Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology, the study of behaviour / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    abstracts from, or neglects, this active aspect of consciousness, and attempts to describe each phase of it as it is or subsists, without reference to the functions subserved by it. Consciousness may be likened to the surface of a spring of water which bubbles up un- ceasingly from obscure invisible sources. The surface assumes at every moment new forms; some change rapidly, others slowly, but none persists stably; each detail of the form of the surface is constantly giving place to new ones, some slowly, others more rapidly. The com- plexity and the rapidity of change are so great that it is impossible for the mind to seize all the details of any one moment, much less to observe just how each detail changes. The cinematographic method, therefore, begins by giving names to the principal varieties of the forms that present themselves; it then attempts to describe the whole surface as it exists at any moment, by enumerating the forms presented by it at that moment; and it attempts to represent the actual course of the changes of the whole surface by describing in such general terms its appearance at suc- cessive moments. That is to say, it analyses the perpetual flux into a complex of elements each statically conceived, and it describes the flux as consisting in the simultaneous and