DISCOVERY 



335 



The Independence of 

 Psychology ' 



By Charles S. Myers, M.D., Sc.D., F.R.S. 



Director of the Psijchotofjicat Laboratory^ Uniuersily of Canibrid'je 



In his address to the Subsection of Psychology last year. 

 Dr. Rivers dealt with recent advances in our under- 

 standing of mental disorders and their treatment. 

 Since the war, my immediate interests have been turned 

 from this to another field of applied psychology, namely 

 to industrial psjxhology : but as my work in it has 

 lain rather in the direction of organisation than of per- 

 sonal research, I have decided to leave this subject to 

 the contributors of the seven papers bearing on it, 

 which will later come before tliis Subsection, and to 

 turn to a broader problem for my address — the general 

 position of psychology at the present day, particularly 

 in relation to physiology. In the choice and treatment 

 of this theme I have been influenced, first by the 

 unanimous opinion of psychologists that the time has 

 come for the institution of a separate section of this 

 Association devoted to Psychology', and secondly by 

 the fact that a discussion between physiologists and 

 psychologists has been arranged to follow my address, 

 in order that this opinion may be fuUy debated. 



It is perhaps superfluous to point to the growing 

 interest in and importance of psychology during the 

 past four or five years, whether as illustrated by the 

 recent increase of membership of the British Psycho- 

 logical Society to upwards of six hundred persons, by 

 the noteworthy applications of psychology to warfare, 

 medicine, education, industr\', and other social prob- 

 lems, by the recognition of psychology as one of the 

 subjects for a Degree in Science at several of our Univer- 

 sities, by the establishment of University Boards of 

 Psychological Studies, or by the striking increase in 

 the number of students attending lectures and engaged 

 in research in psychology since the war. 



Psychology is now recognised as a distinct subject of 

 study, with methods and aims of its own, which are 

 quite different from those of philosophy or of physiology 

 — the two studies to which it owes most, for its inception 

 and for its emancipation respectively. Freed from 

 its long tutelage under philosophy, it has at length been 

 able to assume the character and the aims of Modern 

 Science, which, as Dr. Singer has recently pointed out,^ 

 unhke the Science of the Greeks, did not arise as an off- 

 spring of philosophy, but only later began to form an 

 aUiance with it. As a modern science, psychology is able 



'■ .\n opening adJress to the Subsection of Psychology at 

 the Cardiff Meeting of the British Association, 1920. 



• In his Inaugural Lecture, Greek Science and Modern Science, 

 London : University of London Press, 1920. 



to lay aside such metaphysical problems as the relation 

 of mind to body, \vith its implications of materialism, 

 idealism, parallelism, interactionism, determinism, and 

 free-will. The views which psychologists may hold on 

 the problem of the mind-body relation will interfere 

 no more with the progress of scientific psjxhology than 

 the conflicting views on vitalism and mechanism inter- 

 fere with the progress of physiology. There arc many 

 who believe that such problems will never be solved 

 by the methods of natural science. But all are agreed 

 that, whatever opinions an investigator may hold in re- 

 gard to them, those opinions need net hinder him, any 

 more than his religious opinions, from advancing his 

 subject by scientific research. 



Freed also now from the scientific leading-strings of 

 physiolog3% psychology is able to devote itself purely 

 to the study of mental processes, their functions, re- 

 lation, and natural history, the results of their sj-n- 

 thesis and analysis, their growth and decay in the 

 individual, their comparison and evolution in the race, 

 species, and genus, and their abnormal variations, in 

 excess or defect, due to heredity, disease, drugs, or 

 injury. Psychology now studies mental processes for 

 their own sake, neither because of their interest for 

 metaphysicians in support of some wide-cast theory of 

 knowledge, of reality, or of the universe, nor because of 

 their interest for physiologists who seek to determine 

 the functions of hving substance. 



Most of us, not all perhaps, have passed beyond the 

 stage of crass materialism, when the mind was regarded 

 as the " function " of the brain— secreted by nerve ceOs 

 j ust as the cells of the liver secrete bile. We now recog- 

 nise that it is the nervous impulse, not the mental pro- 

 cess, that results physiologically from the activity of 

 the neuron,^ and that it is the nervous impulse which 

 is the subject of study of neural * physiology. It is, of 

 course, always interesting and often valuable to correlate 

 nervous and mental processes ; but, so long as we are 

 ignorant of the nature of their interrelation, the two 

 must be kept separate and not confused. Anyone who 

 speaks of a sensation ascending a nerve, or of a thought 

 passing through the brain, at once betrays his incom- 

 petence. 



The independence of psychology and physiology is 

 further illustrated by the different sources from which 

 the former has obtained its recruits. Neither Francis 

 Galton, the father of experimental human psychology 

 in this country, nor Lloyd Morgan, one of the fathers 

 of experimental animal psychology, could be called 

 physiologists. Nor, on the Continent, had the versatile 

 Fechner or the physicist Mach received physiological 

 training. Moreover, some of the most recent advances 

 of psychology, due especially to the work of Janet, 



' The nerve cell with its processes. 

 * Relating to the nervous system. 



