ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON PSYCHOLOGY 1 99 



both Experimental and Physiological Psycholog}') ; 2d, Genetic or 

 Comparative Psychology (including Zoological and Anthropological 

 Psychology) ; 3d, Social, with its important branch, Educational 

 Psychology ; 4th, Statistical Psychology (including questions of 

 mental variation, heredity, types of mind, etc.); and, 5th, Patholog- 

 ical and Abnormal Ps5'chology — the investigation of diseased and 

 abnormal minds. The course of development in these somewhat 

 distinct and separate lines has been so self controlled that proper 

 relationships do not exist among these departments. It is now of 

 the most extreme importance — and it is indicated above as one of 

 the most evident functions of the Carnegie Institution — that there 

 should be an agency for the better unification of researches in these 

 different fields. This, and with it the direct encouragement of re- 

 search in each of the great subjects mentioned, witli their subor- 

 dinate subdivisions, constitute, m the opinion of your Committee, 

 the main topics for recommendation in this report. 



The presentation nov-.'- made of the present condition of psycho- 

 logical inquiry may be supported by reference to a recent undertak- 

 ing in Paris. I refer to the foundation in 1900, in connection with 

 the International Congress of Ps3'chology, of what has been named 

 the General Psychological Institute. This association, formed 

 under the patronage of an international committee, upon which 

 your present reporter was asked to serve, has for its explicit objects : 

 First, the advancement of piychohgical science ; and, second, the U7iifi- 

 cation of the branches of psychclooical ivork — the tvv'o objects which 

 the present report is also emphasizing. The importance of the 

 function of such a general institution in unifying the results of 

 science is seen, or may b« seen, in the following quotation from a 

 recent bulletin issued by this French Psychological Institute : " The 

 branches of psychological science [says this report] appear to be 

 pursued in too great independence of one another. Properly speak- 

 ing, they should be .so closely connected that it would be impossible 

 to make a profound study of the facts of any one of them without 

 thorough knowledge of the body of results from the others. How, 

 for example, can we study the psychology of children without know- 

 ing the work that has been done on such questions as that of the 

 general psychology of suggestion ? Or how study the m.ental con- 

 dition of the alcoholic inebriate without knowing all the results 

 of research which bear upon the psychic effects of drugs? In short, 

 solidarity, in this science, has become a great need. The tendency 

 to form international congresses, and, in particular, the work of the 



