Thoughts of a psychiatrist on the war and after / by William A. White.

  • William Alanson White
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thoughts of a psychiatrist on the war and after / by William A. White. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/160 (page 10)
    The human animal, like all animals, has certain fundamental instincts which it occupied itself with experimental refinements. Vision was examined to define its range, not only in terms of distance, but of lateral extent; the visibility of the cardinal colors was examined in the same way and then the range of color vision itself, that is, the number of color tones that were distinguishable; the degrees of brightness were arranged in a scale in a similar way; and the ra¬ pidity, measured in hundredths of a second, with which the observer could respond to the several visual stimuli was recorded. The other sense organs were examined in like manner and laws were evolved based upon the nature of series of least observable differences in stimuli. Psychol¬ ogy in this state of its development, was in reality only a refined physiology of the sense organs, defining their capacities for reaction in more defi¬ nite terms of time and space and of the physical characteristics of the stimulus. For this psychology, which was a refined physi¬ ology the sensation was the irreducible unit out of which all that was mental was built up. If I, for example, see a book lying on the table before me, this experience can be analyzed into its com¬ ponent sensory units. The color of the book, lighter where the light strikes it, darker in shadow, [10]