Medical psychology : comprising a brief exposition of the leading phenomena of the mental states, and of the nervous apparatus through which they are manifested with a view to the better understanding and elucidation of the mental phenomena or symptoms of disease / by Robert Dunn.

  • Dunn, Robert, 1799-1877.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical psychology : comprising a brief exposition of the leading phenomena of the mental states, and of the nervous apparatus through which they are manifested with a view to the better understanding and elucidation of the mental phenomena or symptoms of disease / by Robert Dunn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    world, consciousness; but they are indissolubly con- nected, and no sooner has the perceptive consciousness begun to dawn, than greater mental activity is mani- fested, increasing in intensity and energy as the sphere of its action is widened; arising, not only from the direct conflict of the' perceptive faculties with the external world, but also from the development of the will or in- tellectual force, and from the evolution and play of the individual or personal and social propensities and affec- tions, and of the emotional, moral, and religious intui- tions and feelings. For, in the second stage of our mental progress, ideas are formed and retained in the mind; for memory exists, volitional poiver is developed and exercised, and emotional sensibility is awakened and manifested. Perception, through the inlets of the senses, speaks to us from loithout; and ideation, or the formation of ideas, is effected in response to impressions from with- out, by virtue of the primeval harmony which subsists between the perceptive faculties of the mind and the external world or Nature. For, in perception, as the correlative of sensation, and indicative of its intellectual phase, sensory impressions are idealised—that is, trans- lated or converted into intellectual phenomena, and become the pabulum of thought; and thus we see that, in the progress of mental development, to the sensational the perceptive phenomena are superadded; these are ideation and volition, with their associates memory and emotional sensibility. The genesis of the will and of the memory is in the perceptive consciousness ; for their manifestation is dependent solely upon the presence of ideas in the mind. There can, indeed, be no volitional or determinate action, any more than tliere can be any exhibition of the power or faculty of memory, without the existence and retention of ideas in the mind; and hence ideation, memory, and volition, are interwoven with each other, and are at the root; when, indeed, the perceptive consciousness is in abeyance, they are one and all suspended.