Analytic Psychology, Volume 1

Front Cover
Allen & Unwin, 1918 - 314 pages
"The present work aims to bring systematic order into the crowd of facts concerning our mental life revealed by analysis of ordinary experience. Psychology is the most empirical of the sciences; and of all the branches of Psychology what is commonly though inaccurately called the introspective is most immersed in matter-of-fact. Its function is to describe, analyse, and arrange. In this respect it is contrasted with what is called the Genetic or Synthetic Method, which instead of attempting merely to ascertain and define the processes of the developed consciousness, proposes to itself the task of tracing the evolution of mind from its lowest to its highest planes. When I first planned the present work, I found myself baffled in the attempt to follow the genetic order of treatment without a preparatory analysis of the developed consciousness. Our knowledge of mental processes, as we can observe and infer them in our own ordinary experience, is essential as a clue to the nature of mental process at lower levels. I therefore found myself driven to pave the way for genetic treatment by a previous analytic investigation; and the result was the present work. Chapters VIII., IX., X., and XI. in book II have already appeared as articles in the pages of Mind. They have in each instance been greatly expanded and altered, so that they may be considered as virtually new. The general Introduction is an expansion and modification of a paper printed in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society on "The Scope and Method of Psychology". The chapter on "Relative Suggestion" appeared in the Proceedings of the Society for 1895"--Pref.
 

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Page 88 - And a little attention will discover, that it is not necessary, even in the strictest reasonings, significant names which stand for ideas should, every time they are used, excite in the understanding the ideas they are made to stand for : in reading and discoursing, names being, for the most part, used as letters are in algebra, in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular...
Page 106 - ... the insertion of accidental circumstances, in order to the full explanation of his living characters, their dispositions and actions; which circumstances might be necessary to establish the probability of a statement in real life, where nothing is taken for granted by the hearer; but appear superfluous in poetry, where the reader is willing to believe for his own sake.
Page 80 - ... interesting things or events; and being applied in such a variety of cases that we know readily by habit to what things they belong, they produce in the mind, whenever they are afterwards mentioned, effects similar to those of their occasions.
Page 51 - This sensation can be nothing else than it is felt to be. Its very essence consists in being felt; and, when it is not felt, it is not. There is no difference between the sensation and the feeling of it - they are one and the same thing.
Page 161 - First of all, I am aware of a constant play of furtherances and hindrances in my thinking, of checks and releases, tendencies which run with desire, and tendencies which run the other way.
Page 43 - I touch the table gently with my hand, and I feel it to be smooth, hard, and cold. These are qualities of the table perceived by touch ; but I perceive them by means of a sensation which indicates them.
Page 106 - That illusion, contradistinguished from delusion, that negative faith, which simply permits the images presented to work by their own force, without either denial or affirmation of their real existence by the judgment, is rendered impossible by their immediate neighbourhood to words and facts of known and absolute truth.
Page 94 - In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or subject about which all the members of the thought revolve. Half the time this topic is a problem, a gap we cannot yet fill with a definite picture, word, or phrase, but which, in the manner described some time back, influences us in an intensely active and determinate psychic way.
Page 59 - And when, after successfully analyzing this total, we call it back to memory, as it was in its unanalyzed state, and compare it with the elements we have found, the latter (as it seems to me) may be recognized as real parts contained in the former, and the former seen to be their sum. So, for example, when we clearly perceive that the content of our sensation of oil of peppermint is partly a sensation of taste and partly one of temperature.
Page 90 - ... talking nonsense on these subjects, and may perceive any repugnance among the ideas, as well as if we had a full comprehension of them. Thus if, instead of saying, that in war the weaker have always recourse to negotiation, we should say, that they have always recourse to conquest; the custom which we have acquired, of attributing certain relations to ideas, still follows the words, and makes us immediately perceive the absurdity of that proposition.

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