Psychology

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

the science of mental phenomena. Opinion is far from unanimous on many of the most important points of psychological doctrine, especially on such points as involve a philosophical view of the nature of mind. Thus, in the first place, we have the view that psychology deals with the facts of the conscious mind which, when knowing, feeling, or striving, ing, is always conscious of itself as knowing, feeling, or striving-i. e., is selfconscious. But it has many difficulties. We can hardly ascribe self -consciousness to the lower animals or to very young children, and yet some kind of mental life clearly belongs to them; so that it would seem that mental life and self-consciousness cannot be identified. Further, many psychologists (including Hamilton) are of opinion that there are mental phenomena unaccompanied by self-consciousness even in mature human life . In the second place, a materialistic view of mind is connected with the attempt to make brain physiology play the part of a psychology . It is plain, however, that a sensation or a feeling of pleasure or pain is a fact of an entirely different order from a neural disturbance. The one may accompany or even cause the other (or both may be only different aspects of the same ultimate existence), but the characteristic nature of the mental fact is not reached by the most thorough investigation of its physiological conditions, while the latter are in many cases much more obscure than the phenomena they are adduced to explain. In the third place, an attempt has been made (sometimes apart from any philosophical hypothesis as to the nature of mind) to start with certain mental facts -called presentations , sensations, or feelings-regarded as ultimate or independent, and to trace the laws and manner of their combination and succession. This method has been worked with excellent result by the English Associationist psychologists. By a similar method, and by treating presentations as forces, Herbart and his followers have elaborated a mechanism of the mind and reduced psychology to mathematical form. The difficulty of this mode of conceiving mind is to explain how a series of sensations -on any interaction of presentationscan generate the consciousness of a self persisting through changing states; and even to give any meaning to sensation or presentation without regarding it as experienced by or presented to mind. On these grounds many psychologists, while influenced by the scientific method of the presentation or sensation is only conmind. So far, mind must be assumed by ceivable as belonging to a subject or the psychologist as implied in the experiment. This subject, or mind as the conence of which he has to trace the developdition of experience, may be admitted to elude psychological observation. Ward (1918); "Psychology of Peoples" Consult "Psychological Principles" Le Bon (1898); "The Mind and Its Ed- Psychology" (1913-1914). ucation" Betts (1916); " Educational disease by the application of mental in- PSYCHOTHERAPY , treatment of fluence. The treatment takes various forms and the conditions of its efficacy depend on the psychical character of the disease and the responsiveness of the symptoms to psychical remedies. Since, however, there is hardly a malady that has not its psychical factors psychotherapy can often supplement the work of it cannot effect a cure. ordinary treatment even in cases where that nearly half the number of known It is estimated diseases have a psychical origin, though, on the other hand, every illness has its physical basis also . The mental influence has to be of a character to fit the case. is of the simplest and a mere prohibition In the case of children the remedy or command or word of flattery and encouragement may have its due effect. There is no limit to the tricks and artifices that may be used from harshness to sympathy, from bullying to wheedling, from playing on prepossessions and personal weaknesses to philosophical argument: all have their place in dealing with the nervously afflicted. The skill of the practitioner will be shown in his capacity for trained observation of the connection between cause and for applying his suggestive influences accordingly. tice falls into a number of divisions, of Psychotherapeutic treatment in pracwhich the most important fall under the heads of hypnosis , suggestion, re-education, and psychoanalysis. These methods of treatment interlap more or less. Hypnosis, as here used, is based largely on the influence of suggestion, seeking means ideas in the patient's mind, while his of fixing certain ameliorative will and consciousness are held in restraint by conditions such as hypnotic sleep. Under the heading of suggestions are included methods of inducing desirable emotional conditions by inpatient. Re-education has as its purpose fluences beyond the cognizance of the the mental reconstruction of the patient by clarifying his mind and showing him what he is capable of performing and what he is not. PSYCHOANALYSIS (q. v,), is an extended form of his re-education, and involves the moral rehabilitation of the patient by leading him through free association to bring his whole mind into the open, however reluctant he may be in doing so, and thus reveal the repressed desires, of which, according to the theory of Freud, the neurotic manifestations are the outward symbols and expressions.