A primer of psychology / by Edward Bradford Titchener.

  • Titchener, Edward Bradford, 1867-1927.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A primer of psychology / by Edward Bradford Titchener. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    tions, etc. Each of these, every idea or resolve or feeling that forms part of our conscious experience, is a specific item of that experience, — corresponding to the separate animal, horse or eagle or what not, of the zoologist. (4) Once more: just as histological observation shows that the animal is not made up of a single uniform substance, but that the organism is com- posed of a number of different tissues, so does psychological observation show that no concrete mental process, no idea or feeling that we Actually experience as part of a consciousness, is a simple process, but that all alike are made up of a number of really simple processes blended together. These simple processes are called mental elements. They are very numerous: there are probably some 50,000 of them : but they may all be grouped into two great classes, as sensations and affections. Reversing our order, then, we may build up mind as follows. We set out with the two classes of elementary processes, sensations (red, cold, bitter) and affections (pleasant, unpleasant). These can never be experienced separately; a consciousness is never a single elementary process, but always a group of concrete processes. While the chemist can get H and O as well as H20, the elements as well as the compound, the psychologist can never know sensations and affections except by abstraction, by directing his attention upon one part of a concrete process and ignor- ing the rest of it. Above the elements stand the simplest forms of real mental experience, the concrete processes (ideas, feelings, etc.). These unite, again, to form consciousnesses, which appear in various states, according as their bodily conditions vary. T inally, a certain series of consciousnesses makes up The mental elements. The up- building of mind.