Postscript to Part II.

The reader is reminded that this part of the Survey only covers about a decade and does not bring the theories up to date. It opens with the concept of Narcissism which effected a revolution in thought; looking back at the literature before this (1893-1914) one cannot help reflecting on the relative poverty of the analytical instruments then employed for dealing with the problems of the psychoses. At the conclusion of the Survey of the third period a like reflection (1923–1926) in regard to the second will arise. The subdivision of the psychical apparatus into three parts, Ego, Super-Ego and Id, and the new views on Anxiety, transform the picture once more; here again the greater part of the work is done by Freud.

[The Bibliography will be printed at the end of Part III.]

REVIEWS

Psychologies of 1925. Powell Lectures in Psychological Theory. By MADISON BENTLEY, KNIGHT DUNLAP, WALTER S. HUNTER, KURT KOFFKA, WOLFGANG KÖHLER, WILLIAM MCDOUGALL, MORTON PRINCE, JOHN B. WATSON, ROBERT S. WOODWORTH. Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts. 1926.

We have in this volume a series of lectures which purport to set out the psychological principles that were up-to-date through the year 1925. Six different schools of thought are represented, but the psycho-analytical school finds no place here, although its doctrines and its methods are regarded by many competent persons as the most important development of psychology in recent years.

The first four chapters are devoted to 'Behaviourism'-three by John Watson and one by Walter S. Hunter. We are grateful to Hunter for the term 'Anthroponomy' which he uses for the science of human behaviour and contrasts with psychology; for it is notorious that the thorough-going behaviourist has scrapped all the stock-in-trade of the psychologist, and it is hardly honest of him to call himself a psychologist or his science psychology. As Hunter says: "The aspect of man which the psychologist studies is that which is termed mental, or psychical, or experiential." But the behaviourist will have nothing to do with "the ancient philosophical concepts of mind and consciousness as aspects of the universe which differ from the physical."

Woodworth in his single contribution treats of "Dynamic Psychology." He says the aim of modern psychologists of all schools is the study of the "workings of the mind." Dynamic Psychology is concerned with "antecedents and consequences, cause and effect, stimulus and response, the combination of factors and similar dynamic relations." It is not limited to the study of feelings, emotions, conation and muscular and glandular action. Perception, Woodworth thinks, is especially in need of dynamic concepts. The unitary percept resulting from a plurality of stimuli, as in McDougall's dot figure, is not adequately accounted for by 'simultaneous association' nor by synthesis or apperception. The really dynamic concept to fit the case is the concept of stimulus and response. The dot figure is a stimulus to which more than one response is possible.

In dealing with the attitude of dynamic psychology to the purposive and mechanistic tendencies in psychology to-day, Woodworth makes some cogent remarks on the relations of causal and purposive interpretations of behaviour. He points out that there can be no contradiction between the purposiveness of a sequence of actions and its being a causal sequence. "A purpose is certainly a cause; if it had no effects, it would be without significance...every purpose has its cause in a double sense: it has its genesis in the life-history of the individual, and, at any time, it has its exciting stimulus. The whole story of purpose would be futile, if purpose were not the effect of definite causes, as well as the cause of definite effects" (pp. 118-119).

Three lectures are devoted to Gestalt psychology. Kurt Koffka gives an interesting and instructive account of "Mental Development" and Wolfgang Köhler describes some of his well-known experiments in a lecture on "The

Intelligence of Apes." In his second lecture, on "An Aspect of Gestalt Psychology" Köhler tells "how Gestalt Psychology treats some sides of our sensory experience, more especially, how the new ideas deal with the visual field in a state of rest."

The section of this volume that appeals most directly to medical psychologists is that which appears under the heading, "Purposive Groups"; for three of the five lectures included in it are by Morton Prince and the other two are by William McDougall. Morton Prince's three lectures are entitled: (1) Three Fundamental Errors of the Behaviourists and the reconciliation of the purposive and mechanistic concepts; (2) Awareness, consciousness, coconsciousness and animal intelligence, from the point of view of the data of abnormal psychology-a Biological Theory of Consciousness; (3) The problem of personality. How many selves have we?

In his first lecture Dr Prince spends much powder and shot in controverting the errors of the Behaviourists. Their first error is "the denial of consciousness as cause of bodily reactions." But if this be an error it is an error that is older than Behaviourism. Dr Prince's memory goes back to the days of Herbert Spencer and Huxley, Hughlings Jackson and Charles Mercier, and he has a healthy contempt for the 'steam whistle' interpretation of the part played by consciousness in conduct. He rather irreverently stigmatizes as 'steam whistlers' all who disbelieve in the causal efficacy of consciousness. The second error of Behaviourists is to suppose that behaviour can be completely explained in terms of neural and other bodily processes alone. Their third error consists in confining themselves to only one method of observation and experimentation-the objective method.

One cannot help thinking that Dr Prince might have found more important errors in Behaviourism than those he has selected, and some of his invective seems like kicking the dog that isn't there." It is hardly necessary to go into the researches of modern physics on the nature of matter, in order to invalidate materialism as a philosophical principle. But this is what Dr Prince is at some pains to do, and when he has reduced brain processes to units of negative and positive electricity, or units of energy, or both, he reminds us that these are only "phenomenal manifestations of an unknown something." His own reconciliation of the difficulties inherent in the problem of the mind-body relation is the same as that put forward by Strong in Why the Mind has a Body. The unknown immaterial reality, of which electrical units and units of energy (brain processes) are the phenomenal manifestation, is consciousness (mind). Dr Prince does not discuss the difficulties that arise out of this solution of the problem, and he is happy in that by adopting it he gets rid of the bogey of interactionism, can reconcile the purposive and mechanistic concepts, and, above all, can relegate "the epiphenomenalism of the steam-whistle to that limbo where such absurdities belong."

After so brave a defence of 'mentalism' as a basis for the discussion of human behaviour it is something of a shock to find that in order to account for the persisting traits of personality Dr Prince falls back upon neural dispositions. He says: "It is obvious that this quality of fixed persistence implies some kind of enduring dispositions and these we are compelled to formulate in physiological terms...." He here seems to imply that a neural disposition has some sort of reality, whereas a "mental disposition is a figure of speech." But this is just the contrary of his view that mind is the reality of which neural processes are the phenomenal manifestations.

In his lecture on awareness, consciousness and co-consciousness Dr Prince gives in more detail the biological theory of consciousness which he proposed to us at the International Congress of Psychology in 1923. He holds to his distinction between awareness and consciousness. By awareness he means awareness by a subject; by consciousness he means thought, sensation, perception, imagining, feeling, and so on, without any implication that there is any subject of such experiences.

The evidence on which he relies to justify his contention that conscious processes may occur without a subject of experience is drawn largely from psycho-pathology; and more especially from the phenomena of co-consciousness which he has done so much to elucidate. I have personally verified almost all the observations he describes-with one exception; but this exception concerns a matter so central to his argument that it requires consideration in some detail. Dr Prince says that a pin-prick in hysterical anaesthesia is remembered in hypnosis, but that the hypnotized hysteric declares that "when it occurred he was unaware of it." There is ambiguity in the use of 'he' in this account. For what the hypnotized person means may be that he, as 'waking self,' was unaware. The facts are more clearly put in another sentence: "These he now claims to remember were true co-conscious perceptions of which the hysteric was unaware in spite of concentration of attention"; that is, in my view, the hysteric as 'waking self' was unaware.

In the following quotation Dr Prince states succinctly his interpretation of all co-conscious experiences of this kind. He says: "The introspective testimony of my dissociated subjects, who in that condition recalled vividly and precisely these subconscious experiences, has been unanimous that these experiences were without self-consciousness, that in their content there was nothing that the personal pronoun 'I' could be applied to. The subject could not say, and there was nothing that could say, 'I saw this,' 'I felt that'; the perceptions, feelings, etc., were not synthesized into a self or personality. The conscious events were just sensations, perceptions, images and thoughts and nothing more no agent, nothing that could be called a psychological 'experiencer'" (p. 237).

My own observations and experiments seem to me to be entirely opposed to Dr Prince's view. All my hypnotic subjects used the first personal pronoun in describing their co-conscious experiences. They would say, "I remember now, you pricked me three times, but when I was awake I did not feel anything"; that is, "I," as 'waking self' did not feel anything. Or if an incipient doubling of the self had arisen or had been artificially produced, the secondary personality would say, "I felt it when you pricked her, but she did not feel anything.'

The difference between Dr Prince's findings and mine would seem to afford another example of the way the views of the observer may affect the results of hypnotic experiments. Dr Prince was looking for instances of 'subjectless experience,' whereas I have never doubted that experience always implies a subject whose experience it is.

Dr McDougall devotes two lectures to a defence of the proposition that man's acting and thinking are purposive. The need for such a demonstration. of the obvious has been brought about by the alarming popularity of mechanistic behaviourism in America. It is unnecessary to review Dr McDougall's arguments in contravention of any mechanistic psychology, for they are well known from his other writings. He deals separately in these lectures with

the three rival groups into which the Behaviourist school has split. The followers of Watson he calls strict behaviourists. They refuse to recognize both conscious activity and the goal-seeking nature of all behaviour. A smaller group, headed by Tolman, although refusing to be interested in conscious activity, do admit that behaviour is a goal-seeking process, and their teaching is a sort of purposive behaviourism. As Tolman says, "it is not a mere Muscle Twitchism of the Watsonian variety." A third group, represented by Allport, do not deny the facts of conscious activity, but they make no use of introspectively observed facts and they accept 'muscle twitchism.' Dr McDougall vindicates purposive psychology by showing the inadequacies of these three types of Behaviourism.

Knight Dunlap writes on "Reaction Psychology." This, in his view, is the only psychology that can be called scientific. He relegates to the dust heap the whole Anglo-German tradition of introspectional psychology and tries to make the reader's flesh creep by depicting the awful consequences of subjection to Malebranchian metaphysics. By limiting his vision to "the view of the organism as a response mechanism and the assimilation of conscious responses to other responses," by insistence on the importance of ‘integration' and 'patterns,' by restricting introspection to "the awareness of things inside the body," by getting rid of the instincts, by regarding 'images' as myths, and by the rejection of various concepts that have been entertained by many competent persons, Dunlap thinks "there can be no reasonable doubt that we have come to a permanent basis for psychology." In a world where so much is doubtful it is odd to meet so much assurauce.

In striking contrast to the omniscience and intolerance of Knight Dunlap is the suave and courteous exposition by Madison Bentley of "The Psychologies called Structural." His exposition is lucid and concise, and he shows very clearly the important contributions to our knowledge which have resulted from the work of the structuralists. He also points out, however, the defects and the limitations of structuralism, but he qualifies his adverse criticisms by certain reflections which might with advantage be taken to heart by some of the other contributors to this volume. He says: "There is no doubt, moreover, that the criticisms should be tempered by reflection upon the complementary frailties and limitations of competing standpoints. If this creed does ultimately rest upon a certain kind of 'temperament,' as we have heard that it does, and upon a preference for problems of a certain restricted type, as we have seen that it does, then its claim to supply the one substantial foundation for our subject or to represent a 'purer' and more desirable set of scientific principles than others would seem to stand with no more justification than do the similar pretensions of rival doctrines" (p. 404).

T. W. M.

An Introduction to Forensic Psychiatry in the Criminal Courts. By W. NORWOOD EAST, M.D. London: J. and A. Churchill. 1927. pp. x + 382. Price

16s. net.

The points of legal importance which may arise as to the mental state of a person accused of crime have been discussed in many books. But there has, hitherto, been no text-book dealing exclusively with the subject. This want has now been supplied by Dr Norwood East, from the store-house of his long experience.