ABSTRACT
Experimental psychology in America is pervaded by the firm conviction that any theory of memory will have to be basically associative in character. This claim, we are convinced, is fundamentally wrong. This chapter reviews two counterexamples to this mistaken generalization, namely, Gestalt theory and the reconstruction hypothesis, both exemplifying the rationalist methodology. Unfortunately, both of these approaches will turn out to be rather sketchy when considered as memory theories. This is not surprising because, in the rationalist conception of matters, memory is a very complicated but essentially uninteresting topic for study.
