Comparative psychology

“ This is all the more necessary as physiologists, biologists, biological chemists, and recently students of comparative psychology, a science which lies on the borderland of psychology and biology, have a tendency to make incursions into psychology proper, and favor mechanical or purely physiological concepts to the detriment and even total exclusion of mental processes. ”

“ A study of the psychogenesis of a concrete case will on the one hand illustrate these principles and, on the other, the structure and dynamics of normal personality.
Before making such a study, however, we ought to have a working conception of the normal; and this we are entitled, from the point of view of dynamic psychology, to construct on the basis of data supplied by studies of abnormal and normal mental behavior. The older way of considering human personality was to conceive it as an “ego” with various faculties. ”

“ But when we recollect that everything in the world can be compared with everything else, and that the number of directions of difference is indefinitely great, then we see that the complication of self-compoundings of the ultimate differential increment by which, on this theory, all the innumerable unlikenesses of the world are explained, in order to avoid writing any of them down as ultimate differences of kind, would beggar all conception. ”

“ So that while all associative phenomena rest on subjective psychology, distinctively human association depends upon and presupposes a fully developed rational faculty.
I have called this the perceptive, as distinguished from the affective side of mind. This term, though inadequate to express the highest processes of the intellect is well adapted to describe the incipient stages of rational life. Since the new biology has taught us to account for every organ and attribute by the law of advantage, the intellect of man has presented the most marked obstacle to this mode of interpreting nature. ”

“ For us who deal, not with the various forms of animal life, but with the various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity of the working of the human mind in all races of men. ”

“ Just as we differ in the various aspects of body, so also we differ in the various aspects of mind. These differences can be measured by tests. A knowledge of these differences should aid us in grading, classifying, and teaching children, as well as in the selection of occupation and professions for them. Mental traits have some degree of independence; as a result a high degree of one trait may be found with low degree of some others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then we must remember that these external and internal evolutions of social life, take place often unconsciously, making comparisons and distinctions without reflecting on their nature or limits; we must remember that it is the business of reflective comparison, of the comparative method, to retrace this development consciously, and to seek the causes which have produced it. ”

“ What relation exists between the individual's opinion of himself and the results of objective measurements of him, such as those afforded by psychological tests? How do the results of tests compare with the judgments of associates? [Pg 125]
8. Are individuals who themselves possess a given trait in high degree better judges of that trait in themselves or in others than are those who possess the trait in less degree?
9. What intercorrelations exist between the estimates of self and others, when different traits are compared? ”

“ This assuredly is not to be effected by mapping out the human mind into a set of independent faculties, and exhibiting in a desultory manner the facts of an empirical and unsystematic psychology. Such teaching is at the best merely theoretical. ”

“ So long as we stick to verifiable psychology, we are forced to admit that differences of simple kind form an irreducible sort of relation between some of the elements of our experience, and forced to deny that differential discrimination [Pg 494] can everywhere be reduced to the mere ascertainment that elements present in one fact, in another fail to exist. The perception that an element exists in one thing and does not exist in another and the perception of qualitative difference are, in short, entirely disconnected mental functions. ”

“ In considering the causal laws of psychology, the distinction between rough generalizations and exact laws is important. There are many rough generalizations in psychology, not only of the sort by which we govern our ordinary behaviour to each other, but also of a more nearly scientific kind. Habit and association belong among such laws. ”

“ There are also very striking variations between individuals even within normal life; well people are very different from one another. All that is commonly meant by character or temperament as [5] distinguishing one person from another is evidence of these differences. But really to know all about mind we should see what its variations are, and endeavour to find out why the variations exist. This gives, then, another topic, "Individual or Variational Psychology." ”

“ The study of it in all its bearings is called the study of individual differences. When the traits involved are mental, we speak of the psychology of individual differences. It is one of the marvelous facts about human beings that of all the millions born, no two are just equal in possession of a given trait, except by chance; and no two are identical in their combinations of traits, for the infinite possibilities of permutation practically exclude identity by chance. These combinations, which go to make up personality, are combinations of amounts of the same traits. ”

“ Psychological knowledge, general for all subjects must be assumed, as well as general knowledge of the objective world. The psychologist, like other scientists, must assume that his experiences are so conditioned, that though they may be unique, still if others were to be put under the same conditions and confronted with the same external realities, they would pass through similar experiences. ”

“ How man gets experience, and retains and organizes this experience must be our problem in the chapters on sensations, ideas, memory, and thinking. Individual differences in human capacity make necessary a treatment of the different types and grades of intelligence, and the compilation of tests for determining these differences. We must also treat of the application of psychology to those fields where a knowledge of human nature is necessary. ”

“ If, indeed, our Physiology had reached the point of ideal completeness, so that every routine uniformity at present expressed in psychological terminology as the establishment of an “association” or “habit” could be translated into its physiological correlate, we should be able to dispense altogether with psychological hypotheses as aids to the calculation of the course of events, and to restore logical unity to Psychology by confining it entirely to the task of providing Ethics and History with the teleological categories they require for the description of their subject-matter. ”

“ The 'associationist' schools of Herbart in Germany, and of Hume the Mills and Bain in Britain have thus constructed a psychology without a soul by taking discrete 'ideas,' faint or vivid, and showing how, by their cohesions, repulsions, and forms of succession, such things as reminiscences, perceptions, emotions, volitions, passions, theories, and all the other furnishings of an individual's mind may be engendered. ”

“ Working speculatively with psychological material there is a risk of being sacrificed to the general misunderstanding which bestows the value of an objective theory upon the line of psychological evolution thus elaborated. ”

“ To break up bad associations or wrong ones, to build others in, to guide the associative tendencies into the most fruitful channels, is the educator's principal task. But here, as with all other simple principles, the difficulty lies in the application. Psychology can state the laws: concrete tact and talent alone can work them to useful results.
Meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our minds may pass from one object to another by various intermediary fields of consciousness. ”

“ Moreover, those who are instructed at a late period, who learn a language of analytical signs, i. e., who speak with their fingers, or emit the sounds which they read upon the lips of others, are able to disclose their anterior mental state. It is possible to compare the same man with himself, before and after the acquisition of an instrument of analysis. Subjective and objective psychology combine to enlighten us. ”

“ Finally, it is found that separate things, while having many points of difference which indicate their individuality, nevertheless have a few points of likeness which indicate that they belong to the same general family or class. The detection of likenesses and differences in the qualities of various things is an important mental process. Many of the higher thought processes depend largely upon the ability to compare things properly. The development of attention and perception tends to develop the power of comparison. ”

“ The original or primary divergence of mental type between any two peoples must, then, have been due to these fundamental causes—namely, differences of physical environment and spontaneous variations of mental structure, the latter adding to the traditional stock of knowledge and belief, of moral precepts and sentiments. ”

“ The third step in conception is that of comparison, in which the qualities of several things are compared or examined for likenesses and differences. We find many qualities in which the several things differ, and a few in which there is a likeness. Classes are formed from resemblances or likenesses, while individuals are separated from apparent classes by detection of differences. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the mental state under examination neither resembles nor operates on any of the realities known to the psychologist, he calls it a subjective state pure and simple, possessed of no cognitive worth. ”

“ Our science is not concerned entirely with differences between people, but asks also in what ways people are alike, and this is indeed its central problem. How do "we" observe, learn, remember, imagine, think? What sensations and feelings do we have, what emotions, what instincts, what natural and acquired impulses to action? How are our natural powers and impulses developed and organized as we grow up? Psychology is concerned with the child as well as the adult, and it is even concerned with the animal. ”

“ It is not merely incidentally, as a grateful addition to its normal task, that psychology serves us. The essential nature of the standpoint which calls it into existence, and of the abstraction which it performs, is to put in our possession the method by which values are introduced and effected in life. The statement of personality as an object, of social relations as a mechanism of stimuli and inhibitions, is precisely the statement of ends in terms of the method of their realization. ”

“ Just as the causal method finally reaches the general principles of human psychology by the analysis and reduction of individual events, so does the constructive standpoint reach aims that are general by the synthesis of individual tendencies. ”

“ As against the introspectionist, then, the behaviorist is justified in his contention that psychological procedure must be objective and experimental in character.274 The danger to which he has exposed himself is the failure to differentiate his problem from that of physiology and physics. It is only by a proper recognition of both the objective and the distinctive character of conscious behavior that psychology can free itself of the reproach which is heaped upon it by members of its own household and take the place that rightfully belongs to it in the community of the sciences. ”

“ This, as was stated in the last chapter, is the psychological point of view, the relatively uncritical non-idealistic point of view of all natural science, beyond which this book cannot go. A mind which has become conscious of its own cognitive function, plays what we have called 'the psychologist' upon itself. ”

“ While the psychological theory would guide and illuminate the practice, acting upon the theory would immediately test it, and thus criticise it, bringing about its revision and growth. In the large and open sense of the words, psychology becomes a working hypothesis, instruction is the experimental test and demonstration of the hypothesis; the result is both greater practical control and continued growth in theory. ”

“ The struggles of economists with ‘utility’, of mathematical philosophers with ‘points’ and ‘instants’, of biologists with ‘entelechies’, and the adventures of psycho-analysts with ‘the libido’ and ‘the collective unconscious’ are instances in point. At present theoretical psychology in particular is largely made up of the manipulation of similar suspects. The Act of Judgment, the relation of Presentation, Immediate Awareness, Direct Inspection, the Will, Feeling, Assumption, Acceptance, are only a few of the provisional ultimates introduced for convenience of discussion. ”

“ While they should be used for the sake of a better elucidation of the facts, it is not good scientific sense to sacrifice to them the very material of the science of psychology. Sensations, ideas, feelings, emotions, are after all the direct data of the psychologist, while physiological processes and currents are purely hypothetical. ”