Volume 1

Analytic psychology.

  • Stout, George Frederick, 1860-1944.
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Analytic psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    different conditions. This course yields important results, when we can assign definite circumsta'nces on which the variation depends. Thus, by comparing space as it exists for persons possessed both of sight and touch, with space as it exists for the blind, we may obtain valuable data foi cletei- mining the part played by visual experience in the develop- ment of this perception. A flood of light is thrown on the conditions of mental development in general by examination of the cases of such abnormal individuals as Laura Bridgman or Helen Keller. Under the same head come the data supplied by mental pathology, including cases of aphasia, psychic blindness, and so forth. It is also possible, in a wide range of cases, to vary external conditions experimentally, and to note the result. This line of inquiry has been followed up with great ardour, and on the whole with encouraging success. The value of the experi- mental method in psychology is twofold. In the first place, it facilitates introspection, and confines it to definite issues. In the second place, it correlates definite variations in the results of mental process, with definite variations in its con- ditions. It is the second application of the method which concerns us here. The experiments on which Weber’s law is founded supply a simple illustration. Here the condition which is varied is the intensity of the stimulus, and the mental result which is correlated with it is the judgment of comparative intensity. As another instance we may adduce the use of the stereoscope. Nothing, perhaps, has contributed so much to our knowledge of the process on which the percep- tion of solidity depends, as comparison between the appearance of dissimilar perspectives stereoscopically combined, and that presented by flat surfaces generally. In all these cases, what we observe and compare are not psychological processes, but their products. These do not constitute a special subject- matter peculiar to psychology. They are, on the contrary,