a striking correlation that
shows the interdependence of these two systems, respectively operative and
linguistic. But verbal learning has only a slight effect on operative progress,
except when the words used make it necessary to set up new conceptual rela-
tions, whereas the sequence of operative patterns derives from a spontaneous
equilibration due to the actions of the subject.
Similar considerations arise in respect of inter-individual affective values :
their content is continually modified by exchange and group dynamics, which
starts with two individuals. However, the very form of the exchanges and espe-
cially the structuration of the values governed by isomorphic scales with seria-
tions and trees or graphs of logical character testify once more to general
co-ordinations, which are the outcome of inter-individual affective regulative
processes, using the term in the sense given by P. Janet (see Chapter VII, section
12).
This interdependence, succeeding direct psycho-sociological reductionism
which was once the dream of some people, is to be found even in the study of
wil - a special instance of the ‘decisions’ of which the games theory has afforded
a detailed psychological and economic-sociological study. As everyone is well
aware, the wil was long regarded as a typical example of individual actions that
were irreducible to social factors, since the individual wishes for himself and
individual wills often conflict and also frequently come up against group pres-
sures. However, more than fifty years ago now, W. James showed that the wil
was not the same as mere intention or mere effort and that it came in only in the
event of conflicting tendencies. When a tendency of a lower order, but one which
is temporariIy strong, clashes with a tendency of a higher order, which is
temporarily weak, an act of the wil consists in reinforcing the latter until it
prevails over the former, while lack of wil is characterized by the victory of the
former. Here there is an implicit reference to social factors, for the tendency
which is initially weak but subsequently reinforced is often indistinguishable from
duty. Further, the fault of the explanation is that it refers to an ‘additional force’
which has no visible origin, A French psycho-sociologist, Charles Blondel,
therefore thought he had solved the problem by considering this additional
force as merely the force of collective imperatives; a reductionist solution which
is not sufficient, for if these imperatives are the strongest, there is no longer any
need for will, while if they are not, then the problem remains. The hypothesis
can then be formulated that the strength and weakness of the two conflicting
tendencies before the act of wil are not absolute but relative to the perceptive
situation at any given moment (all purely cognitive perception that is social and
linked to affective evaluations is characterized by momentary over-estimation
and under-estimation). It is then sufficient to conceive the wil on the model of
the reversible operations that correct perception by subjecting it to rules of
transformation, in which case the wil is the affective operation (last term of the
energy regulatory processes that Janet contrasts with the structural regulatory