ABSTRACT
It is significant that a chapter with the above title appears in a book under the aegis of a psychoanalytic society. The many historically based antago nisms between various workers in psychiatry that have led to “organic" versus “psychodynamic" factions and resulted in the inability of either to use the contributions of the other gradually are being resolved and being replaced by a more holistic synthesis of biological and social factors in hu man behavior theory as well as therapy. False dichotomies retarding the development of our science, such as the “nature-nurture" controversy, are gradually being replaced by multivariable interactional models. W hat is be ing shown is that enzyme regulation is dependent on hormones; hormone levels are a function of the complex interplay of limbic and cortical influ ence on the anterior pituitary; neurophysiological events in subcortical lim bic structures are subject to modification by current experience in animals and man; current experience perception is a function of past experience; past experience is a function of social field forces as well as those related to the individual; and each of these representative levels is related to each
other in a style consistent with a gradient interdependent modulation rather than an all-or-none trigger. Thus, in the process of teasing out or manipulating variables in a complex system of this type one can be working many places at the same time in spite of the investigator's or therapist's unimodality of orientation. It remains to be seen whether therapists or re searchers in the behavioral areas will be secure enough to allow themselves at least momentary glances at a broader, multi-dimensional view while ply ing their profession and maintaining its assumptions in their own particular segment.
