Hamilton, Unusual Reaction of a Dog. 339 



avoided making one error. It was to break up this habit that 

 electricity was introduced as a penalty for errors. It seemed to 

 be effective during the first 20 trials of its use, but after that all 

 previously acquired fondness for the experiments was replaced by 

 fear, and I found myself working with, an animal that reacted like 

 Thorndike's hungry cats and dogs.- 



Lloyd Morgan defines a psychological process as "the middle 

 term between results of complex stimuli from the environment on 

 the one hand, and the results of complex reactions to that envi- 

 ronment on the other hand."'^ Instead of stating our problems in 

 the interests of hypothetical interrelations ot these "middle term" 

 processes, and instead of making our experimental and clinical 

 observations subservient to problems so stated, it seems desirable 

 to pursue a method of studying animal behavior which will keep 

 us more closely in contact with the facts accessible to us. Such 

 a method is realized, I believe, in the clinical^ and experimental 

 study of reaction-types. 



It is true that partially objective methods have been followed 

 in this field so far as the higher vertebrates are conerned, but the 

 divorcement from middle term speculative demands has been 

 more apparent than real. Otherwise, there would be no appeal 

 to "criteria of conciousness;"' no catering to hypothetical modes 

 of mental elaboration of sense-data; and, in short, no need of 

 psychological inferences, in our interpretations of animal behavior. 



Animal behavior affords data for the solution of a great and 

 comprehensive problem: Starting with the assumption that from 

 the lowest forms of life to human life, there is an ever increasing 

 adequacy of adjustment to complex environments, and that the 

 adequacy (in the sense of complexity) of adjustment implies a cor- 

 responding complexity of effective inner elaboration intervening 

 between reception of stimuli and reaction to them, the general 



^ Thorxdike, E. L., Animal Intelligence. Psychological Review Monograph supplement, vol. 2, 

 no. 4, pp. 30-32. 1898. 



3 Lloyd Morgan. Comparative and Genetic Psychology. Psychological Review, \o\. 12, p. 79. 1905. 



* For the lack of a better term "clinical" is used here to indicate the kind of observation that is 

 employed by the psychiatrist in his studies of insane patients. It is generally recognized by clinical 

 psychiatrists that the academically trained psychologist (if he lack adequate clinical knowledge of insan- 

 ity) is greatly hampered in his experimentation with patients by his lack of clinical checks upon his work. 

 The case is quite analogous where experimental work with animals is not supplemented by prolonged 

 and extensive observation of the subjects.dealt with. 



^SeeYERKES, Animal Psychology and the Criteria of the Psychic. Journal of Philosophy, Psychol- 

 ogy and Scientific Methods, vol. 2, pp. 141-150, 1905, for a viewpoint which recognizes the value of 

 psychological inferences. 



