BOOK REVIEWS 



WATSON, JOHN B. Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. 

 Philadelphia, 1919, xiv + 429 pages. 



The aim of this book seems to be to present a common-sense psy- 

 chology freed. from the hampering restrictions of uncontrolled subjec- 

 tivism and parallelistic or other incomprehensible metaphysics. The 

 novitiate, we are told, has to endure no holy vigil nor pass through 

 secret initiation ceremonies before seriously beginning his work. 



Just what may be the special province of psychology as here delim- 

 ited, however, remains obscure to the uninitiated reader despite numer- 

 ous passages intended to clarify the question. The "matter of envi- 

 ronmental adjustment" (p. 9) has been claimed since before the day of 

 Herbert Spencer as the most fundamental of all general biological 

 activities. Again, it will be hard to find a clearer statement of the 

 aims of neuro-physiology than this (p. 10): "The goal of psychological 

 study is the ascertaining of such data and laws that, given the stim- 

 ulus, psychology can predict what the response will be; or, on the other 

 hand, given the response, it can specify the nature of the effective 

 stimulus." 



The formal differentiation of this psychology from physiology (p. 19) 

 leaves the physiologist somewhat in the condition of the man who has 

 not only been robbed of the key to his treasure chest but sharply rapped 

 on the head to boot. " Physiology teaches us concerning the functions 

 of the special organs, .... but nowhere in physiology do we 

 get the organism, as it were, put back together again and tested in 

 relation to its environment as a whole." It is true that "all the king's 

 horses and all the king's men" in the service of physiology have not yet 

 succeeded in accomplishing this feat, yet the very creditable advances 

 toward this consummation in the volume before us read very like 

 excellent experimental physiology. 



Following the first chapter on Problems and Scope of Psychology is 

 a chapter on Psychological Methods in which some of the usual phys- 

 iological methods as employed in psychological laboratories are briefly 

 described, together with sections on Verbal Report Methods and 

 Methods of Testing. In the next chapter (The Receptors and their 

 Stimuli) 65 pages are devoted to the elements of sense physiology. 



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