Abstract:
It is a psychological commonplace to-day to say that, to understand the individual and his behaviour, we must study him and his behaviour, not in isolation, but as part of a dynamic whole comprising the person in his social and cultural milieu. Generally accepted as this may now be it has not always been so or at least it has not been explicitly recognised. Even to-day, recognized widely as it is in theoretical studies, it is not always taken into account in practice nor is it easy for it to be constantly recognized in practical work. As soon as we begin to study the individual it is difficult not to take him out of his social and cultural setting and as soon as we begin to study his behavour it is difficult not to study in isolation aspects only of his total behaviour. It is difficult because of the conceptual tools at our disposal and because of the practical limitations on any study, as, to investigate at all, we must isolate and separate. Both of these limitations apply to the study of mental disorders. In the first place there are the limitations imposed by the conceptual schema of the times and in the second place practical exigencies make it impossible always to study the individual in his environment as a dynamic whole. For the sake of practical progress and the increasing of technical skills and knowledge it is probably undesirable that we should always so study the person but to gain most from studies limited in scope I think it is necessary to try to relate them to the larger whole which forms the broader groundwork of the study and always to realize the limitations of the particular study by keeping in mind as a theoretical background the individual in his environment as the whole object of enquiry.
