2 
CURT P. RICHTER 
function of the parts alone. This older psychology was further 
characterized by a complete unwillingness to see the biological 
aspects of the organism’s reactions, the place of the reactions in 
the life situations. 
The trend of present day psychology stands in marked contrast 
to this older view. The tendency is now to begin with the study 
of the responses of the total organism—intact—and in the situa¬ 
tion in which it ordinarily finds itself. Here the biological as¬ 
pects of the problems stand decidedly to the fore as is evidenced 
by the general current usage of such terms as adaptation, responses, 
reactions, adjustments. It is the behavior of the organism that 
is of most interest, what the organism does , and how it works. 
By what the organism does, is meant simply the description of 
all of the operations and activities involved in the adjustment of 
the organism to its environment. This would include the de¬ 
scription of the objects in the environment responded to, the 
nature and kind of responses made to these objects, the various 
activities elicited by these objects. Further this would include 
also an account of the interrelation of these different activities, 
hunger, sex, social and work activities, for instance, the role 
played by each, the relative importance of each in the life adjust¬ 
ment of the organism. 
The problem of how the organism works deals with the more 
dynamic aspects of behavior. This requires in the first place the 
determination of the origin of the organism’s activity, what it is 
that drives it, so to speak, about in the environment. Further, 
a knowledge of the working of an organism requires a description 
of how the various specific responses are set up as the organism 
is driven about in the environment, how these responses are knit 
together. Here belongs also a knowledge of how the develop¬ 
ment and knitting together of the responses are affected by such 
factors as early frights, shocks, trauma, distortions and limita¬ 
tions of activities. 
At present these problems can not easily be attacked in humans 
for obvious reasons, despite the fact that many abnormal patients 
may be considered as Adolf Meyer so interestingly suggests, as 
“ experiments of nature. ” In most humans the early determin- 
