Introduction
Abstract
Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless, Vol. II, No. I. January 2002 (© 2002) 1 2 Salomon Rettig · . The aim of this issue is to study the process of doing behavioral research with human subjects. A critical examination of a basic preposition of such inquiry is undertaken here for the purpose of discovering what inferences may be validly drawn from this proposition. The following general proposition serves as guidance in the examination. THE PROPOSITION In view of the fact that the psychology experimenter must maintain communicative contact with the human subjects when doing behavioral research, such inquiry is neither strictly independent nor objective. Engaging a subject via talk or by written instructions requires direct contact with the subject. Any textual address constitutes a form of communicative intervention that leaves it wide open to different interpretations. The relationship between word and deed is not a straightforward one because language represents not a physical but a symbolic reality. Symbolic reality lacks all spatial referents and transcends all time limitations. Following such communication and its interpretation by the subject, the subject is modified, but in an unpredictable way. People necessarily express themselves by means of words but think in