William McDougall 1871-1938 / by Major Greenwood and May Smith.

  • Greenwood, Major, 1880-1949
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William McDougall 1871-1938 / by Major Greenwood and May Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    must always be subject to revision with the progress of science”. He himself looked upon this as his best work, and was surprised that it failed to arouse much interest. He was very conscious of the necessity for a recognition of the importance of psychology in the interpretation of the problems of life, and he did his best to make its contribution adequate. In addition to these and other books he published numerous articles relating to muscular contraction, the physiological factors of the attentive process, various problems of visual sensation, the nature of the inhibitory impulse within the nervous system, the condition of fatigue in the nervous system, hypno¬ tism, instinct, and intelligence. For years he had been interested in abnormal manifestations of mental life, both because they might shed light on the normal, and also from a desire to help in some way, those suffering from the various aberrations from the normal. Consequently he welcomed the work of Freud from the beginning and found a link with him in the insistence on the purposive character of symptoms. Some think that McDougall’s Social Psychology played a considerable part in facilitating the acceptance of Freud’s general principles in this country. He regretted at the time that Freud had not studied normal psychology, but he eventually came to the conclusion that Freud was thereby saved from having to struggle against many of its errors. In recent years he criticized severely what he considered to be the more extravagant developments of psycho-analysis, but there is no doubt that he appreciated Freud’s contributions to psychology and psycho-therapy. In a different field he took a practical interest in the early correlational work of Spearman and Karl Pearson, and even though he personally refused to learn these newer methods, he expected his students to equip themselves to use them, and the earliest research work of William Brown, Cyril Burt, and of one of us necessitated the use of correlation. He was brilliant at devising experiments and designing the requisite apparatus. The dotting machine is a good illustration. It was intended to be a means of obtaining an objective