A History of Psychology by Brett George Sidney

Author:Brett, George Sidney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-85174-5
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

CHAPTER III

REPRESENTATIVE TYPES OF THEORY

§ 1 . THOUGH Wundt and his work rightly claim the first place in any account of modern German psychology, there are many other active forces to be recognized and many different directions of thought to be recorded. In dealing with these we come ever nearer to the limits of history, until finally we reach the living present and lose perspective. For that reason this chapter cannot be more than an indication of current thought, and the organization of its material can only be arbitrary and tentative. To avoid chaos, some outstanding features must be selected and the chief productions of the period grouped accordingly. The general plan will be as follows: (1) first the tendency to emphasize physiological or biological considerations will give a definite place to one group of writers; (2) then the cognate tendency to affirm the principle of association and reject apperception leads to theories of a possible reconciliation; (3) the divergence from Wundt which develops in the Würzburg school introduces another important type of theory; while (4) the emphasis laid on introspection forms the most complete antithesis to our first group and marks another way of thought. In actual exposition these various writers are not always sharply distinguishable, but at this stage only general descriptions can be attempted.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century the more eminent psychologists uniformly complain that the subject of feelings is the most obscure part of the science. For many reasons this subject steadily acquires importance as the century draws to a close, and it may usefully be regarded as one of the directing lines in the historical development. For this reason a few pages will be devoted to the attempt made by Horwicz to construct a psychology entirely on the basis of feeling.

In the region of 1850 two antithetic lines of development were still running parallel—the older Hegelian and the newer naturalistic lines. The former waned as the latter waxed, and the single outstanding feature of the next fifty years was the advance of physiological and biological conceptions. The Hegelians, represented by Erdmann and Schaller, were doomed from the first by the fact that they treated the feelings as a phase of the dialectical movement, which was supposed to explain the evolution of the spirit in man. As the physiological basis is not known immediately by consciousness, it was disregarded. The failure of Hegelian psychology was mainly due to this belief that what is not itself a phase of consciousness cannot be used to explain consciousness, a point of method which ultimately rules out physiology, neurology, and natural evolution. The wider basis taken by Lotze in his Medicinische Psychologie (1852) furnished the most authoritative and effective foundation for the new developments. In this we find emphasis laid on the action of nerves and muscles, vital activity, and reflex action. Lotze himself was inclined, in his later writings, to say less about those things; but scientific interests made his earlier work more effective among his contemporaries than the later productions.

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