178 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to face, in the sense that other natural sciences have been. I am fully 

 mindful of Professor Titchener's 3 cogent apologia for the failure of the 

 contemporary psychology to " hold its men/' who tended either to leave 

 it for more frankly speculative departments of thought, or sought the 

 concreter fields of education, or physiology and therapeutics. But the 

 fact seems to be that psychology has not been over-forward in seeking 

 the test of concrete experience. 



A somewhat definite program for the medical course in psychology 

 has been discussed by Watson. 4 It seems, not unnaturally, determined 

 more by the place of the methods in experimental psychology than by 

 direct consideration of their applications to the study of psychopatho- 

 logical conditions. From this standpoint, one might in minor detail 

 suggest some modification of Professor Watson's plan ; thus in any work 

 on sight, campimetry should probably occupy an equal place with color 

 vision. The skin and kinesthetic sensations have a psychopathological 

 importance quite equal to that of hearing. Watson's plan is for a sys- 

 tematic experimental course; I must confess that what seem the most 

 fitting topics do not coordinate themselves so readily in my mind, and 

 my own tendency would be to make such a course less one in experi- 

 mental psychology than in psychological experiments. The content of 

 the laboratory course may indeed change with the progress of the sci- 

 ence, in accordance with the principle that properly governs it; but as 

 we are not trying to make psychologists, but medical men, we must 

 subordinate the desideratum of the academic system to a series of those 

 experiments and methods most likely to be made use of in actual 

 medical practise. It is evident that in the determination of the proper 

 subject matter of such a course, there enters not only the available 

 stock-in-trade, so to speak, of experimental psychology, but also the con- 

 sideration of those particular clinical exigencies in which they are likely 

 to be of service. Only such experiments and methods should form a 

 part of such a course for which definite value in special situations can 

 be indicated ; and the understanding of the application is on a level of 

 importance equal with that of the experiment itself. The application 

 of experimental methods will, of course, be practically confined to the 

 study of individual cases, and the procedure which should be followed 

 in the laboratory is thus an intensive study of each experimental method 

 with individual subjects; group experimentation or methods which 

 involve it are out of place in such a course. 5 In an enumeration of the 

 experimental methods which would seem, from the writer's particular 

 experience, to best deserve place, would be included the study of the 



8 Am. J. Psych., XXI., 1910, 406-407. 

 4 Journ. Am. Med. Assoc, March 30, 1912, 916-918. 



8 Cf. Kraepelin, "Ueber Ermudungsmessungen," Arch. f. d. Ges. Psychol., 

 I., 1903, 28. 



