SECTION J.—PSYCHOLOGY. 
PURPOSIVE STRIVING 
AS A FUNDAMENTAL CATEGORY OF 
PSYCHOLOGY. 
ADDRESS BY 
PROFESSOR WILLIAM McDOUGALL, F.R.S., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
We who are workers in the various fields of Psychology are happy in the 
knowledge that our science is rapidly developing, extending its influence 
into every sphere of human activity. The institution and the success of 
this Section of the British Association are good evidence that our colleagues 
in the other branches of natural science have recognised the claim of 
Psychology to take its place among those other branches. And, though 
in Great Britain there are still all too few Chairs of Psychology, in Canada 
and America the Universities and Colleges are now providing abundant 
opportunities for teachers, students, and research workers, opportunities 
that are being eagerly and fully used. 
Yet, in spite of this happy state of affairs, there is manifested among 
us psychologists a certain uneasiness as to the status of our science, an 
anxiety lest the psychologist be regarded as not quite really and truly a 
man of science. This anxiety is, I think, exerting an unfortunate influence 
on the development of our science, an influence which shows itself in two 
principal directions. 
On the one hand is a group of psychologists who, actuated by the 
desire to mark off an exclusive field of study as their province, define 
psychology as the science of consciousness and would confine themselves 
to the analytic description of conscious states as complex conjunctions of 
elements or units of some kind. On the other hand are those who, feeling 
that such analytic description, whether it resolves consciousness into a 
complex of sensations or atoms of consciousness, or into larger more 
complex units (the so-called configurations or Gestalten), brings but little 
light on human nature and conduct, and can hardly claim to be in itself 
a science, are driven to the opposite extreme ; they ignore this realm of 
facts, alleged to be the peculiar and distinctive field of psychology, and 
they would bring to the study of man only those methods of observation, 
description, and explanation which are used in the physical sciences. 
These two tendencies, which, when they are carried to extremes, result 
respectively in what is unfortunately called ‘ structural psychology ’ and 
in ‘ behaviorism,’ although so different in their outcome, are but two 
expressions of one desire, the desire to make psychology conform to some 
preconceived notion of what a science is or should be. The “ structuralist ’ 
