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.

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    spends its life in endeavoring to satisfy. Just what these are, how they are to he is analyzable into its component sensory qualities; the perception of its distance is dependent upon sensations (unconscious) of the stress and strain of the eye muscles as they move the two eyes into a position which brings the book into clear vision, into focus; the perception of the object as a book is again dependent, not upon immediate sensations, but upon a combination, an association of these with remembered groups of similar sensations, which groups, occurring over and over again in the course of our lives, have, with the aid of memory associations, gradually built up the concept book: the perception of the roughness or smoothness, as the case may be, of the cover, is also but sensa¬ tional material, but here again, largely inferred from past touch experiences rathep than dependent upon present sensations. The sensation is the unit out of which consciousness is built up by a pro¬ gressive series of combinations into percepts, con¬ cepts, abstract ideas. This is a workable method of studying certain mental processes so long as we are dealing with subjects that can be interrogated, but for studying the mind in its manifestations in animals other than man it is impracticable. Here a method of objective observation becomes necessary, and ac- [ii]