In education, for instance, very many different ends might be reached;
psychology cannot decide anything. The decision as to the aims of
education must be made by ethics, which indeed takes not a causal but a
purposive attitude. Only after ethics has selected the aim, psychology
can teach us how to reach it. Of course this principle must hold for the
physician too. All his causal dealing with the mind presupposes that he
has selected a certain end in harmony with his purpose. The only
difference is that, in the case of the physician, there can be no
possible doubt as to the desirable end; what he aims at is a matter of
course, namely, the health of the patient. To desire the health of the
sufferer is thus itself a function which belongs entirely to the
purposive view of the world, and only in the interest of this purpose
does the physician apply his knowledge of psychology or of the causal
sciences of physics, physiology, and chemistry. Indeed only with this
limitation have we the right to say that the psychotherapist takes the
causal,--and that means the psychological,--view of his patient. As far
as he decides to take care of the health of his patient, this decision
itself belongs to the purposive world and to his moral system. The
physician is thus ultimately just like the minister and just like anyone
who deals with his neighbor, a purposive worker; but while the minister,
for instance, remains on this purposive track, the physician puts a
causal system into the service of his purpose. He knows the end, and his
whole aim is to apply his causal knowledge of the physical and psychical
world to the one accepted end of restoring the health of the patient. He
has to ask thus in general: what has psychology to-day to offer which
can be applied in the interests of medicine?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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