The Principles of Psychology
Buch
Basiswissen
Im Jahr 1890 zum ersten Mal veröffentlicht liegt dieses zweibändige Werk mit rund 1280 Seiten die Breite der Fragen und mögliche Herangehensweisen an die Psychologie in gut lesbarer Form dar. Der Autor, William James, gilt als einer der Mitbegründer der modernen empirischen Psychologie. Besonders wertvoll in diesem Werk ist Würdigung der subjektiven Sicht auf die Psychologie. Hier steht das Originale Inhaltsverzeichnis aus der Ausgabe von 1918.
CHAPTER I
The Scope of Psychology, 1. Mental Manifestations depend on Cerebral Conditions, 1. Pursuit of ends and choice are the marks of Mind's presence, 6.
CHAPTER II
The Functions of the Brain, 12. Reflex, semi-reflex, and voluntary acts, 12. The Frog's nerve-centres, 14. General notion of the hemispheres, 20. Their Education—the Meynert scheme, 24. The phrenological contrasted with the physiological conception, 27. The localization of function in the hemispheres, 30. The motor zone, 31. Motor Aphasia, 37. The sight-centre, 41. Mental blindness, 48. The hearing-centre, 52. Sensory Aphasia, 54. Centres for smell and taste, 57. The touch-centre, 58. Man's Consciousness limited to the hemispheres, 65. The restitution of function, 67. Final correction of the Meynert scheme, 72. Conclusions, 78.
CHAPTER III
On Some General Conditions of Brain-activity, 81. The summation of Stimuli, 82. Reaction-time, 85. Cerebral blood-supply, 97. Cerebral Thermometry, 99. Phosphorus and Thought, 101.
CHAPTER IV
Due to plasticity of neural matter, 105. Produces ease of action, 112. Diminishes attention, 115. Concatenated performances, 116. Ethical implications and pedagogic maxims, 120.
CHAPTER V
The Automaton-theory, 128. The theory described, 128. Reasons for it, 133. Reasons against it, 138.
CHAPTER VI
The Mind-stuff Theory, 145. Evolutionary Psychology demands a Mind-dust, 146. Some alleged proofs that it exists, 150. Refutation of these proofs, 154. Self-compounding of mental facts is inadmissible, 158. Can states of mind be unconscious? 162. Refutation of alleged proofs of unconscious thought, 164. Difficulty of stating the connection between mind and brain, 176. 'The Soul' is logically the least objectionable hypothesis, 180. Conclusion, 182.
CHAPTER VII
The Methods and Snares of Psychology, 183. Psychology is a natural Science, 183. Introspection, 185. Experiment, 192. Sources of error, 194. The 'Psychologist's fallacy,' 196.
CHAPTER VIII
The Relations of Minds to other Things, 199. Time relations: lapses of Consciousness—Locke V ==== Descartes, 200. The 'unconsciousness' of hysterics not genuine, 202. Minds may split into dissociated parts, 206. Space-relations: the Seat of the Soul, 214. Cognitive relations, 216. The Psychologist's point of view, 218. Two kinds of knowledge, acquaintance and knowledge about, 221.
CHAPTER IX
The Stream of Thought, 224. Consciousness tends to the personal form, 225. It is in constant change, 229. It is sensibly continuous, 237. 'Substantive' and 'transitive' parts of Consciousness, 243. Feelings of relation, 245. Feelings of tendency, 249. The 'fringe' of the object, 258. The feeling of rational sequence, 261. Thought possible in any kind of mental material, 265. Thought and language, 267. Consciousness is cognitive, 271. The word Object, 275. Every cognition is due to one integral pulse of thought 276. Diagrams of Thought's stream, 279. Thought is always selective, 284.
CHAPTER X
The Consciousness of Self, 291. The Empirical Self or Me, 291. Its constituents, 292. The material self, 292. The Social Self, 293. The Spiritual Self, 296. Difficulty of apprehending Thought as a purely spiritual activity,[Pg xi] 299. Emotions of Self, 305. Rivalry and conflict of one's different selves, 309. Their hierarchy, 313. What Self we love in 'Self-love,' 317. The Pure Ego, 329. The verifiable ground of the sense of personal identity, 332. The passing Thought is the only Thinker which Psychology requires, 338. Theories of Self-consciousness: 1) The theory of the Soul, 342. 2) The Associationist theory, 350. 3) The Transcendentalist theory, 360. The mutations of the Self, 373. Insane delusions, 375. Alternating selves, 379. Mediumships or possessions, 393. Summary, 400.
CHAPTER XI
Attention, 402. Its neglect by English psychologists, 402. Description of it, 404. To how many things can we attend at once? 405. Wundt's experiments on displacement of date of impressions simultaneously attended to, 410. Personal equation, 413. The varieties of attention, 416. Passive attention, 418. Voluntary attention, 420. Attention's effects on sensation, 425;—on discrimination, 426;—on recollection, 427;—on reaction-time, 427. The neural process in attention: 1) Accommodation of sense-organ, 434. 2) Preperception, 438. Is voluntary attention a resultant or a force? 447. The effort to attend can be conceived as a resultant, 450. Conclusion, 453. Acquired Inattention, 455.
CHAPTER XII
Conception, 459. The sense of sameness, 459. Conception defined, 461. Conceptions are unchangeable, 464. Abstract ideas, 468. Universals, 473. The conception 'of the same' is not the 'same state' of mind, 480.
CHAPTER XIII
Discrimination and Comparison, 483. Locke on discrimination, 483. Martineau ditto, 484. Simultaneous sensations originally fuse into one object, 488. The principle of mediate comparison, 489. Not all differences are differences of composition, 490. The conditions of discrimination, 494. The sensation of difference, 495. The transcendentalist theory of the perception of differences uncalled for, 498. The process of analysis, 502. The process of abstraction, 505. The improvement of discrimination by practice, 508. Its two causes, 510. Practical interests limit our discrimination, 515. Reaction-time after discrimination, 523. The perception of likeness, 528. The magnitude of differences, 530. The measurement of discriminative [Pg xii] sensibility: Weber's law, 533. Fechner's interpretation of this as the psycho-physic law, 537. Criticism thereof, 545.
CHAPTER XIV
Association, 550. The problem of the connection of our thoughts, 550. It depends on mechanical conditions, 553. Association is of objects thought of, not of 'ideas,' 554. The rapidity of association, 557. The 'law of contiguity,' 561. The elementary law of association, 566. Impartial redintegration, 569. Ordinary or mixed association, 571. The law of interest, 572. Association by similarity, 578. Elementary expression of the difference between the three kinds of association, 581. Association in voluntary thought, 583. Similarity no elementary law, 590. History of the doctrine of association, 594.
CHAPTER XV
The Perception of Time, 605. The sensible present, 606. Its duration is the primitive time-perception, 608. Accuracy of our estimate of short durations, 611. We have no sense for empty time, 619. Variations of our time-estimate, 624. The feeling of past time is a present feeling, 627. Its cerebral process, 632.
CHAPTER XVI
Memory, 643. Primary memory, 643. Analysis of the phenomenon of memory, 648. Retention and reproduction are both caused by paths of association in the brain, 653. The conditions of goodness in memory, 659. Native retentiveness is unchangeable, 663. All improvement of memory consists in better thinking, 667. Other conditions of good memory, 669. Recognition, or the sense of familiarity, 673. Exact measurements of memory, 676. Forgetting, 679. Pathological cases, 681. Professor Ladd criticised, 687.
Fußnoten
- [1] William James: The Principles of Psychology. Two volumes. Published by: Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1918. 1280 pages. First published in 1890.