Firstly the advantages are mentioned of the intensive co-operation between the psychologist and the hospital as a whole from the time of admission of the patient.
In this way the psychologist can assimilate the information from other co-workers, e.g. information from more common situations, in his explorative investigation. This can be of benefit for the significance of his investigation.
Secondly is described, in view of a classification of questions, how in this way can be strived gradually for conditional investigation and via conditional investigation for predictive experimental investigation.
The classifications discuseed are:
a) Questions concerning the possibility of plating the patient.
b) Questions concerning the way in which the patient is disturbed and to what extent.
c) Questions concerning functional relations (of the type "should A, then B".)
The investigation that strives for a formulation of hypotheses about functional relations was called a conditional investigation. Model for such a relation was the spiral that originates when, on a specific and unusual appeal starting from the patient, the surroundings answer likewise specific and unusual, which reinf orces the appeal.
Not until the stage of the formation of hypotheses does one reach the scientific significance. The jointly thinking over and co-operation on the first two categories of questions is an attempt to create in the third category the conditions for an investigation that is significant in two aspects: significant for the practical interest of the patient and thus useful for the hospital and significant as a directed and controllable method of investigation.
With this attempt at integration of practical and scientific interest and of integration of the thinking and deciding jointly, a picture is given of the place of the clinical psychological investigation in the Second Psychiatric Clinic of the Utrecht University.