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Psychology 275
of psychology would never have been written if psychopathology had not so
frequently called for psychological analyses, because here practical application
and theory are so closely connected that works such as those of Ribot, P. Janet
and Freud belong to psychology in the strict sense and not to what is often called
‘applied psychology’. Of course many examples of the applications of psychology
at the clinical level, where the psychologist has a specific part to play alongside
the psychiatrist, exist and are becoming increasingly frequent. Such clinical
work in its turn opens up a series of further avenues and wil probably help to
build up the theoretical structuration whose lack is so sorely felt (as in all our
disciplines), and which would be an integrative theory of the personality.
But there is no doubt either that when a problem is raised with a view to
finding a practical application, the problem itself is often somewhat distorted
or even only partially treated, simply because, in seeking an immediate solution
to particular practical questions, there is a danger of neglecting many other
aspects which deserve consideration on account of their theoretical importance
and which might even require to be studied in order to understand the problem
in its specificity. And the consideration of utility may lead all the more to
limitations and restrictions in that it is determined both by the scope of the
application envisaged and by the need to find a solution quickly and to choose
the most convenient methods. In working out his intelligence tests, Binet had
the excellent idea of applying them to the most diverse functions, convinced
that intelligence is everywhere and constitutes a sort of summation of all cognitive
activities. But when afterwards he was asked what intelligence was, he
replied with ready wit: ‘It is what my tests measure’, a very wise reaction but
a little disturbing when one thinks of the theoretical knowledge acquired by the
instrument of measurement thus constructed. A physicist, on the contrary, does
not measure a form of energy until a far more thorough theoretical study has
been made of what is to be measured and of the instrument of measurement
itself.
In fact, nearly all intelligence tests are based on a postulate which is certainly
limitative and consists in measuring only the resultants or ‘performances’ and
not the actual processes which have produced them. In physics, of course, processes
can be judged by their results, but this is because they are homogeneous
and the results of a given process constant. In mental activity on the contrary,
the same resultant can be obtained by different paths and, above all, an operative
structure is the source of a great many possible resultants which cannot be
deduced from the performance observed but presupposes a knowledge of the
underlying operative mechanism: the latter is therefore the objective to be
reached in judging an individual’s intelligence, particularly since it is important
to diagnose not so much what the subject can do when undergoing the test, as
what he would be capable of doing in many other situation. Intelligence was
therefore ‘measured’ long before it was known what it consists of, and we are
only just beginning to have some inkling of the complexity of its nature and
functioning. But the progress made is not due to the ‘tests’and other discoveries
of ‘applied psychology’; it is due to the sum of disinterested research carried
out, particularly research on theoretical and epistemological aspects which