Attitude (psychology)

“ Out of the symbolic application of infantile trends, an attitude evolves which may be termed philosophic or religious, and these terms characterise sufficiently the lines of further development of the individual. The individual is not only an established and unchangeable complex of psychological facts, but also an extremely changeable entity. ”

“ Our own bodily position, attitude, condition, is one of the things of which some awareness, however inattentive, invariably accompanies the knowledge of whatever else we know. We [Pg 242] think; and as we think we feel our bodily selves as the seat of the thinking. If the thinking be our thinking, it must be suffused through all its parts with that peculiar warmth and intimacy that make it come as ours. Whether the warmth and intimacy be anything more than the feeling of the same old body always there, is a matter for the next chapter to decide. ”

“ Only when the unconscious is assimilated does the individuality become more prominent, and with it also that uniting psychological phenomenon between the ego and non-ego, expressed by the word attitude, is now no longer a typical attitude but an individual one. ”

“ It seems reasonable to me—upon the hypothesis that it is a person using another's mind or brain—that there must be more or less of that other's style or tone incorporated in the message, and that to the unseen personality, i.e., the power which impresses, the thought, the fact, or the philosophy, and not the style or tone, belongs. ”

“ But this inward disposition, though important chiefly for its effects, is more important therefore than we are apt to realize. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so he is." The scientific study of psychology has emphasized the fact, which is open to everyday observation, that even secret thoughts and moods influence inevitably a man's outward acts. What we do depends upon what we have been thinking and imagining and feeling. ”

“ Is psychology able to explain, or is any human being competent to know what these qualities are, apart from his perceptions of them? It is always our perceptions of the primary qualities, and not these qualities themselves, which come before the mind, just as it is always our sensations resulting from the secondary qualities, and not the secondary qualities themselves, that we are cognisant of. ”

“ Every one will recognize this to be true, so long as the existence of something corresponding to the term 'personal mind' is all that is insisted on, without any particular view of its nature being implied. ”

“ Or does one seriously think he understands better how the knower 'connects' its objects, when one calls the former a transcendental Ego and the latter a 'Manifold of Intuition' than when one calls them Thought and Things respectively? Knowing must have a vehicle. Call the vehicle Ego, or call it Thought, Psychosis, Soul, Intelligence, Consciousness, Mind, Reason, Feeling,—what you like—it must know. ”

“ I employ this word “tendency” as synonymous with needs, appetites, instincts, inclinations, desires; it is the generic term of which the others are varieties; it has the advantage over them of embracing at the same time both the psychological and physiological aspects of the phenomenon. All the tendencies suppose a motor innervation; they translate the needs of the individual, whatever they may be, physical or mental; the basis, the root of 3the affective life is in them, not in the consciousness of pleasure and pain which accompanies them according as they are satisfied or opposed. ”

“ On these terms the personal self rather than the thought might be treated as the immediate datum in psychology. The universal conscious fact is not 'feelings and thoughts exist,' but 'I think' and 'I feel.' [216] No psychology, at any rate, can question the existence of personal selves. The worst a psychology can do is so to interpret the nature of these selves as to rob them of their worth. ”

“ Of all these wider, more potential selves, the potential social self is the most interesting, by reason of certain apparent paradoxes to which it leads in conduct, and by reason of its connection with our moral and religious life. ”

“ It has been suggested in recent years that such flashes of intelligence are due to the secondary personality or the subliminal self or the other self, and it is often added that it is the development of our knowledge of these phases of psychology that represents modern progress in the science of mind. ”

“ In the largest sense these questions are also questions of character, for even if we discard as inadequate the psychology which considers behavior alone as important, conduct is the fruit of character, without which it is sterile. ”

“ It is not in the moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain.
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With good intentions, hell proverbially is paved. ”

“ In all cases of intellectual or moral rapture we find that, unless there be coupled a bodily reverberation of some kind with the mere [Pg 471] thought of the object and cognition of its quality; unless we actually laugh at the neatness of the demonstration or witticism; unless we thrill at the case of justice, or tingle at the act of magnanimity; our state of mind can hardly be called emotional at all. It is in fact a mere intellectual perception of how certain things are to be called—neat, right, witty, generous, and the like. ”

“ It is this chronic mental habit that broods upon the problem of subjective experiences, and is ready to recognize in signs and omens the guiding principle of rationality; not that this is always done designedly and superstitiously, but the underlying bent obscures the consideration of experience in any other than a personal light, and obstructs that illumination of the concrete by the generic, which constitutes an indispensable factor in the growth of wholesome thought. ”

“ A sensitive and somewhat inharmonious character, as a neurotic always is, will meet special difficulties and perhaps more unusual tasks in life than a normal individual, who as a rule has only to follow the well-established line of an ordinary life. ”

“ But the psychologist has yet more to tell us about the nature of personality. Although helped to distinctiveness of self-conscious expression by means of its experience of the struggle under present material conditions, it is not the whole of it that can be thus expressed. ”

“ The recognition by {18} psychology of respect for personality as one of the three or four most fundamental conditions—if not the most essential of all—of happiness, of character, and of influence, is explicit confirmation of the truth of this element of the social consciousness. ”

“ It must be remembered, however, that the intellect appears not as an opponent of the principle of the satisfaction of desire, but merely as an instrument of the ego in determining which course of action will result in the greatest ultimate satisfaction, direct or indirect, present or future. For, at the last, every individual acts so as to bring himself the greatest satisfaction, immediate or future, direct or indirect, either personal or through the welfare of others, as this may appear to him at the particular moment of deliberation. ”

“ To me now, writing these words, emphasis and selection seem to be the essence of the human mind. In other chapters other qualities have seemed, and will again seem, more important parts of psychology.
Men are so ingrainedly partial that, for common-sense and scholasticism (which is only common-sense grown articulate) , the notion that there is no one quality genuinely, absolutely, and exclusively essential to anything is almost unthinkable. "A thing's essence makes it what it is. ”

“ But as his abilities to 'do' lie wholly in the line of his natural propensities; as he enjoys reaction with such emotions as fortitude, hope, rapture, admiration, earnestness, and the like; and as he very unwillingly reacts with fear, disgust, despair, or doubt,—a philosophy which should legitimate only emotions of the latter sort would be sure to leave the mind a prey to discontent and craving. ”

“ These attributes are not applicable to a human personality; being as a rule judgments of character intuitively and not critically approved, which are projected upon our fellow-beings, inevitably doing serious injury to human relations. ”

“ If we admit the existence of the temperate character, it ought to find its place here. Can we admit it, or ought it not rather to be looked on as a purely ideal category? Though we may admit that persons are actually to be found in whom feeling, thought, and action are present in strictly equal proportions, ought we not to consider this as the absolute suppression of character, i.e., of any marks of individuality? ”

“ To many minds, however, the temptation to magnify this interest into a significant portion of one's mental life, to invest it with a serious power to shape belief and to guide conduct, is unusually strong, in some cases almost irresistible. ”

“ The third attitude would so understand the admitted identity of the Personality observed as practically to identify also the simultaneous and successive observers and observations, and to eliminate all variety and growth in that spirit’s own inner life and in its apprehension by other minds. ”

“ The 'quality of reality' which these moods attach to things is not like other qualities. It is a relation to our life. It means our adoption of the things, our caring for them, our standing by them. This at least is what it practically means for us ”

“ It is because they are in their proper and almost inextricable entanglement with our individual or temperamental functions, absolutely essential elements of all our rationality, of all our mental developments, of all our worth as thinkers, as workers or as producers ”

“ Surely not the psychological fact; for our inveterate love of relating and comparing things does not alter the intrinsic qualities or nature of the things compared, or undo their absolute givenness. And surely not the physiological fact; for the length of time during which we can feel or attend to a quality is altogether irrelevant to the intrinsic constitution of the quality felt. ”

“ But this, as yet, only within the narrow area of the highest culture." The earlier and more fundamental psychological factor of humanity is feeling and not thought, or more accurately an incipient rationality, thoroughly suffused with emotional motives; and primitive analogies proceed by a feeling of analogical fitness, and not by an intellectual justification. ”

“ We would remind you again, at this point, of the great triangle of the mind, the emotional, ideative, and volitional activities—feeling, thinking, and willing—and their constant reaction upon each other and absolute interdependence. We find that our feelings arise from previous willing and ideation, and are aroused by ideas and repressed by will; again we see that our ideas are largely dependent upon the interest supplied by our feelings, and that our judgments are influenced by the emotive side of our mental life, the will also having its part to play in the matter. ”

“ Let us now test our principles by turning to human instincts in more detail. We cannot pretend in these pages to be minute or exhaustive. But we can say enough to set all the above generalities in a more favorable light. ”

“ If, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them, of egoistic preoccupation about their results. Such a habit, like other habits, can be formed. Prudence and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives. ”

“ Thus every one, according to the range of his intelligence, may reach some or all these stages, and according to his temperament experience or not experience at each of them an emotional state. The emotions which are susceptible of a complete evolution will furnish the proofs. ”

“ The passions are like fiery horses, useful if well under control, but most dangerous if the control is lost. The ego is the driver, the will his hands, attention the reins, habit the bit, and the passions the horses. To drive the chariot of life under social conditions, the ego must have strong hands (will) to tighten or loosen the reins of attention. He must also employ a well designed and shaped bit of habit. ”

“ The prevalence of this obvious preference which we feel for everything of our own is indeed striking. Does it not look as if our dear Ego must first lend its color and flavor to anything in order to make it please us?... Is it not the simplest explanation for all these phenomena, so consistent among themselves, to suppose that the Ego, the self, which forms the origin and centre of our thinking life, is at the same time the original and central object of our life of feeling, and the ground both of whatever special ideas and of whatever special feelings ensue? ”

“ THE average person greatly underestimates the part played by the emotional nature in the mental activities of the individual. He is inclined to the opinion that, with the exception of the occasional manifestation of some strong emotional feeling, the majority of persons go through life using only the reasoning and reflective faculties in deciding the problems of life and guiding the mental course of action. ”