SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS —I, J. 413 



been suitably adjusted, either lamp will glow ; but both lamps will not 

 glow simultaneously, although they are both in permanent connection with 

 the same battery. An external disturbance can be used to start a glow in 

 the extinct lamp, and the glowing lamp is then automatically extinguished. 

 The experiment was first described in the Psychological Review (U.S.A.), 

 1930, 37, 214-227. An investigation of the cause of the phenomena is in 

 progress. 



SECTION J.— PSYCHOLOGY. 



Thursday, September 2. 



Dr. R. B. Cattell. — The psychometric versus the intuitive approach in the 

 study of personality (lo.o). 



A controversy over the use of the Binet test in psychological clinics has 

 brought to a head a difference of viewpoint, which has become more evident 

 in recent years, between those who believe that personality is ultimately 

 describable in terms of mental measurements and those who believe it is 

 only to be intuited as a whole. The cleavage runs from applied psychology, 

 where it takes the form of an opposition between mental assessment as an 

 art and as a science, to theoretical psychology, where it becomes in the main 

 an irreconcilability between gestalt and geisteswissenschaftlich psychology on 

 the one hand and factor psychology on the other. 



The practical and theoretical implications of the two viewpoints are 

 examined in detail. It is contended that in practice the psychometric 

 approach already gives more reliable results and that in theory the intuitive 

 approach is nothing less than a disguised attempt to escape from the rigours 

 of scientific method. The energetic prosecution of clinical research has 

 been impaired by deflection of effort towards the specious attractions of 

 intuitive methods, but intuition, because it involves projection of the 

 therapist's own personality, is in the end nothing more than a source of 

 error, though in the beginning it may provide a useful scaffolding for a 

 structure of objective research. 



Prof. T. V. Moore. — The synthetic sense and intelligence (10.45). 



I. The contribution of pathology to mental analysis. 



Pathology gives us a very valuable rule for the differentiation of functions. 

 Whenever a single function is destroyed after a certain type of pathological 

 change : 



(a) The function destroyed is in some way connected with the normal 

 activity of the tissue that has undergone pathological change. 



(6) The function destroyed must be recognised as distinct from the 

 functions that remain intact. 



II. Pathology of perception. 



After certain pathological changes in the brain the patient 

 {a) is still capable of receiving certain sensory qualities ; 



(b) is incapable of interpreting the sensory qualities so received, 



(c) but may still possess intact the power of interpretation. 

 (Cases illustrating these conditions are given.) 



