"... a man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming
    passion--in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant,
    and in his service I know no limits. My tyrant is psychology; it
    has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now, since I have
    hit on the neuroses, it has come so much the nearer. I am plagued
    with two ambitions: to see how the theory of mental functioning
    takes shape if quantitative considerations, a sort of economics
    of nerve-force, are introduced into it; and secondly, to extract
    from psychopathology what may be of benefit to normal psychology.
    Actually, a satisfactory general theory of neuropsychotic
    disturbances is impossible if it cannot be brought into
    association with clear assumptions about normal mental processes."
                                      -S. Freud 1895/letter to Fliess
 
    ... A man like me cannot live without a hobby-horse, a consuming
    passion--in Schiller's words a tyrant. I have found my tyrant,
    and in it's service I know no limits. My tyrant is Psychology; it
    has always been my distant, beckoning goal and now, since I have
    hit on the history of neuroses, it has come so much the nearer. I
    am plagued with two ambitions: to see how the theory/history of mental
    functioning takes shape if qualitative and quantitative
    methodological considerations, a sort of hermeneutics of historical
    /political-force, are introduced to it, and secondly, to extract
    from personality theory and psychological historiography what may
    be of benefit to contemporary researchers in historical psychology.
    Actually, a satisfactory general theory of historiography in Psychology
    is impossible if it cannot be brought into association with empiricism
    and Kuhnian and post-Kuhnian revolutions in science. Leaving out
    the assumption of normality and Guassian logic with regard to
    a perception of 'normal mental processes'!
                                       -R. White 1997/letter to psa
 
--
   ----------------------------------------- Carleton University ----------
               Robert G. White               Dept. of Psychology
                                             Ottawa, Ontario. CANADA
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