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.

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    nected with the proof of such truths by argument and evidence. What has been said of habits of thought applies, mutatis mutandis, to habits of volition. When we are so accustomed to submitting to a certain authority that we do so automatically, we none the less have to exercise oui attention in following its commands, if they are obscure or self- contradictory. § 5. The Formation of Habit. One necessary and omnipresent condition of the formation of habit is the tendency of any mental process with its con- nected movements to repeat itself, simply because it has occurred before—a tendency which grows stronger the more frequently the process recurs. When we say that the tendency grows stronger we mean (1) that the process is capable of being set in action by a slighter cue. If on the first occasion it has occurred by way of reaction to a complex stimulus abed, it may, after frequent repetition, find sufficient prompt- ing in the presence of a b c or a b, or even of a alone. This characteristic of habit has been called the principle of the “ Diminution of Causality ”.x (2) That it becomes less liable to disturbance from accompanying circumstances. (3) That it becomes stronger as a propensity—i.e., if its course is inter- rupted or arrested greater impatience is felt. This principle of repetition, as we may call it, seems in certain exceptional cases to be of itself sufficient to account for the growth of habit. Its importance is greater in proportion as the part played by attention and volition in the original process is small. Thus, in the case of idiots, we sometimes find it opera- tive in almost complete detachment from other modifying conditions. Dr. Carpenter quotes from Miss Martineau’s
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