In my postdoctoral dissertation I ran into the same difficulties as I had in my doctoral thesis, generated by the contradiction between units of efficiency with units of time, as well as with the substantive, relational, and process interpretation of the phenomenon of transfer. Is this due only to identical elements, as Thorndike claims, explainable through Aristotle's substantive logic? Or is it due to relational identity between structures, as in configurational psychology, in which case the explanation has to be provided through isomorphism? What is the role of process, which is based on the third dialectic principle of logic?

I could not provide satisfactory answers, but the horizon of the paper was wider than that of the doctorate, and the ideas are more fleshed out, and maybe even deeper. I felt more and more, though, a need to go deeper into mathematical methodology, without which I could not solve my problems in an entirely scientific manner. For this, I needed to go not only to Britain but also to America, where these mathematical psychology issues had started to be treated very competently, a fact which Professor Goangă had started to recognize.

Both in writing my doctoral and postdoctoral dissertations—and especially during my time in Germany—I became convinced that the central problem is that of the person itself, which requires even more logical and mathematical methodology. Would I be able to combine my interest for methodology with personality psychology?