The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Introduction to Psychology, by Wilhelm Max Wundt, Translated by Rudolf Pintner

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Title: An Introduction to Psychology

Translated from the Second German Edition

Author: Wilhelm Max Wundt

Release Date: August 25, 2014 [eBook #46677]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY***

E-text prepared by Marc D'Hooghe
(http://www.freeliterature.org)
from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive
(https://archive.org)

AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

BY

WILHELM WUNDT

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIPSIC

TRANSLATED FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION

BY

RUDOLF PINTNER, M. A. (Edin.), Ph. D., (Leipsic)

Publication of the
"Pädagogische Literatur Gesellschaft Neue Bahnen"

LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM ST. W. C. I.

Published 1912—Reprint 1920

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

It is not the intention of this introduction to psychology to discuss the scientific or philosophical conceptions of psychology, or even to make a survey of the investigations and their results. What this little book attempts is rather to introduce the reader to the principal thoughts underlying present-day experimental psychology, leaving out many facts and methods which would be necessary for a thorough study of the subject. To omit all mention of experimental methods and their results is at the present day impossible. Yet we only need to consider a comparatively small number of results of the first importance in order to comprehend the basal principles of the new psychology. To characterise the methods of this psychology it would be impossible to omit all reference to experiments, but we can and will omit reference to the more or less complicated instruments on which the carrying out of such experiments depends. I must refer the reader who wishes a fuller account of the new psychology to my Outlines of Psychology, which also contains the necessary bibliography of the subject.

W. WUNDT.

LEIPSIC, June 1911.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

The present volume is a popular introduction to the Wundtian psychology. It is a shorter and simpler sketch than the same author's Outlines of Psychology, and it should prove invaluable to the English-speaking student who wishes to gain some conception of the subject before entering upon a deeper study of the same. Its popularity in Germany has been phenomenal.

In translating the work the translator has, as far as possible, used the same English terms as those employed in the translations of Wundt by Judd and Titchener.

He is greatly indebted to Mr. Robert Wilson, M.A., B.Sc., for his advice and help in reading over the manuscript before going to press.

RUDOLF PINTNER.

EDINBURGH, May 1912.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CONSCIOUSNESS AND ATTENTION

Psychology as a description of processes of consciousness—The metronome—The rhythmical disposition of consciousness—The scope of consciousness—The threshold of consciousness—The fixation-point and field of consciousness—The focus of attention—The scope of attention—Apprehension and apperception

CHAPTER II

THE ELEMENTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Psychical elements and compounds—Sensation and idea—Memory images and perceptions—Quality and intensity of sensations—Feelings—Difference between sensation and feeling—The three pairs of feelings—The affective process—Emotions and moods—Volitional processes—Motives—Instinctive, voluntary, and discriminative actions—The qualities of feelings—Feeling and apperception

CHAPTER III

ASSOCIATION

Associations and apperceptions—The fusion of tones into clangs—Spatial and temporal perception—Assimilation and dissimilation—Direct and reproduced forms of the same—Complications—The recognition and cognition of objects—Successive association—The so-called "feeling of familiarity"—Secondary ideas—The affective processes in recognition—The so-called states of consciousness in forgetting, remembering, &c.—Memory associations

CHAPTER IV

APPERCEPTION

General characteristics of apperceptive combinations as compared to associations—The aggregate idea and its analysis—Concrete and abstract thought—Speech and thought—Understanding and imagination—Examples of primitive forms of speech in the language of primitive races—Development of apperceptive combinations out of associative ones—Inadequacy of the method of introspection in dealing with the psychological problems of thought—Psychology of language and race

CHAPTER V

THE LAWS OF PSYCHICAL LIFE

The relation between psychical and natural laws—The psycho-physical individual—The question as to the universal validity of the laws—The principle of creative resultants—The principle of heterogony of ends—The principle of conditioning relations—The principle of intensifying contrasts—The psychological and physical standpoints—Relation between physical and psychical values—Physical and psychical elements—The nature of the soul—Mythological views—The "substance" hypothesis—The principle of the actuality of mind

AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER I

CONSCIOUSNESS AND ATTENTION

If psychologists are asked, what the business of psychology is, they generally make some such answer as follows, if they belong to the empirical school: that this science has to investigate the facts of consciousness, its