ABSTRACT
A physicist is so remote from most of the issues of interest to this conference that the most he can hope is to observe what is involved in the detached spirit of a man from Mars. There are two comments that I would like to make. The first is, that in spite of the apparently unsatisfactory status of some of the constructs of the psychoanalyst it would appear that there is nothing fundamentally unsound at the foundations, but that if one takes the necessary trouble and care everything can be put on a completely “operational” basis—it is not necessary to postulate unprovable principles or essences such as the vitalist does, for example. The second comment is that perhaps some of the features which distinguish psychoanalysis from other disciplines can be explained by the prominent role that introspection plays. This role is fundamental, because without the introspectional report that the analyst is able to draw from his patient some of the basic concepts of the analyst are merely verbal constructs—they have no “reality” because there is no second method of getting to the terminus.
