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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    safety, the parental instinct and the in¬ stinct of gregariousness. The parental in¬ stinct might, perhaps, be classified as a de- about, in short it wishes for certain results. The “battle of motives” for the control of the indi¬ vidual thus becomes a battle of wishes and that motive or that wish succeeds which is the stronger. The individual does what, in the last analysis, he wanted to do. In terms of conduct the man bought a house, but if we also take into account the data of introspection we find in addition that he wanted to buy a house in the country which he could look forward to as a home when he retired from busi¬ ness. The wish has replaced the sensation as the ultimate psychological unit. The replacement of the sensation by the wish as the unit of mental life has not only been of momentous importance from a purely scientific standpoint, but it has had the effect of humanizing the science of mind. Psychology can no longer be content to deal with abstract scientific concepts, but it must deal with actual, living human material, with men as they are, with their aspirations and disappointments, their hopes, their fears, their loves and hates. Psychology has become human¬ ized. (See Holt, Edward B.: “The Freudian Wish and Its Place in Ethics.” New York, 1915.) [14]