Dr. Rubin
says, "the physical appearance of the individual, his psychic traits, or what might
be called the chemistry of his soul, are demonstrated [22] in a great measure by the
character and amount of the internal secretions of his various glands."
- Rubin, Herman H., M.D., Your Mysterious Glands, p. 54.
Some
schools go so far to deny consciousness altogether and regard it (the East investigator
would say they rightly regard it) as inherent in matter. Dr. Leary says:
"Consciousness characterizes nerves as vibration characterizes other forms of
matter."
- Leary, Daniel H., Ph.D., Modern Psychology: Normal and Abnormal, p. 116.
Thus it is defined elsewhere as "a complex integration and succession of bodily
activities which are closely related to or involve the verbal and gestural mechanisms and
hence most frequently come to social expression."
- Hunter, Walter S., Psychologies of 1925, p. 91.
Watson warns his readers that they "will find no discussion of consciousness and
no reference to such terms as sensation, perception, attention, will, image and the like.
These terms are in good repute, but," he says, "I have found I can get along
without them both in carrying out investigation and in presenting psychology as a system
to my students. I frankly do not know what they mean nor do I believe that anyone else can
use them consistently."
- Psychologies of 1925, p. 201, footnote.
Finally we are told that "When psychology has become quite divorced from psyche
and gets in bed with living beings we shall be able to throw the word 'consciousness'
into the discard - along [23] with 'mind' and 'memory.' Human behavior then will be on a
scientific basis and not a branch of literature, or philosophic or religious speculation.
'Mind' will give way to personality, 'consciousness' in general to specific exhibitions of
learned behavior, and 'memory' to the calling out of some part of the individual's striped
or unstriped muscle-tissue organization."
- Dorsey, George A., Why We Behave Like Human Beings, p. 333.
This intensely materialistic trend of Western psychology is the more surprising when we
remember that, according to its derivation, psychology is the 'logos' or word of the
psyche or soul.
The West, however, has its dissenting voices. There is the introspective school of
psychology, more frequently called the introspectionist, and also the mentalist. They
admit the fact of consciousness and assume a conscious entity. Dr., Leary defines these
groups as follows:
"The introspectionist is interested in consciousness, awareness, awareness of
awareness, the self, the 'I' images, and all sorts of other things that the behaviorist of
strict training and rigid technology scorns, ignores and denies... The introspectionist
turns his attention inwardly; remembers, compares mentally, derives data from
self-communion, asks others to do the same; the behaviorist theoretically treats the human
animal the same as he would any lower form of life, and observes merely the overt and
objective responses the animal makes in much the same manner as would be used by the
physicist or chemist in observing the reactions of bodies or compounds in their
laboratories. [24] Furthermore, the subjective school is apt to be ultra-rational and
systematic; the behavioristic more empirical and pragmatic...
"The mentalists insist that psychical activity is not the mere reflection of
physical activity; that over and above the body and the brain there is something
different, on a different level, call it mind, spirit, consciousness, what you will.
Thought is not the functioning of matter. The materialists on the other hand, while
differing among themselves, would hold just the reverse, namely, that all is physical, and
that all human conduct, be it thinking, feeling, emotions, muscle activity or nerve
activity, is all the functioning of physical, material cells, and that without such
structure there can be no activity at all. Whatever acts is physical, however it acts. On
the one hand we have an informing power or spirit using the structure of the physical
body; on the other we have structure as the basis, solely and indispensably, of function,
however complex, however delicate, however noble that functioning may be in terms of
morals or religion."
- Leary, Daniel B., Ph.D., Modern Psychology: Normal and Abnormal, pp. 6-7.
The introspectionists and mentalists have not, however, demonstrated their point
scientifically, and the position of these schools is still further weakened by the many
diverse groups into which psychology is divided. Dr. Hocking, of Harvard, says:
"True, psychology does not speak with a single voice. There is dynamic psychology
and purposive psychology, Gestalt psychology and reaction psychology, Freudian psychology,
structural psychology, behavioristic psychology, and various other schools. They produce
[25] different portraits of the self. But the composite of them has a distinctly
physiological cast; and we may take behaviorism as the pure instance, because it is the
extreme instance, of this character."
- Hocking, Wm. E., Self, Its Body and Freedom, pp. 17,18.
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