Volume 1

Analytic psychology.

  • George Frederick Stout
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Analytic psychology. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    236/314 (page 218)
    them only indirectly supports the attention-process, because of the peculiar function discharged by words, as signs. 3. Fixation of Attention to General Topics.—The topic which at this moment engrosses my mind is the psy- chology of attention. My thoughts continue to be concen- trated on this topic, while a series of images, mostly verbal, succeed each other in consciousness, each representing some partial aspect of this total and permanent object. The same topic thus receives gradual definition as my thought develops step by step. The total object on which attention is fixed consists, as a rule, of both the topic and the object of the transient image, except in the momentary intervals of transi- tion between one discrete image and another. These intervals are not mere empty gaps ; an awareness of the general drift and purport of our thoughts is retained in them, so that as each image emerges we immediately feel obstruction or advancement of the current of mental activity. To Professor James belongs the credit of having most fully and clearly ex- hibited the nature and importance of these “ transitive states ”. The stream of consciousness, “ like a bird’s life, seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. . . . The resting-places are usually occupied by sensorial imaginations of some sort . . . the places of flight are filled with thoughts of relations, static or dynamic, that for the most part obtain between the matters contemplated in the periods of com- parative rest.”1 Often the sole link connecting an image with its predecessor in the train of ideas is to be found in their relation to a common topic. These transitive states of imageless attention are often especially noticeable when our thoughts are suddenly diverted from one absorbing topic to another of heterogeneous nature. After our preoccupation it requires an effort to collect ourselves. While we are making 1 Psychology, vol. i., p. 243.