ABSTRACT
IN the Centre the smooth lines of functional action, or health, begin to stand out as the high-lights of a relief wrought of the living medium of the family membership. But the very prominence of this ‘action pattern’ of the family, illumined as it is for us by a hypothesis of biological function, only serves to accentuate and to deepen the shadows of the background from which the relief rises. Thus, by the very sharpness of the contrast, we gain not only a knowledge of function, but also a clearer understanding of the nature of the negation of function—its pathological anatomy and, more important still, its aetiology or origin.
