Psychology, general and applied

Front matter

UBRARY OF CONGRESS

Class Book.

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

Preface

It can hardly be claimed that a new textbook of psychology is needed because there is lack of old ones. On the contrary, we have a bewildering variety, and America has contributed a large and brilliant share. Yet the plan and aim of the present book are very different from all of them.

One difference is indicated even by its sub-title; it includes the applied psychology as well as the general. Hitherto the textbooks have been confined to the theoretical study. The time seems ripe for bringing the psychological work into full contact with the practical efforts of civilization. The application of psychological studies to education and law, to industry and commerce, to health and hygiene, to art and science, deserves its place in the psychological curriculum. Thus the last third of this book may be a supplement to any other textbook.

But the book adds to the usual material still another essential part. The psychology of our textbooks is individual psychology; this volume also includes the social psychology. The processes which result from the social contact have traditionally been neglected, because individual psychology had to reach a certain completeness before the scientific interest could turn to social consciousness. But our day, which has seen the ripening of applied psychology, has brought us also the rapid growth of social psychology, and its outlines ought to be drawn in any map of the psychological world.

Finally, the traditional psychology is confined to descriptions and explanations. Yery justly, such an explanatory account of mental life omits an entirely different

vii viii PEEFACE

aspect, its inner meaning. But this meaning of the acts of our mind offers, after all, problems of its own. They must be solved; we cannot simpjy ignore them. This book, therefore, traces them in a special part, called Purposive Psychology. Our causal psychology is and must be a psychology without a soul, the purposive psychology culminates in the understanding of the soul and its freedom.

While the addition of an applied, a social and a purposive part makes the material of this book very different from the others, its method, too, deviates in many respects from the customary procedure. I may mention one negative feature: it is not concerned with the structure of the l^rain and of the sense organs. A book which sketches the outlines of psychology cannot include the details of accessory sciences like the anatomy of the nervous system. In a college course the instructor may easily add such information and show pictures and models.

On the other hand, the book emphasizes the principles, both the biological-physiological and the philosophical. Those who dislike to touch philosophical problems in psychology can easily omit the chapters on the principles of causal psychology and again those on purposive psychology. Yet it is hardly wise to encourage this aversion for the wider aspects. Do we not deceive ourselves if we fancy that we can approach the study of mental states with the same naivete with which we can turn to the study of minerals and plants?

HUGO MtJNSTERBERG.

Harvard University, May, 1914.

Contents

INTRODUCTION THE AIMS OF PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Interest in Psychology 1

Book I

CAUSAL PSYCHOLOGY PART I. PRINCIPLES OF CAUSAL PSYCHOLOGY

III. Psychological Explanation 21

Psychological laws, 21. The unconscious, 24. The subconscious dispositions, 26. The subconscious operations, 28.

IV. Psychophysical Explanation 34

Connection of mind and brain, 34. Psychophysical parallelism, 39.

V. Scope and Methods of Causal Psychology . 43 The subdivisions of psj^chology, 43. Selfobservation, 47. Indirect obseiwation, 50. Experimental psychology, 52, ix

CONTENTS

Part II. The Individual Processes A. The Elementary Individual Processes Chapter Page

YI. The Nervous System .59

The sense organ-brain-muscle arc, 59. The development of the nervous system, 61. The biological aspect of man, 65.

VII. Stimulation 70

The psychical elements, 70. Optical stimulation : The system of light sensations, 72; Saturation and brightness, 75; The visual stimuli, 78. Auditory stimulation : The system of sound sensations, 85 ; The acoustic stimuli, 87. The lower sense stimulations : Taste, 95 ; Smell, 97; Touch, 98; Temperature, 100. Internal stimulation : Movement sensations, 101 ; Feeling sensations, 105.

VIII. Association . . . o 107

After-effects in the nerve centers, 107. Association by contiguity, 111. Association by similarity, 113. The character of the reproduction, 116. Conditions of association, 119.

IX. Reaction . 122

The motor process, 122. The sensory effects of the motor processes, 127

X. Inhibition 131

The suppression of mental contents, 131. The central problem of inhibition, 135. The inhibition of actions, 138. The action theory, 139.

B. THE COMPLEX INDIVIDUAL PROCESSES

XI. Perception 145

Unity of perception, 145. The elements "of space perception, 147. Space perception and muscle action, 150. Theory of space percep-

CONTEXTS xi

CHAPTER PAGE

tion, 152. Perception of time, 156. Perception of meaning, 160.

XII. Ideas . . 165

Memory, 165. Imagination, 170. General ideas, 172.

XIII. ACTR'ITY 176

The impulse feeling, 176. The rivalry of motives, 179. Complex actions, 183. Attention, 187. The thought process, 192.

XIV. Inner States 196

Pleasure and displeasure, 196. The physiological basis of simple feelings, 198. The manifoldness of feelings, 201. Emotions, 203. The esthetic attitude, 207. The intellectual attitude, 209.

XV. Personality 213

The unitj^ of the jDersonality, 213. Selfconsciousness, 216. The variations of the personality, 221.

Part III. The Social Group

A. ELEMENTARY GROUP PROCESSES

XVI. Individual Differences 221

The aim of social psychology, 224. Childhood and maturit}'-, 227. Sex and race, 231. Character and temperament, 235. Intelligence, 238. Abnormal variations, 211.'

XVII. Union 246

The conditions of organization, 246. Voluntary and involuntary communication, 248. Language, 250. Associations, 251.

XVIII. Submission 254

Suggestion and selfassertion, 254. Imitation and sympathy, 259. Aggression and selfexpression, 262.

xii CONTENTS

B. THE COMPLEX SOCIAL PROCESSES

CHAPTEK PAGE

XIX. Oeganization 265

The individual and the social mind, 265. Involuntary combinations, 269. Intentional combinations, 273.

XX. Achievement .• 275

The biological aspect, 275. Material and methods, 277. The types of social achievements, 278.

Part I. Principles Of Purposive Psychology

XXI. Immediate Reality 285

The two psychologies, 285. Causal psychology and reality, 288. Scientific reconstruction, 290. Purposive understanding, 293.

XXII. The Soul 297

Purposive acts and causality, 297. Purposive acts and time, 301. The connection of purposive acts, 302. The function of the soul, 306.

Part II. The Individual Experiences

XXIII. Meaning 310

Meaning in practical life, 310. Problems and methods, 312. The pointing to an opposite, 315. The affirmation of sameness, 316.

XXIV. Creation 321

Analysis of purposes, 321. The freedom of the will, 323. The creative power, 326.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XXV.

Part III. The Social Experiences Page

Practical Relations 329

Understanding, 329. Interpretation, 330.

XXVI. Ideal Relatioxs 335

The ideal purposes, 335. The normative acts, 336.

Book III Applied Psychology Part I. Principles Of Applied Psychology

XXVII. The Aim of Practical Psychology .... 341 The present situation of practical psychology, 341. The limitations of applied psychology, 346.

XXVIII. The Psychohistorical Sciences 352

Two types of application, 352, Historical individuals, 356. Historical social events, 359. History and purposive psychology, 363.

PART 11. THE PSYCHOTECHNICAL SCIENCES

XXIX. Educational Psychology 365

The educational pmposes, 365. The imparting of knowledge, 369. The development of abilities, 375. The arousing of feelings, • 380. The work of the pupils, 382. The selection of studies, 386. Adjustment to individual differences, 389.

XXX. Legal Psychology 395

The report of the witness, 395. Memory and suggestibility of the witness, 398, The discoveiy of hidden ideas, 402, The court and the criminal, 406. Prevention of crime, 409.

XIV

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

Psychotechnics of commerce and industry 413. The selection of the industrial worker, 415. The adjustment by experimental methods, 418. The apprentice, 421. The technic 423. Monotony and fatigue, 425. The interests of commerce, 428.

Medical Psychology .........

The practical standpoint, 435. Diagnosis of physical disturbances, 437. Diagnosis of mental disturbances, 438. The effect of drugs, 443. Psychotherapy, 443. Prevention of disease, 448.

Cultural Psychology

The outlying fields of psychotechnics, 452. Life enjoyment, 454. The fine arts, 455. Music and poetry, 460. The work of the scientist, 462. The work of the historian and of the philologist, 466. The work of the psychologist, 469.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION. THE AIMS OF PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter I The Interest In Psychology

Naive Interest in Psychology. — Long before we turned to any scientific psychology, we all were interested in the traits of mental life. To be sure, we watched our material surroundings and were captivated by the happenings of outer nature, before we became aware of the processes in our inner life. But, after all, everybody noticed early whether his memory worked well or badly, how his attention sometimes failed him, how he was able or unable to think out a problem, how fear or hope, and joy or anger, arose in him. He may have been startled by the wonders of his dreams or by the play of his imagination; he may have thought about the limits of his personal talents or about the special gifts of his mind ; he may have felt conflicts between his resolutions and his will. In short, the naive curiosity which turned first to toys and tools, to stones and plants, later turned to memory ideas and fancies of the imagination, to feelings and excitements, to acts of desire and of volition, to talent and intelligence. They cannot be found without: the attention must turn inward to observe them. But at the same time we knew and watched the inner life of the other people around us. We became aware of the varied behavior of men and followed their expression, we tried to understand their peculiar ways and became interested in the display of emotions of those with whom we were in contact. This interest in the behavior of other beings extends to dog and horse and bird.

All such naive observing of our own mental life and of that of our friends satisfies the natural desire for knowledge, even if the knowledge is not useful for any practical ends. Yet the practical life drives us steadily toward such observation, too. We do not want merely to take notice of the curious fact that something which we did remember has slipped from our memory, or that the solution of a problem suddenly rushes to our mind, or that our attention wanders away during a lecture, or that our liking was stronger than our will. We want to understand still more how much we can trust our memory and our attention and our will, and how we can train our mind or how we can suppress an unwelcome emotion. Above all, we want to look into our neighbor's mind for our practical purposes. How will he behave? His friendliness or his unkindness, his carefulness or his negligence, his good or his bad memory, his humor or his character, may be matters of deep concern to us. We try to foresee how another's mind will work just as we try to foresee how the physical instruments and the chemical substances will help or hinder us.

At first all this remains unconnected, and does not shape itself into any general idea of mind and mind's action. But it easily leads further from mere curiosity to an earnest interest. The haphazard knowledge of human behavior becomes broader, we notice regularities which occur in our mental life, we get a clearer insight into its limitations, and we may be led to a common sense theory about the nature of that inner being. We begin to think about the relation of the mind to the body, of freedom and re-

THE INTEEEST IN PSYCHOLOGY 3

sponsibility, of the inheritance of mental qualities, of the life of the mind after death. In the same way our observation of mental life in the interest of practical purposes becomes deeper and wider. The manifold purposes of civilization demand this from us. We cannot bring up children or teach them in classrooms wdthout carefully watching their mental qualities and without trying to foresee how their minds will work in new situations. We cannot deal with criminals in the courtroom without trying to analyze the motives w^hich impel them. Nor can we be in politics without thinking about the ideas and impulses, the character and the abilities of the public men. We cannot be interested in industrial problems and social questions without giving attention to the mind of the workingman, to his fatigue and to his feelings, to the strain on his attention and to the satisfaction of his desires.

Theoretical interest and practical demands alike lead us in this way at first to a naive, and then to a deliberate, watching of mental life, and by this to the gate of psychology. We need only to make the observation more painstaking and careful, more extended and systematic, and we are in the midst of psychology. Of course as soon as we aim toward such deliberate study of the mind, we shall apply more reliable methods than a mere occasional watching of events in our inner life or in the behavior of our neighbors. The botanist, when he examines the plants, can no longer be satisfied with the way in which the friend of nature strolls through the woods and the meadows, picking the flowers which he likes along the path; he seeks definite kinds of plants, dissects them and studies them under his microscope. The psychologist, too, will make himself independent of mere chance, will collect his data from the widest fields of human experience, will produce mental processes at will in order to examine them, will provoke all kinds of mental behavior in man and animal, will compare the mental characteristics in adult and child, in man and woman, in normal and diseased persons, in different races and under different conditions of life. He will repeat and repeat his observations, will disentangle the complex inner states and will seek the elements from which they are composed, and he, too, will use subtle instruments and carefully adjusted apparatus to discover the real facts. But with all this refinement of method and with the expansion of the outlook, the original interest does not change its character, but only its strength and seriousness.

Scientific Interest in Psychology. — The motives which may lead us to the systematic study of psychology are as manifold as the naive interests. First of all, we want to understand the working of the mind, the laws which control its processes, the conditions under which it works, the effects which it produces ; we want to understand the inner ties between our mental states, their meaning, the elements which enter into them. This theoretical science will branch out into special sciences which deal with child psychology or pathological psychology or animal psychology or the psychology of individual differences. Moreover the study cannot be confined to single individuals. Their mental life is combined in social action. If we are to understand mental life, we must follow up the working together of human minds from the simplest contact in a friendly talk to the firmest connections in a life of mutual devotion, from the narrowest circle of the family to the widest circle of the civilized nations. The behavior of the social group and the laws of the social mind and the meaning of the social impulses thus fall no less into the compass of psychological interest.

But, as on the level of simple commonsense, so now on the higher level of science, we cannot remain merely theoretical. The practical demands take control of our endeavors. This is not meant in a trivial sense of mere selfish usefulness. Those practical motives with which we may approach the study of psychology are of service to

THE INTEREST IN PSYCHOLOGY 5

the highest tasks of cultured society. The aims of education and justice, of health and social reform, of industrial enterprise and esthetic achievement, make it daily more necessary to understand the mental factor which enters into the social practice. The engineer must recognize that the mind of the workingman is no less important for the final industrial outcome than the machines. The lawyer cannot confine his interest to the legal problem; he must understand the working of the minds of all who figure in the court, the defendant and the plaintiff, the witness and the jury. The teacher of our modem days knows that an understanding of the mind of the pupils is worthy of the same scholarly effort which is devoted to the content of instruction. The physician is aware that his drugs and his remedies must be supplemented by carefully adjusted influences on the mind of the patient.

The application of psychological knowledge, however, may not be limited to the practical tasks to be fulfilled. We may apply psychology for the understanding of the life around us and of the life which has passed away. With the interest of the historian we may try to analyze the psychological processes of the events of earlier times. The personalities of the heroes and the movements of the masses, the leaders in politics and in war, in religion and in art and in every unfolding of civilization may be brought nearer to our understanding by the application of psychology. The great wars and revolutions, the growth of nations and their decay, the development of religions and arts, the changes in the language and customs, all may be explained with the help of psychological knowledge.

We desire to know and to understand the working of the mind with the theoretical interest with which we study the stones and the stars. We feel the practical interest which makes us master the mental reality to use it as a tool for the purposes of civilization. Yet these are not the only motives for such a study. The interests which lead toward the pursuit of scholarly psychology may arise from a still deeper source. We want to understand the problems of inner life and of human behavior, because we feel, at first vaguely, that they are intimately connected with the ultimate questions of our life reality. To understand the science of our mind then no longer means to acquire some little specialistic knowledge, as if we were to learn a chance chapter of natural science or history, but it means insight into the last meaning of our total existence : what are we, and whence do we come ? Is our will free in its decisions, or is it dependent upon the actions of the brain? Is our mind really controlling our body, or are our mental processes only accompanying the currents in the nervous system? And such questions lead at once to those of freedom and responsibility, and further on to the deepest problems of duty and morality, and ultimately of religion. Or again we may turn to psychology under the pressure of other philosophical doubts. We seek truth and beauty and morality in the belief that these ideals have a lasting value of their own; must not our loyal belief be undermined by the understanding that such thoughts of ideals are merely processes in individual minds, and thus dependent upon the psychological laws? How can these ideals be valid for us personally, how can they be binding for mankind, if they are nothing but the passing states of our mind, like memories and dreams? The deepest concerns of our soul are here involved.

Chapter II The Realm Of Psychology

The Definitions of Psychology. — We have discussed the reasons why men may turn to psychology, but we have not as yet stated what psychology really is. We have gone on without any exact definition ; we have so far left everything in the vague and indefinite form in which commonsense takes hold of it. We have spoken of inner life or of mental states or of human behavior, of observing our inner experience, of understanding personalities, of describing and explaining the processes of the mind, and we have used some other similarly general terms without even asking whether they characterize correctly the aims of the psychologist. We might just as well have spoken of the soul or of consciousness, or, to use the more scholarly term, of psychical phenomena. No one of such phrases was proposed as a definition to mark out clearly the work which the student of psychology has to take up.

Usually textbooks of psychology begin with a precise definition. We have abstained from that, because there is some danger involved in such a starting point. All astronomers agree as to what astronomy can be and ought to be ; but the psychologists disagree as to the aims of psychology. Only where a consensus of opinion exists can it be right to begin at once with a definite statement of what the particular science is called to undertake. Where different views are possible we have hardly a right to go to the work with a more or less arbitrary decision that one definition and not another is to be accepted. To discover what psychology really is, onight to be the goal of a penetrating inquiry. Various possibilities ought to be considered. The neglect of this demand has too often led to a regrettable one-sidedness. It may even be that the inner life demands different kinds of scientific treatment, which may be equally justified and which may equally fall into the compass of that which the vagueness of commonsense would call psychology. Then we should have no right to say that, because one kind of psychology is valuable, therefore no other exists. There may be two or more standpoints possible in psychology, and a general definition ought to be wide enough to include them. Yes, it may be said that to reach a clear understanding as to the true meaning of psychology is a more difficult task than the solution of any special psychological prohlem. And it must be frankly confessed that, while modern psychology has made rapid progress in the mastery of the special facts, it has progressed only slowly toward this fundamental problem of psychology, what its aim ought to be.

This may seem to some a slow way of approach. They are anxious to come to the actual facts of mental life and to study the realities of conscious experience instead of entering into cumbersome discussions about the principles and underlying purposes of psychology. They do not want abstract theories, which seem to them a wrangling about words, but are longing for a knowledge of concrete processes and their laws. But such a desire for a hasty approach to the details is ill advised; its hope is illusory. The uncritical rush toward the mental states cannot bring us nearer to them. "We must know first what kind of facts belong to our study, and what way of approach is demanded by it. And if we do not settle these preliminary questions patiently, we cannot wonder if later we find confusion among the so-called facts.

The objects of psychology cannot be collected like flow-

THE REALM OF PSYCHOLOGY 9

ers, which we pick, and butterflies, which we catch, and which we can bring home and show to others. IMemory ideas and imaginative acts, feelings and emotions, volitions and judgments are not facts which can be picked or caught. And if we speak of them, describe them to others, and make their meaning clear, or explain them, we must have somehow settled for ourselves those problems of theory. We cannot take hold of any mental facts without seeing them through some kind of a theory, and, if we really aim toward a consistent view of mental life, we have no right to be satisfied with the superficialities of commonsense or with the dogmatic statements of an arbitrary definition : we must really examine what it means to speak of psychological facts, and how psychology is to approach them.

As to certain aims, to be sure, all psychologists agree. Here, above all, belongs their decision to abstain from any judgment of value. If the psychologist approaches mental life, he has no interest in asking whether the mental states are valuable or not. He does not care whether the will impulses in the mind are good or bad, moral or immoral, whether the imaginings of the mind are beautiful or ugly, whether the thoughts in the mind are wise or foolish, whether the emotions of the mind are holy or sinful. The dissecting botanist is interested in the ugliest weed as much as in the beautiful flower, the chemist cares for the constitution of the deadly poison as much as for that of the helpful drug. In the same way the psychologist is surely interested in the analysis of the criminal act as much as in that of the heroic deed, in the babbling of the insane mind as much as in the reasoning of the thinker, in the silliest play of the infant as much as in the highest creative processes of the artistic mind. He remains the neutral observer who understands and explains the mental events without forming a judgment on them. As soon as he begins to evaluate them he oversteps the boundaries of his realm and is trespassing on the fields of logic, ethics and esthetics.

But so long as we only agree that the value aspect of mental life is not accessible to the psychologist, we have not settled anything as to his material. We may begin here, too, with a negative claim: the psychologist is not concerned with the outer physical objects. The processes and laws of bodies as such are never the material for a psychological study. Yet with this we are already approaching debatable ground. Some might doubt the correctness of this sweeping statement, and limit it to the inorganic world and the vegetable kingdom. They would say that, if we approach the bodies of the animals and above all the bodies of the human organisms, we have a part of the physical world before us which is of greatest importance for the psychologist. But there is no real contradiction. Nobody can doubt that the mental life which the psychologist studies is most intimately connected with the functions of the body, of the nervous system, of the brain. But while it is so firmly connected, and while the body and its functions are thus indeed of deepest import for the psychologist, the body is not itself the real object of his study. The growth of the flowers is intimately dependent upon the soil and the water and the light, and yet water and light and soil are not the objects of the botanist's study. The mental life may be dependent upon the nervous system and the brain, but it does not consist of such physical processes.

The Two Standpoints in Psychology. — The elements which we have gathered so far in order to define the aims of psychology are two. "We have said that the psychologist is interested only in the inner experiences as against the outer physical world, and that he has to do with them in a theoretical way, abstaining from all judgments of value, from all liking and disliking, praising and blaming. But this is certainly still insufficient for a positive

THE REALM OF PSYCHOLOGY 11

account of his actual work, because the chief question remains: what is inner experience, what is our inner personal life? The difficulty lies in the fact that we can take account of ourselves in several ways and the inner experience may thus appear as something very different, from different standpoints. The frequent failure to discriminate them is more than anything else responsible for the confusion and the shortcomings in the field of psychology. We can take two fundamental attitudes toward the inner experience, and both are important and significant; we have no right to prefer the one to the exclusion of the other, or, worst of all, to mix the two in a haphazard way. Those two attitudes do not start with scholarly psychology. They prevail in our ordinary life and are intertwined in our daily intercourse. We may perhaps suggest the difference at first in saying that we can try to explain mental life and that we can try to understand mental life.

If someone asks us a question, our aim is to understand what he has in mind. We try to enter into his thought and to understand his feeling about it, in order to take an attitude toward the question in answering yes or no. If we succeed, we feel sure that we have grasped everything which is in the questioner's mind. His whole inner experience has become clear to us and is completely understood. Yet exactly the same mental process of the questioner might awake in us an entirely different interest. Instead of considering the meaning, we might ask ourselves what causes these thoughts and feelings. How did those ideas enter the mind? Are they perhaps effects of some earlier experience ? How do those questions arise in consciousness, and from what elements are they composed ? Then we look on the other man 's mind as a kind of mental mechanism, made up of a variety of mental states, the appearance and disappearance of which demand some kind of explanation. We may even explain them by brain processes of which the questioner himself does not know anything, or by after-effects of earlier impressions which he may have forgotten.

These two standpoints present themselves in every bit of experience. If a man commits a crime, we may be interested in understanding the motives and aims in his mind, and, if we are to judge his deed, we certainly must try to think ourselves into his mind, in order to understand his action from the inside. His emotions and his volition, his crime, everything is to be understood as the expression of his personality. Only through this do we enter into his self. Yet we might study the same criminal from an entirely different point of view ; we might ask ourselves from what causes this criminal deed arose in this man. How far are his education, his life habits, his surroundings, his state of health responsible for the development of these impulses ? How far did the fatigue of his brain, or the influence of alcohol, or a disease produce the abnormal impulse? What causes interfered with the mental resistance of his will? From what source did the ideas or the memories and the hopes or fears arise, and how did they come to result in that criminal deed?