Psycho-physiology

“ Surely no one who is cognisant of the facts of the case, nowadays, doubts that the roots of psychology lie in the physiology of the nervous system. What we call the operations of the mind are the functions of the brain, and the materials of consciousness are products of cerebral activity. ”

“ I wished also to show that no half-way recognition of consciousness would meet the demands of investigation. Perhaps the chiefest benefit to come from the physiological psychology of our day will be in this, that it will make unmistakably clear its own inadequacy for a treatment of consciousness as such. I trust I may not be misunderstood in this remark. I yield to no one in the belief that an inestimable advantage has been conferred on psychology by physiology. ”

“ 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. ”

“ NO SPECIAL BRAIN-CENTRES FOR EMOTION.
If the neural process underlying emotional consciousness be what I have now sought to prove it, the physiology [Pg 473] of the brain becomes a simpler matter than has been hitherto supposed. Sensational, associational, and motor elements are all that the organ need contain. The physiologists who, during the past few years, have been so industriously exploring the brain's functions, have limited their explanations to its cognitive and volitional performances. ”

“ While we concern ourselves exclusively with modes of mind as correlatives of nervous changes, we are treating of what was there distinguished as æstho-physiology. We pass to psychology only when we consider the correspondence between the connections among subjective states and the connections among objective actions. Here, then, without transgressing the limits of our immediate topic, we may deal with feelings and functions in their mutual dependencies. ”

“ 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 union of psychology and physiology is the closing of the circuit, in one direction, of the pursuit after knowledge, and marks the initiation of a rational comprehension of the mind and of its relation to corporeal conditions. ”

“ The progress of cerebro-physiology and pathology, in recent times, has been mostly along the line of the Involuntary Life—a phrase which I have elsewhere and often used to designate those phenomena of mind or body, or of both, in their reciprocal relations, that are independent of will or consciousness, or of both. This Involuntary Life is the branch of physiology that has been least studied and least understood ”

“ But when B interprets his own experience as he had interpreted A's we seem to have lost the real world altogether. In presence of this dilemma, the philosophers of our time, as already said, are feeling it needful to revise their psychology. The question of method is vital. If the psychophysical standpoint were the more fundamental, psychology would be based on physiology, and the old definition of sensation might stand. ”

“ After all, it is the consequences of a theory which count, and this will be seen to be true particularly as respects memory. The pragmatic point of view of counting the consequences, of determining the difference 11that the theory makes in the understanding of the mental processes of normal and abnormal life, reveals the importance to us of validating the theory. The consequences of the psycho-physiological theory are so far-reaching, in view of its bearing upon a large number of problems in normal and abnormal psychology, that it is worthy of sustained and exhaustive examination. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have the strongest reasons for concluding that every feeling, every change in Sensibility, has its correlative material process in the organism—is, in short, only the subjective aspect of the objective organic change. What in Physiology is called Co-ordination and has reference to movements, in Psychology may be called Logic, having reference to feelings. ”

“ But, on the other hand, to reject the resource of psychological analysis, and construct the theory of the mind solely on such data as physiology at present affords, seems to me as great an error in principle, and an even more serious one in practice. Imperfect as is the science of mind, I do not scruple to affirm that it is in a considerably more advanced state than the portion of physiology which corresponds to it ”

“ In other words, for man to be able to exercise such high [Pg 502] mental processes there is need to postulate incalculable ages of specialization in the nervous apparatus, and in psycho-physical adjustment, of a kind which has thus enabled the psychical power to express itself to such a supreme degree in the realm of mind and matter. ”

“ But by the side of the physiological theory legitimately exist as possibilities a psychological one and a psycho-physical one. It is the doctrine of the latter theories that not only are physical vestiges left behind in the cortex of the brain after every perception, but also psychical dispositions to the formation of ideas and images; and that it is possible for images of all kinds to continue to exist without distinctly attaining to consciousness. ”

“ Contemplate, then, if you can, a duplex intelligent brain, in a state of activity, but cut off from all communication with the external world through the media of the senses and from all control over the body;—in fact, an isolated, self-acting, self-contained mechanism, the organ of intelligence and emotion. ”

“ The characters which I have used as a means of distinguishing the instincts which are especially obvious in the innate behaviour of Man resemble in many respects the characters of protopathic sensibility, of a person who is dependent on the activity of the thalamus or of the isolated spinal cord, and in the domain of pure physiology the characters of the isolated nerve and of the heart. ”

“ Psychology speaks here in no uncertain terms to physiology. Whoever becomes fascinated by the processes of his own body is bound to magnify the sensations from those processes, until the most insignificant message from the subconscious becomes a distressing and alarming symptom. The person whose mental ear is strained to catch every little creaking of his internal machinery can always hear some kind of rumble. ”

“ To return now to our starting-point, the physiology of the brain. If we suppose its cortex to contain centres for the perception of changes in each special sense-organ, in each portion of the skin, in each muscle, each joint, and each viscus, and to contain absolutely nothing else, we still have a scheme perfectly capable of representing the process of the emotions. An object falls on a sense-organ and is apperceived by the appropriate cortical centre ”

“ While, as we have seen, those parts of psychological doctrine which are concerned with the more mechanical aspects of conduct may ultimately be replaced by Physiology, the parts which deal with the initiation of fresh purposive adjustments, such as the psychology of attention and of feeling, are in principle irreducible to Physiology, and must retain a permanent value 307so long as mankind continues to be interested in the ethical and historical appreciation of human life. ”

“ Morphology and physiology are interdependent, correlated, and connected one with the other; and, as I will endeavor to point out as my argument develops itself, psychology is, likewise, intimately associated with these two manifestations of life.
It will be noticed that as forms take on more complexity, and as organs develop new and more complex functions, psychos becomes less simple in its manifestations, and more complex in its relations to the internal and external operations of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Physiology alone can teach us this much at least, that mind is not matter; and experience, consciousness, and observation teach us that while the action of the mind may be suspended for a time when the nervous organization can not normally act, from disease or injury, the mind itself is not destroyed, but its action may be restored with the restoration of the brain to its normal condition. ”

“ Now it is the mental states of the corporeal individual that psychology investigates and studies.
In our last discussion we have come to the conclusion that consciousness depends on the corporeal individual and can only be known from physical, bodily manifestations. Each living being manifests some activity in its reactions to the stimuli of the external environment. Now what are the reactions characteristic of consciousness? ”

“ Physiological psychology teaches us how to separate the visible, the tangible, and the audible from bodies—a labor which is subsequently richly requited, as the division of the subjects of physics well shows. ”

“ The first may be summed up in saying that the chain of causes and effects in the physiological process of which the brain is the centre is complete without the intervention of the psychical process, while the psychical process of consciousness, though a connected series, is not a relation of effects to causes but of association of ideas which involves no conversion of energy. ”

“ Who knows the countless associations that mingle with his each and every thought? Who can pick apart all the nameless feelings that stream in at every moment from his various internal organs, muscles, heart, glands, lungs, etc., and compose in their totality his sense of bodily life? Who is aware of the part played by feelings of innervation and suggestions of possible muscular exertion in all his judgments of distance, shape, and size? Consider, too, the difference between a sensation which we simply have and one which we attend to. Attention gives results that seem like fresh creations ”

“ On the contrary, if we make a like supposition of astronomical knowledge, with regard to the brain of man, or even the soul-organ of the lowest animal, whose mental activity may be restricted to the sensation of pleasure and pain, then, so far as all the material phenomena are concerned, our knowledge would be as perfect, and our instinct of causality as satisfied, as in the case of muscular contraction or secretion, provided we had astronomical knowledge of muscles or glands. ”

“ This view reaches an extreme in the direction of formal, as opposed to objective or practical grounds for selecting a course of study. While the old psychology with its mental faculties concentrated its attention on the mental processes and neglected the world of existing objects and relations upon which those processes were directed, physiological psychology tends to confine its attention to the physical part of the process, the organic changes in the brain cells and their functions. ”

“ Whether the remainder of our mental states are similarly dependent on physical conditions, is one of the vexatæ questiones in the science of human nature. It is still disputed whether our thoughts, emotions, and volitions are generated through the intervention of material mechanism; whether we have organs of thought and of emotion, in the same sense in which we have organs of sensation. Many eminent physiologists hold the affirmative. These contend that a thought (for example) is as much the result of nervous agency, as a sensation ”

“ Recently students of animal life have made violent efforts of merging psychology into biology. There is no doubt that motor reactions, adjustments, adaptations, behavior must be taken into consideration in the study of psychic facts, but motor manifestations are of psychological significance only in so far as they lead to an interpretation of the inner subjective facts, facts of consciousness. ”

“ Physics treats as a unit the whole system of appearances of a piece of matter, whereas psychology is interested in certain of these appearances themselves. Confining ourselves for the moment to the psychology of perceptions, we observe that perceptions are certain of the appearances of physical objects. From the point of view that we have been hitherto adopting, we might define them as the appearances of objects at places from which sense-organs and the suitable parts of the nervous system form part of the intervening medium. ”

“ One cannot take the specific gravity of love or hate, of fear or joy, as one can that of bile; one cannot find a single physical characteristic in any psychic phenomenon. The most physical of all mental processes, viz., perception, has its psychological as well as its physiological phases. The instreaming, through the senses, of impressions from the external world, may be traced by the physiologist along the different nerves of the body to the cortex cells of the brain. ”