n is apt to shirk
the responsibility of making an attempt to solve the concrete problems
of greater complexity. The psychiatrist has to study individuals and
groups as wholes, as complex units, as the "you" or "he" or "she" or
"they" we have to work with. We recognize that throughout nature we have
to face the general principle of unit-formation, and the fact that the
new units need not be like a mere sum of the component parts but can be
an actually new entity not wholly predictable from the component parts
and known only through actual experience with the specific product.
Hydrogen and oxygen, it is true, can form simple mixtures, but when they
make an actual chemical integration we get a new specific type of
substance, water, behaving and dividing according to its own laws and
properties in a way not wholly predictable from just what we know of
hydrogen and oxygen as such. Analogy prompts us to see in plants and
animals products of physics and chemistry and organization, although the
peculiarity of the product makes us recognize certain specificities of
life not contained in the theory of mere physics and chemistry. All the
facts of experience prompt us to see in mentation a biological function,
and we are no longer surprised to find this product of integration so
different from the nature and functions of all the component parts. All
the apparent discontinuities in the intrinsic harmony of facts, on the
one hand, and the apparent impossibility of accounting for new features
and peculiarities of the new units, are shown to be a general feature of
nature and of facts: integration is not mere summation, but a creation
of ever-new types and units, with superficial discontinuities and with
their own new denominators of special peculiarities; hence there is no
reason to think of an insurmountable and unique feature in the origin of
life, nor even of mentally integrated life; no need of special mystical
sparks of life, of a mysterious spirit, etc.; but--and this is the
important point--also no need of denying the existence of all the
evidence there may be of facts which we imply when we use the deeply
felt concepts of mind and soul. In other words, we do not have to be
mind-shy nor body-shy any longer.

The inevitable problem of having to study other persons as well as
ourselves necessarily leads us on to efforts at solution of other
philosophical problems, the problem of integrating materialism and
idealism, mechanism and