Receptivity

“ It allows to the mind no original furnishing at all, except a power of receptivity. The name of this receptive and entirely passive capacity is sensation. Outward things conveying impressions to the senses in particular, and to the nervous organism generally, are the source and origin of all our ideas. The mind is at first an absolute blank, and contributes no elements of its own to the formation of its cognitions. It originates nothing from within, but receives all its knowledge from without. All knowledge and all ideas are ultimately resolvable into sensations. ”

“ To be able to operate psychologically, I must receive through my interior being and impart through my outward being—must first have the powers of receptivity, and, secondly, must possess the powers of impartability. It becomes just as necessary to have a good, healthful physical development to be able to impart, as to have a good spiritual development to receive the power. The individual becomes stronger as a medium in proportion to his development in receptivity and impartability. ”

“ The receptivity is at first necessary to keep up the deception, for the patient does not know the symptoms of the simulated disease, and must always be on the alert to pick up hints. When dissociation occurs, the receptivity finds its place in the split-off stream, [Pg 89] forming part of the mechanism for keeping up the symptoms; but having passed out of the control of the main personality it tends to become exaggerated and misdirected. ”

“ Attention, implying a degree of reactive spontaneity, would seem to break through the circle of pure receptivity which constitutes 'experience,' and hence must not be spoken of under penalty of interfering with the smoothness of the tale. ”

“ In this show we see a fine example of receptivity, like that of the hysteric who watches the doctor to learn what symptoms he expects to find; and just as the doctor may suggest absurd symptoms and find them present, so I was able to suggest falsehoods and have them reflected as revelations. But the believer would never do that; he is eager to fit every phrase to some fact within his knowledge, those that cannot be so fitted being forgotten as soon as the next lucky shot occurs, and in his eagerness he helps along the medium and provides him with more material. ”

“ We have, then, studiously to examine ourselves, with the view of ascertaining what thought is, and how it is distinguished from sensation. It is a common saying, both in ordinary discourse and in metaphysical disquisition, that thought is free and active, that sensation is necessitated and passive; in other words, that our mental freedom and activity consist in thought, while our mental receptivity or passivity consist in sensation. The mind is free and active when it thinks: it is compelled and passive when it feels. ”

“ The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; and the chief wonder of it is that it so often comes about, not by doing, but by simply relaxing and throwing the burden down. This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies. ”

“ In this respect, however, movements and thoughts either in themselves or through their sensational and ideational accompaniments may be regarded as pertaining to the receptive side of consciousness. With these provisos, then, the, broad generalization may hold that receptive states lead through feeling to active states, and that presentations that give neither pleasure nor pain meet with no responsive action. But first the objection must be met that presentations that are in themselves purely indifferent lead continually to very energetic action, often the promptest and most definite action. ”

“ Meanwhile, we can already see one consequence and one point of connection with the reflex-action theory of mind. Any mind, constructed on the triadic-reflex pattern, must first get its impression from the object which it confronts; then define what that object is, and decide what active measures its presence demands; and finally react. The stage of reaction depends on the stage of definition, and these, of course, on the nature of the impressing object. When the objects are concrete, particular, and familiar, our reactions are firm and certain enough,—often instinctive. ”

“ Of course, every [Pg 23] perception of the outer world, all our seeing and hearing, and touching and tasting, offers us at once such definite connection between the inner experience and a piece of the physical universe. Our own organism is also such a piece of physical nature: just as I describe my tasting or touching, I may describe the perception of my arms and legs or my inner organs. Thus everything which is material of perception gives us a handle for a real psychological description. Psychology usually calls the elements of these perceptions sensations. ”

“ Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton University, U.S.A., called attention early in the 90’s to a reaction characteristic of all living beings, which he terms the “Circular Reaction.” We take his most recent account of this from his “Development and Evolution” (1902) :— [0h]
“The general fact is that the organism reacts by concentration upon the locality stimulated for the continuance of the conditions, movements, stimulations, which are vitally beneficial, and for the cessation of the conditions, movements, stimulations which are vitally depressing.” ”

“ The result is a more or less massive organic feeling that attention is going on. This organic feeling comes, in the way described on page 302, to be contrasted with that of the objects which it accompanies, and regarded as peculiarly ours, whilst the objects form the not-me. We treat it as a sense of our own activity, although it comes in to us from our organs after they are accommodated, just as the feeling of any object does. Any object, if immediately exciting, causes a reflex accommodation of the sense-organ, and this has two results—first, the object's increase in clearness ”

“ As the experience of sensation, the state of so-called feeling is an exclusive attribute of vitality; it is evident that, granting the evolution hypothesis, feeling must make its appearance and take its rise at some definite moment in the course of organization. The demonstration of the specific conditions of organization, which constitute the starting-point of feeling or subjective experience, would furnish the initial data for the solution of what we may call the physico-psychical phase of the problem of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Wherever the mind is elevated enough to discriminate; wherever several distinct sensory elements must combine to discharge the reflex-arc; wherever, instead of plumping into action instantly at the first rough intimation of what sort of a thing is there, the agent waits to see which one of its kind it is and what the circumstances are of its appearance; wherever different individuals and different circumstances can impel him in different ways; wherever these are the conditions—we have a masking of the elementary constitution of the instinctive life. ”

“ As soon as we pass to consider attention, the case is changed; we come into definite conflict with popular psychology. Common sense regards attention as a voluntary concentration of the mind. For instance: I am sitting at my desk, thinking out and writing down the sentences of this paragraph. As I write, I am subject to all sorts of sensory stimuli; the temperature of the room, the pressure of my clothes, the sight of various pieces of furniture, the sounds from house and street, the scents coming from the room itself or borne in through the open window, organic excitations of various kinds. ”

“ It is evident that the attempt to ascertain the nature of consciousness and of psychology from the standpoint of behavior is committed to the assumption that the behavior in question is of a distinctive kind. The justification of this assumption will enable us to formulate the definitions which we seek. Discussions of conscious behavior ordinarily emphasize the similarity between conscious and reflex behavior rather than the difference. An attitude of expectancy, for example, is usually conceived as a sort of temporary reflex. ”

“ Something happens that we can only describe as a shift of the vividness of our mental processes. A moment ago, my psychological ideas were vivid, set (as it were) in the focus of attention, while all other ideas and perceptions [92] were dim and marginal; now the incoming ideas—my friend’s business or the subject of the message—drive to the front; they in their turn become vivid and focal, while the psychological ideas, just lately central and dominant, fall back, along with the perception of my sensory surroundings, into the dim background. ”

“ The exercise of a function tends to the development of that function. Thus, our acts of perception must become more exact by mere repetition. So, too, the representations and concepts growing out of perceptions must tend to approximate to external facts by the direct action of the environment on our physical and psychical organism; for external relations which are permanent will, in the long run, stamp themselves on our nervous and mental structure more deeply and indelibly than relations which are variable and accidental. ”

“ The object of all sign-making is primarily that of communication, and from our study of the lower animals we know that communication first has to do exclusively with recepts, while [237] from our study of the growing child we know that it is the signs used in the communication of recepts which first lead to the formation of concepts. For concepts are first of all named recepts, known as such; and we have seen in previous chapters that this kind of knowledge (i.e. of names as names) is rendered possible by introspection, which, in turn is reached by the naming of self as an agent. ”

“ Attitudes and the Mind.—With regard to the influence of the body on the mind, and the stimulating mental reaction that follows even a pose of well-being and good feeling, perhaps nothing affords more striking evidence than the effect of assuming the expressions and attitudes usually associated with various states of mind and then noting the results. If a man throws his shoulders back, and takes in long breaths of air, expanding his chest and stimulating his circulation, his whole body as well as his mind feels the effect. ”

“ There is such a term, formed on the analogy of ‘associative tendencies’; psychologists are coming more and more to speak of determining tendencies. Any nervous set or disposition that turns our attention in a certain direction, that casts our perceptions into a certain form, that places a definite meaning upon an equivocal word, that governs our response to a particular situation, may be called a determining tendency. Some of these tendencies are simple, and some are extremely complex; some are inherited, and some are acquired in the life-time of the individual. ”

“ The psychical reaction which constitutes the sole basis of comparison in the determination of the tests, is a polarization of the attention, and the repetition of the actions related to it. When a stimulus corresponds in this manner to the "reflex personality," it serves, not to measure but to maintain a lively reaction; it is therefore a stimulus to the "internal formation." Indeed, upon such activity, awakened and maintained, the accompanying organism initiates its internal elaborations in relation to the stimuli. ”

“ When a stimulus promptly arouses a reaction, and that ends the matter, we speak of reflex action--provided, of course, the connection between stimulus and response is native. But when a stimulus sets up a tendency to a reaction that cannot be immediately executed, or towards an end-result which cannot immediately be reached, and when the tendency so aroused persists for a time in activity, and gives rise to preparatory reactions, then we speak of instinct. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.) ”