PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE 177 



THE ADVANCEMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL MEDICINE 



Br FREDERIC LYMAN WELLS, Ph.D. 



MCLEAN HOSPITAL, WAVERLEY, MASS. 



TEACHING and research are the coordinate ways upon which any 

 body of knowledge advances. Though we are apt to think first 

 of the former, the latter is indeed the more basic, since before we can 

 talk of teaching we must acquire something to teach; as, to a large 

 extent, it is still the task of psychological medicine to do. It is neither 

 a difficult nor an especially effective matter to urge in generalities the 

 desirability of medical training in psychology in the hundred trite 

 phrases that are current to every one ; the abstractly favorable judgment 

 is now of little meaning except as the basis of constructive ideas. We 

 can best decide the place of psychology in medical education in exam- 

 ining what is the best that psychology has to give it. This question 

 could indeed be dealt with more simply if there were greater unanimity 

 of opinion as to what this best may be ; for, as the recent addresses at 

 Washington plainly showed, divergent opinions still reflect the different 

 angles from which the subject is approached. The discourse of the 

 medical man is one of problems, of the psychologist, one of methods; 

 which under present conditions could scarcely be otherwise. The diffi- 

 culty is that the methods of normal psychology and the problems of 

 pathological psychology do not fit. One could well read this in and 

 between the lines of Franz's remarks, 1 deprecating certain inadequacies 

 in the methods of pathological psychology, as well as the aloofness from 

 practical issues on the psychological side. The doubtful attitude of the 

 psychiatrist towards the psychological Problemstellung is of long stand- 

 ing. " They ask for a psychology . . ,. applied toward a solution of 

 their own problems, one which is aimed at practical ends. It has been 

 assumed that psychology as it is being taught and investigated deals 

 with matters of no concern, or of too abstract a nature for practise " ; 

 which assumption indeed has some measure of truth. 2 Psychologists 

 may not be scientifically at fault for this failure of application, but the 

 medical justice of demanding it can scarcely be gainsaid, and such 

 expressions are fair warning that in our natural wish to extend the 

 scope and influence of psychological science, we do not lose sight of the 

 fact that if psychology is to be successfully taught to medical students, 

 it must afford them something they can use. The test of concrete 

 experience is one that psychology has never been seriously called upon 



1 Journ. Am. Med. Assoc, March 30, 1912, 909-911. 

 a Cf. Hollingworth, Psych. Bull, May 15, 1912, 204-206. 



