Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/290

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278
STERN

consequence a comparison of the tests of individuality made use of by different observers is nearly impossible.

It has seemed to us, therefore, a precondition of all further work in this field that a "Scheme of Psychography," of as complete a kind as possible should be worked out, i. e., "a list, arranged in a synoptical manner, of all those characteristics which can in any possible way come into consideration in the study of individuality, without reference to à priori assumptions as to whether or not they are essential or to the special purposes of particular studies of character."

The Scheme has not been brought to a point at which each student of individuality may simply fill it out for the personality which he is studying; it furnishes, rather, the stock from which he may select the procedure appropriate to his object. But he must now give account to himself as to why he chooses just the particular points which he does and omits others; and he will take into consideration many points of which he would not otherwise have thought. The Scheme will further be indispensable in all genuine psychological investigations of individuality, correlation, inheritance and the like.

The Scheme must, of course, be completely neutral, i. e., it must include the points of view of the historian, the alienist and the educationist as well as that of the psychologist; it must also make specific, for the study of supernormal endowment, the point of view of artistic creation, of scientific production, etc. It is easy to see that such an undertaking can only be carried through by the co-operation of many workers of many professions. The Institut für angewandte Psychologie has therefore formed a Commission for Psychography by which recently, after many years of work, a beginning of publication has been made. ("Ueber Aufgabe und Anlage der Psychographie" and "Fragment eines Schemas der Psychographie" in the Zeitschrift für angewandte Psychologic, III, Heft. 3.)

The trend of the Scheme is as follows: When an individual is to be "psychographed," a sharp distinction must be made between the "attitudes" (Verhaltungsweisen) to be observed directly and the "characteristics" (Eigenschaften) to be inferred from them. The catalogue of attitudes falls again into two groups, according as we have to do with "natural" attitudes or those under experimental conditions. (Just these natural attitudes resist all schematization as yet; nevertheless they are, on the one hand, the chief material of biographical-historical studies, and, on the other, in the case of psychographing a living individual who can be subjected to experiment, indispensable for completeness. In view of this, the Scheme must try to formulate more exactly the data with reference to natural attitudes in such a manner that they may appear as reactions to