S8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



depend on the way in which this complex enables the individual to make 

 appropriate reactions to his environment. An individual becomes psy- 

 chotic when he fails to behave with a certain more or less arbitrary 

 degree of appropriateness. Where the mental malfunctioning follows 

 a sufficiently definite line, we may formulate a definite psychotic entity, 

 as the manic-depressive or the hysterical states. The experimental side 

 of the dynamic psychopathology is therefore distinct from the academic 

 psychology in that it is essentially grounded in the measurement of the 

 reaction's adequacy or fitness. It involves a fundamental recasting of 

 psychological methods, more along the lines of comparative psychology, 

 whose details have only begun to be worked out. 



These things shall enable us to observe certain mechanisms of adap- 

 tation, from which we must learn about the individual's fundamental 

 adaptability. There are very few adaptations which every individual 

 must make, but life places very many persons in situations which they 

 can not meet. Some can not meet them within themselves; they react 

 with the " flight into the psychosis." Some can not meet them as 

 members of society; they react along criminal lines. Others can do 

 neither, and they have led us into the absurdness of a dividing line of 

 responsibility for action where not the shadow of a line exists. We 

 have seen how continuous all normal human traits are with the patho- 

 logical. The value of all attempts at controlling the actions of men, as 

 with automobiles or waterfalls, depends upon taking account of the 

 mechanical principles upon which they act. A chief legislator of my 

 native state lately remarked, " Men do not make laws, they discover 

 them." The problems of the jurist, even more than those of the 

 psychiatrist, are failures of mental adaptation; and as we discover ite 

 laws we shall discover the best laws to regulate human conduct for 

 both the happiness of the individual and the order of society. 



