Outlines of psychology / by Harald Höffding ; translated by Mary E. Lowndes.

  • Harald Høffding
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of psychology / by Harald Höffding ; translated by Mary E. Lowndes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/390 page 5
    eye. Clear, brightly coloured, and moving objects especially attract the attention. Memory also now pjays a leading part. Instead of crying so long as it feels hungry, the child is pacified at the sight of preparations for the satisfaction of its wants (in the third week), and recognizes its mother (from the third month) as the source of this satisfaction, a step assisted by sensations of sound, for the child turns its head to the side whence sound comes.1 Sensations of light, sound, and touch appear, indeed, as phenomena independent of the individual’s feelings of pleasure and pain, and of his active movement, but do not directly come into conflict with them. The sensation of resistance and limitation first does this. Such sensations of checked and hampered movement, as already noted, are possible even in the fætus State, but they now become more varied and powerful. The strong vegetative energy finds expression in movements of the limbs, and the child is thus led to experiment with things of the outer world. Active experi- ment is for the adult also the surest means of making acquaintance with his surroundings. The child does not wait for the outer world to come to him ; from the beginning he himself grasps at the world by involuntary movements, and thus secures the best knowledge as to the limit between the world and himself. The not-self begins wherever movement meets with resistance, especially if the resist- ance causes pain. When memory-images become numerous and connected, a thiid important “moment” is reached, the contrast, namely, between the clearer and stronger impressions which arise immediately, unexpectedly, and often disconnectedly, and the weaker images which are at the disposal of consciousness under all circumstances,--the contrast, that is to say, between * percepts and memories. Now the question is, how much is included in the self ? The limits of the sel'f coincide for a time with the limits of the organism. All that takes part in movement and meets with re- sistance we reckon as part of self. The limitation can be learned only by experience. The child gradually discovers his own body. The hånds are the first familiar part of his own organism ; they are examined especially by means of the lips and the tongue, the child sometimes putting his finger in his mouth and sucking it even on the first day. Afterwards he learns to fix his gaze on the hånds, and then a firm association of ideas is speedily formed between the muscular sensation accompanying their movement Kussmaul, pp. 26, 39. Vierord t, Die Physiologie ties Kindesaliers, pp. iS4, 1S9.
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