ABSTRACT
Until the most recent decades, the dominant conviction was that thinking constitutes, basically, only a combination of ordinary associative processes, of the highest and most complex order, i.e., that it is a simple relation of verbal reactions. Even the most abstract thoughts of relations that are difficult to convey in the language of movement, like various mathematical formulas, philosophical maxims, or abstract logical laws, even they are related ultimately to particular residues of former movements reproduced anew. Initially, language arises out of a reflexive shout that is entirely inseparable from all other emotional and instinctive manifestations of behavior. In the process of developing the ability to think, it is extraordinarily important to establish in the student’s consciousness that general relation, that ultimate goal, which is the governing propensity of the entire process of thinking. Pathology discloses the very same relation between thinking and the inner aspect of personality as does psychology.
