PSYCHOLOGY 



6381 



PSYCHOLOGY: THE SCIENCE OF MIND 



T. P. Nunii, D.Sc., Prof, of Education, London Day Training College 



Kindred articles are those on Metaphysics and Mind. See also 



Intelligence Tests ; Memory ; Perception ; Suggestion ; Will 



The inquirer into psychology is 

 faced by a preliminary obstacle 

 hardly to be met elsewhere : 

 namely, that the professors are 

 seriously at odds even about the 

 object of their science. Speaking 

 broadly, they fall into two schools. 



The older school have their do- 

 mestic differences, but agree in re- 

 garding psychology as the science 

 of mental phenomena, meaning by 

 that term sensations, emotions, 

 memories, thoughts, acts of will 

 and the like. Moreover, they are 

 in genera! agreement about the 

 way in which mental phenomena 

 should be studied. Sensations, 

 feelings, etc., are private pro- 

 perty which no one but their pos- 

 sessor can observe ; no one else can 

 know how a colour appears to me, 

 what mental picture I have before 

 my mind's eye, what precise de- 

 gree of agony a bad tooth is causing 

 me. We often make inferences 

 about another's experience as 

 when we judge from his expression 

 that he is angry but the ex- 

 perience itself is accessible only to 

 its owner. Thus there is, ulti- 

 mately, only one method of inquiry 

 in psychology, the method of intro- 

 spection, or of looking into one's 

 mind to see what is there. 



The younger school both dis- 

 claim the object and reject the 

 method of the older psychologists. 

 A science, they argue, cannot be 

 based on private knowledge ; it 

 must deal with facts open to all 

 competent observers. Hence psy- 

 chology, if it is to be counted a 

 science, must change its ways and 

 model itself anew upon physiology. 

 Just as physiology seeks to deter- 

 mine how particular organs behave 

 under given conditions, so psy- 

 chology should interest itself in the 

 behaviour of the individual as a 

 whole when he is brought into 

 carefully stated situations. This 

 does not rule out self-observation 

 altogether, but it does rule out all 

 observation of my own behaviour 

 which another could not make. 



Results of Introspective Psychology 



In spite of the " behaviourists," 

 it must be admitted that intro- 

 spective psychology has obtained 

 results of permanent value. To 

 begin with, there is the law that 

 every mental occurrence has thres 

 aspects, technically known as cog- 

 nitive, affective, and conative. To 

 take a simple instance : I catch 

 sight of a colour (cognition), am 

 pleased or displeased by it (affect), 

 and adjust myself to see it better 

 or to avoid its sight (conation). 



Under cognition the chief dis- 

 tinctions are between sensations, 

 percepts, images, and thoughts or 

 ideas. Sensations are immediately 

 caused by the stimulation of par- 

 ticular nerve-ends or " receptors." 

 Sensations of light, sound, tem- 

 perature, touch, taste, smell are 

 familiar instances ; less obvious are 

 the " kinaesthetic " sensations 

 which keep us aware of the posture 

 and movements of the limbs. The 

 studj' of all these has been carried 

 to a high degree of refinement. 

 Sensation and Perception 



Sensation is, however, hardly to 

 be called cognition ; it is rather the 

 gateway by which we reach actual 

 knowledge of the external world. 

 A certain prolonged sound falls on 

 my ears, and I say " A tram is 

 coming," or a certain group of 

 light and colour sensations prompts 

 the remark, " There is my pipe." 

 This passage of the mind from sen- 

 sations to the external objects they 

 announce is called perception. It 

 has been aptly compared with what 

 happens in reading, when the mind 

 passes by way of the printed 

 characters to the message they de- 

 liver. Like reading, perception de- 

 pends on accumulated experience : 

 a baby would hear only a noise, 

 he would not hear the tram-car. 

 By perception we gradually build 

 up our vision of the outside world 

 as consisting of distinct objects. 



Anything once perceived may 

 come before the mind again as a 

 mental image. I may, for example, 

 have a visual image of an absent 

 friend, an auditory image of a 

 familiar tune, an olfactory image 

 of the smell of violets, etc. Adults 

 differ widely in the kind and 

 amount of their imagery ; abstract 

 thinkers, for instance, were found 

 by Galton to be notably deficient 

 in visual images. Verbal imagery 

 that is, recall of the appearance 

 or sound of words, or of the move- 

 ment made in pronouncing them 

 is, however, rarely if ever absent 

 from such processes as silent writ- 

 ing or thinking ; as may be verified 

 by writing a few sentences and 

 noting the " inner speech " which 

 accompanies the movements of 

 the pen. 



Thinking may be defined broadly 

 as the mind's activity when en- 

 gaged with absent things or with 

 " concepts ' i.e. the meanings or 

 " patterns " which it has found in 

 and abstracted from its experience. 

 It includes remembering, associa- 

 tion (when one thing " brings up " 

 another), imagination, and reason- 



FSYCHOLOGY 



ing. Imagery, sensual or verbal, 

 plays in these processes a part 

 similar to the role of sensations in 

 perception ; it is a controverted 

 question whether imageless thought 

 can ever occur. 



Under affects we must distin- 

 guish between (1) physical pain 

 and pleasure, (2) " feeling-tone," 

 and (3) emotions. Physical pain 

 (e.g. the pain of a burn) is now 

 known to be a sensation caused by 

 stimulation of definite nerve-ends ; 

 the same thing is probably true 

 of certain physical pleasures. 

 Feeling-tone is the varying current 

 of pleasantness or unpleasantness 

 which accompanies all experience. 

 Its distinctness from physical pain 

 and pleasure is illustrated Y>y the 

 observation that a pain, if not too 

 severe, is often rather pleasant. 

 The nature of emotions, such as 

 fear, anger, joy, etc., has been 

 much disputed. According to the 

 famous James-Lange theory, they 

 are simply strongly toned sensa- 

 tions. We do not cry or strike, 

 says James, because we are sorry 

 or angry ; we are sorry or angry 

 because we cry or strike i.e. the 

 emotions are simply feelings, 

 strongly pleasant or unpleasant, 

 which arise from the physiological 

 activities and movements of the 

 body. Most psychologists hold, 

 however, that well-defined emo- 

 tions (e.g. fear and anger) contain 

 affective elements not to be 

 accounted for in this way. 

 Conation and Biology 



By conation psychologists mean 

 the element of striving which 

 occurs everywhere in conscious 

 life. It is best seen in interest and 

 sustained attention, in desire, pur- 

 pose, and will, but is present 

 equally in the simplest mental 

 acts. Under the influence of bio- 

 logy conation has come to take the 

 central place in the psychological 

 scheme. Man, like the lower 

 creatures, is thought of as essen- 

 tially a " behaving animal," his 

 life as a series of purposive re- 

 actions to his environment ; per- 

 cepts and ideas are then regarded 

 as signals which release or control 

 those reactions, emotions as the 

 sources from which they are ener- 

 gised or inhibited. 



The biological trend in recent 

 psychology is well illustrated by 

 Prof. W. McDougall's work. Upon 

 his view human behaviour, how- 

 ever complex it may become, is 

 actually developed along a few 

 main lines which are marked out 

 by the instincts man has inherited 

 from his animal ancestors. The 

 central element in each instinct is 

 a specific emotion (e.g. fear) which 

 is awakened by a specific kind of 

 object (e.g. a beast of prey) and 



