Instinct and the unconscious (II) / by Charles S. Myers.

  • Myers, Charles S. (Charles Samuel), 1873-1946.
Date:
[1919?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Instinct and the unconscious (II) / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    analogy to the first class of reflex actions is replaced by analogy rather to the fourth. But, we may ask, does not every experience obey the ' all-or-none ’ principle on the occasion of its first occurrence? Does not the first pleasure or the first sensation of sound obey the same principle? No doubt the impossibility of determining the moments (if they exist) when such experiences first occur, must rob our answer of any practical im¬ portance. Yet it can hardly be ruled out of theoretical consideration, if my agreement with Dr Rivers’s definition of instincts is limited practic¬ ally to the first occasions of their appearance. Indeed I am disposed to think that Dr Rivers is fundamentally in agreement with me, for he writes: “as soon as an animal has acquired experience of any kind, it becomes a matter of the greatest difficulty to distinguish between the innate and the acquired conditions.” In a previous Symposium on instinct and intelligence, I gave reasons1 for regarding their separation as a convenient but purely artificial act of 'abstraction.’ I maintained that in the intact organism “there is not one nervous apparatus for instinct and another for intelligence2.” For me, instinct wholly severed from intelligence is indistinguishable from reflex activity. Let me endeavour to justify this psychological stand¬ point on the grounds of further physiological parallelism. The optic thalami, the probable seat of 'abstract’ instinctive ex¬ perience, never function in the intact' individual ’ without some measure of cortical control. The cerebral cortex and the thalami have evolved from a common origin,—the prosencephalon, which contains within it the rudiments of later cortical and thalamic structure3. Only from injury or disease can the thalami act independently of the cortex. Now just as the prosencephalon has become differentiated into the optic thalami and cerebral cortex, so, I suggest, 'abstract’ instinct and intelligence have evolved from a common origin, neither having a separate existence in the intact organism. Herein, I think, lies the crux of the difference between Dr Rivers’s views and mine. He regards instinct as having “led the animal kingdom a certain distance in the line of progress,” whereupon “a new development began on different lines,”—a new path being 1 This Journal, 1910, hi. 209-21S, 267-270. 2 Ibid. 267. 3 Since this has been printed, I have come (mainly from correspondence with Prof. Elliot Smith) to realise that it has embryological rather than functional significance. But the general argument is unaffected: in lower vertebrates some common ‘ organ ’ is doubtless mainly responsible both for intelligent’ and ‘instinctive’ activity, and these functions in the highest vertebrates have become more fully differentiated and transferred to two different ‘organs,’ the cerebral cortex and the optic thalami.