Nature and Tasks

One of the few features seemingly common to all earlier efforts toward a scientific psychology was that the problem was seen as -- and only as -- a general one. The investigations were concentrated on the most basic elements out of which all psychological life is built up, on the general laws [die allgemeinen Gesetzen] according to which mental phenomena occur. In this work, the attempt was made to abstract as much as possible from the unending multi-faceted quality of psychological being as we encounter it in different individuals, peoples, social classes, genders, etc.; the objective was precisely to distill from this multifaceted reality that which is common [das Gemeinsame] and the research findings have been related, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not, to mental life, and not to this or that particular instantiation of a psychological event. Abstraction of this sort is justified so long as it emerges from a judicious insight into the limits of our abilities at any given time: but the danger is only too great (and is also not always avoided) that one forgets that one is dealing with an abstraction and believes that through a general treatment of this sort all problems entailed in psychological investigation can be solved. Fortunately, we are seeing more and more, in contrast to this view, the emergence of an awareness that the material that has to this point been neglected, specifically the differential peculiarities [Eigentümlichkeiten] of the psyche deserves attention. Here is repeated something that has occurred often in the history of sciences and especially our science: that which has been regarded up to a certain point as a source of error, as a nuisance to be offset by any available means, suddenly becomes seen as a problem in and of itself. Individual differences were a crucible for hypothesizing -- if I may put it this way -- a template of the human psyche: they become an object of inquiry in their own right. Differential psychology seeks to take its place alongside of, and to supplement, general psychology.