The foundations of normal and abnormal psychology / [Boris Sidis].

Sidis, Boris, 1867-1923.

Date:: [1914]

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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The foundations of normal and abnormal psychology / [Boris Sidis]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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sciences means molar, molecular, or atomic movement of matter through space, while psychic activity is not a translation of matter through space, a thought is not a material mass having extension, weight and locomotion. This truth, simple as it may appear, cannot be too often repeated and too strongly emphasized, since one frequently meets with this fallacy of “thought-materiali¬ zation” in the world of psychiatry. Words are often mis¬ leading and the metaphorical expression “mental en¬ ergy” is taken in its literal meaning of mechanical en¬ ergy. While I am writing these lines I find in one of the number of the Russian “Archives of Psychiatry and Neurology” edited by Prof. Kowalevsky, an article, in which an attempt is made to express mental activity in terms of mechanical energy. The writer might as well attempt to change inches into pounds. He who undertakes the examination and study of mental phe¬ nomena must bear in mind the simple and important, but frequently forgotten truth, that facts of conscious¬ ness are not of a physical, mechanical character. Against our view may be urged the fact that in proportion as a science tends to become exact, it takes on more a quantitative aspect, its phenomena are re¬ duced to molecular or atomic changes. If now psy¬ chology is a science at all, it will reach its exactness, when it can be expressed in terms of matter and motion, so that the phenomena presented by consciousness, al¬ though at present impenetrable to our imperfect instru¬ ments and methods of investigation, must ultimately be reduced, in some way or other, to mechanical terms. Psychology has not yet had its Galileo. This objection may be easily disposed of by the simple answer that the exactness of science is not at all in pro-