The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams, S. 813

BOOK 8

CHAPTER 7

HUMAN BEHAVIOUR AND THE HUMAN MIND

Behaviourism. Emotion and Urge.

§ 1. Auman 8 3:

§ 9. Automatism and Mediumship. the Complex. § 12. Psycho-analysis.

§ 10. Neurasthenia. § 13. Minds Out of Gear and In Gear.

§ 2. The Mind as the Thing That Knows. a § 4. Hypnosis. Splitting of the Self: Multiple Personalities.

§ 5. The Unconscious. § 6. The 8 7. Hysteria. § 8. Exaltation. 8 11. Repression and

§ 14. Differences Between Minds.

SI Human Behaviourism

ARALLEL with this mainly Russian

work on the behaviour of the dog, to which we have devoted the last chapter, there has gone on a considerable amount of American research, which can be explained most conveniently and lucidly here in direct sequence to the account of Pavlov’s work. Its leader has been Dr. J. B. Watson, and he has a very considerable following, especially in America.

At the outset, it may be well to anticipate a possible confusion about the word Behaviourism. As used by Watson and his disciples, it has a double meaning; it denotes not merely a method of work but a theory of mental realities. In its narrower sense, Behaviourism signifies the study of behaviour—plant, animal, or human; in a strictly objective way, by the same methods as are used in such sciences as chemistry or physiology—the observation, comparison, and measurement of physical facts. In that sense it is used by both Pavlov and Watson. But the school of Watson makes Behaviourism more than a method; it makes it an exclusive “doctrine.” The American Behaviourists tell us that the study of consciousness or mind, as distinguished from brain, has no place in science. They go even further and deny the very existence of conscious processes. If they allow consciousness to exist, it is without processes of itsown. Hardly do they tolerate the passivemirror idea.

We will quote from Dr. Watson himself. Here is one passage: “‘ According to the opinion of many scientific men _ to-day, psychology, even to exist longer, not to speak of becoming a true natural science, must bury subjective subject-matter, introspective method and present terminology. Consciousness, with its structural units, the irreducible sensations (and their ghosts,

the images), and the affective tones, and its processes, attention, perception, conception, is but an indefinable phrase.” Or again : “Whether there are ten irreducible sensations or a hundred thousand (even granting their existence), whether there are two affective tones or fifty, matters not one whit to that organized body of world-wide data we call Science.” Or finally: “If Behaviourism is ever to stand for anything, it must make a clean break with the whole concept of consciousness. Such a clean break is possible only because the metaphysical premises of Behaviourism are different from those of structural psychology.”

We have in the Fourth Chapter of this Book given our reasons for adopting a different attitude. If consciousness exists, it is, we hold, as worthy of scientific study as any other phenomenon. It is as legitimate to use subjective evidence as objective and to deal with subjective and objective realities on a common monistic footing. But our disagreement with Behaviourist philosophy has nothing to do with our attitude to Behaviourist method. ‘That method, we agree with Watson, has remarkable virtues, and we differ from him with respect. Behaviourism permits of an accuracy of measurement, a scientific standardization and comparison of results impossible by any method which trusts solely or mainly to introspection and description.

Watson’s most interesting and suggestive experiments have been concerned with the “ conditioning” and “ de-conditioning ” of children’s reactions. He has shown that the human species is so poor as to be almost destitute of the sharply-defined “ patterninstincts’ of so many lower animals, in which particular situations evoke particular kinds of behaviour with as much definiteness as response follows stimulus in a reflex action. We have already described such instincts in ants and bees and other insects. We have told how there are solitary wasps which

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