The Methods of Reflexological and Psychological Investigation

Abstract

The methods of the reflexological investigation of man have now reached a turning point in their development. The necessity (and inevitability) of a turn around results from the discordance between, on the one hand, the enormous tasks which reflexology sets itself-that of studying the whole of man's behaviour-and, on the other hand, those modest and poor means for their solution which the classic experiment of creating a conditional (secretory or motor) reflex provides. This discordance becomes more and more clear as reflexology turns from the study of the most elementary links between man and his environment (correlative activity in its most primitive forms and occurrences) to the investigation of the most complex and diverse interrelations necessary for the detection of the fundamental laws of human behaviour. [1] Here, outside the domain of the elementary and primitive, reflexology was left only with its general bare claim-equally well applicable to all forms of behaviour-that they constitute systems of conditional reflexes. But neither the specific details of each system, nor the laws of the combination of conditional reflexes into behavioural systems, nor the very complex interactions and the reflections of some systems on others, were clarified by this general, far too general statement and it did not even prepare the way for the scientific solution of these questions. Hence the declarative, schematic character of reflexological works when they state and solve problems of human behaviour that are somewhat more complex. Classical reflexology sticks to its elaboration of the universal scientific principle, the law of Darwinian significance, and reduces everything to a common denominator.