Physiological psychology

“ For example, we influence the mind when we drink too much tea or coffee, not to mention the greater changes of the same kind which are produced in the mind of the drinker of too much alcohol or other poisonous substances. All the methodical means of procedure by which the psychologist produces effects of this kind by changing the condition or functions of the body within itself belong to Physiological Psychology. So he modifies the respiration, changes the heart beat, stimulates or slows the circulation of the blood, paralyzes the muscles, etc. ”

“ We know, indeed, more concerning attention, memory, and thought than concerning the cerebral processes which may precede or accompany them. The commonly used term physiological psychology is awkward. There is a science of physiology and a science of psychology, and there are relations between body and mind. ”

“ It is constituted by a bundle of tendencies essentially physiological in character, and these tendencies have nothing added or external; they are life in action. Each anatomical element, each tissue, each organ has but one end, to exercise its activity; and the physiological individual is nothing but the convergent expression of all these tendencies. They may present themselves under a double form. In the one case they express a lack, a deficiency; the anatomical element, the tissue, the organism has need of something. In this form the tendency is imperious and irresistible ”

“ When a physiologist or biologist constructs a physiological hypothesis as a correlative of consciousness he is so carried away with it that he soon forgets the purpose of the hypothesis and proceeds to deny the main facts. From a purely scientific we must postulate that each and every act of experience, of consciousness has a physiological correlative, a point on which I have laid special stress. ”

“ If we eliminate all psychology, there still remains the physiological tendency, that is to say the motor element, which in some degree, from the lowest to the highest, is never quite wanting.
This excursion into the pre-conscious period—since we so regard it—puts us in possession of one result. At the end of this investigation we find two well-defined tendencies, physico-chemical and organic—the one of attraction, the other of repulsion; these are the two poles of the life of feeling. What is attraction in this sense? Simply assimilation; it blends with nutrition. ”

“ Thus the two sciences of astronomy and physiology discovered and developed the methods of investigating mental times; the further development was the task of psychology.
Another source of the new psychology is to be found in the physiological study of the sense organs. The most obvious method for determining the functions of the nerves and end organs of the skin—the nose, the ear, or the eye—is to ask the living subject what he feels when various stimuli are applied. In this way there has arisen a large body, of knowledge concerning the sensory functions of the nervous system. ”

“ There is a bully physiological laboratory, the sight of which, inaccessible as it is to me in my present condition, gave me a sharp pang. I have blocked out some reading in physiology and psychology which I hope to execute this winter—though reading German is still disgustingly slow.... It seems to me that perhaps the time has come for psychology to begin to be a science—some measurements have already been made in the region lying between the physical changes in the nerves and the appearance of consciousness-at (in the shape of sense perceptions) , and more may come of it. ”

“ All the experiments in physiology consist practically in the production of so many pathological conditions and states. When the physiologist makes injections, sections and stimulations by various agencies, what else does he effect if not the production of the pathological, in order to learn the physiological action of the various tissues and organs? ”

“ It must much rather consist in the attempt to gain principles out of the contents of our psychical life, just as in the reverse case physiological investigation of the change of matter and energy in the organism does not in the least, and rightly so, trouble itself with the psychical qualities of the organism. ”

“ Persons suffering in any way instinctively seek stillness and darkness.
Probably every one will agree that the best way of formulating all such facts is physiological: it must be that the cerebral process of the first sensation is reinforced or otherwise altered by the other current which comes in. No one, surely, will prefer a psychological explanation here. Well, it seems to me that all cases of mental reaction to a plurality of stimuli must be like these cases, and that the physiological formulation is everywhere the simplest and the best. ”

“ Its Importance for Psychology.—There remains a condition of general neural activity so important as to deserve a chapter by itself—I refer to the aptitude of the nerve-centres, especially of the hemispheres, for acquiring habits. An acquired habit, from the physiological point of view, is nothing but a new pathway of discharge formed in the brain, by which certain incoming currents ever after tend to escape. ”

“ To sum up, the history of this psychological metamorphosis is briefly this: incubation, formation of a fixed idea, obsession, final fall.
It is scarcely necessary to point out once more that the primary fact is the transformation of a natural tendency, 204in consequence of changes in the organism, and that satisfaction and appeasement only come afterwards.
II. Nutrition—i.e., the essential act of physiological life—is safeguarded by two distinct kinds of tendencies. (I am still speaking of those only which come within the bounds of consciousness, and therefore have a psychological character.) ”

“ Since psychology primarily deals with the laws of psycho-physiological functions, it will be admitted that the more important and valuable method is the one that has for its subject matter the changes going on directly in the material under investigation. The investigations, however, of changes or disturbances of mental function itself are really a study of the abnormal, researches into the domain of mental pathology. In psychology, as in many other sciences, especially those of the biological order to which psychology naturally belongs, the pathological method is by far the most important. ”

“ I developed the psycho-physiological theory of the subconscious, traced the causation and nature of subconscious activities, and worked out the laws of normal and abnormal suggestibility. The following pertains to our present subject:
The nervous centers of man's nervous system, if classified as to function, may be divided into inferior and superior. The inferior centers are characterized by reflex and automatic activities. A stimulus excites the peripheral nerve-endings of some sense-organ. At once a nerve-current is set up in the afferent nerves. ”

“ We know also of central inhibitions, such as fear, distress, pain, acting as so many inhibitions on the peripheral organs and serving to arrest functioning activity. Similarly in mental life, complex as it is, the highly organized psycho-physiological systems, with their concomitant moments consciousness, still fall under the same general physiological laws of inhibition. ”

“ The physiological evidence in favour of the priority of the feelings need only be briefly recalled; it all centres in one point: organic vegetative life always and everywhere appears before animal life; physiologists constantly repeat 439that the animal is grafted on the vegetable which precedes him. Now organic life is directly expressed by the needs and appetites, which are the stuff of the affective life; animal life by the sensations, the stuff of the intellectual life. The primordial part played by organic sensibility has been shown in the Introduction. ”

“ Some psychologists teach that all action has its origin in the physiological reflex; the organism at first moved reflexly, automatically, fatally; and then, later, mental processes were somehow ‘imported’ into its activities. Others hold that all organic movements were originally of the impulsive [245] sort; the physiological reflex, so far from being primary, is a late development, the final term in a series which begins with movement of a large, diffuse sort, accompanied by mental processes, and which ends with precise, local movement devoid of mental correlates. ”

“ It is not here the place to enter into the question if, and in what degree, animal psychology may be a field of scientific research. Even if one looks upon conscious processes as effects of stimulation, in both lower animals and in man, in no case should one assume them to be factors of an essentially different nature, interrupting the chain of the mechanical reactions ”

“ Physiological processes are framed to explain states of consciousness with their motor reactions. When, therefore, these hypothetical creations threaten to sweep away the actual living facts, it is time to halt and examine closely the sterile character of the hypothesis. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From this standpoint pathology is of the utmost importance in the study of organic life. The pathological being the normal out of place, the abnormal being the normal under special conditions, pathology that deals with the abnormal gives us a deep insight into the general laws of normal physiological activity. ”

“ Variations of sense-organs with their physiological processes are rather slow and tardy, often requiring generations for an effective change, while the representative element can be modified and adapted within the life-existence of the individual and often in a very short time. ”

“ I will begin with an example drawn from the borderland between the psychological and the physiological, one dealing with the sensory concomitants of nervous process in a case of experimental interference with the integrity of the nervous system. ”

“ Thus, the New Psychology recognizes the importance of the Body, while the New Physiology recognizes the importance of the Mind. And, in the end, we feel that both physiology and psychology must be recognized as being but two different phases of one great science—the Science of Life. ”

“ Psychology must postulate uniformity of interrelation of physical, physiological, and psychic processes. ”

“ This must come largely, primarily, from the education of home and school life, and from the regulation of daily conduct in its relation to the brain; and, as the nervous system presides over and controls the body and its several members in the discharge of their functions, an understanding of its physiological action, at least in some degree, is of great importance to everybody. ”

“ What is so clearly true of the nervous apparatus of animal life can scarcely be otherwise than true of that which ministers to the automatic activity of the mind. For, as already shown, the study of psychology has evolved no more certain result than that there are uniformities of mental action which are so entirely conformable to those of bodily action as to indicate their intimate relation to a 'mechanism of thought and feeling,' acting under the like conditions with that of sense and motion. ”

“ The psychical principles of association, indeed, and the physiological principles of nutrition, simply express—the former in terms of mind, the latter in terms of brain—the universally admitted fact that any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself ”

“ It is usually taken for granted by many medical men, and even by some scientists, neurologists, physiologists, biologists, who do not happen to think out clearly the more theoretical aspects of their investigations, that brain processes are the direct cause of mental phenomena and that psychology therefore is nothing but a chapter in physiology. ”

“ The psycho-physiological hypothesis is both inductively and deductively the sine qua non of the science of psychology. ”

“ For this reason psychological hypotheses are, in the present state of knowledge, an indispensable mediating link between actual experience and physiological theory, and if ever they should come to be finally superseded by purely physiological descriptions of human conduct, we may be sure that the triumphant physiological theories will themselves first have been won by the process of establishing psychological formulæ and then seeking their physiological analogues. ”

“ At once we say that the present distribution of pain and pleasure nerves in our body does not seem sufficient for this purpose. Holding fast to a common mode of origin for all our senses, we must, then, look further into biological development for our desired explanations.
Human anatomy and physiology were closed secrets till study of a long line of embryonic and morphologic modifications revealed them. It should be evident that human psychology can never be understood except by a like tracing out of present from past conditions. ”

“ It would seem to be entirely distinct from physiology, which seeks to classify and explain the facts of bodily structure and operation. But all sciences overlap more or less. And this is particularly true of psychology, which deals with the mind, and physiology, which deals with the body.
It is the mind that we are primarily interested in. But every individual mind resides within, or at least expresses itself through, a body. Upon the preservation of that body and upon the orderly performance of its functions depend our health and comfort, our very lives. ”