Psychology : an introductory study of the structure and function of human consciousness / by James Rowland Angell.

Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Psychology : an introductory study of the structure and function of human consciousness / by James Rowland Angell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    of the unconscious. Needless to say, our modest business at tliis point is witli no such majestic influence as all this sug- gests. The term unconscious has two proper uses in psychology. It is, first, a limiting concept set over against consciousness of every kind; whatever is not conscious is un- conscious. Evidently this use of the term is largely negative . in its implication. As a positive concept the unconscious is, in the second place, practically synonymous with the ph}'sio- logical. Thus, to say that an unconscious factor entered in to determine certain of the movements of our voluntary muscles is simply to affirm that certain neural activities, whose obvious counterparts we cannot detect in consciousness, ^ have contributed to the total mass of motor excitations. In i this sense the unconscious ceases to be a sheer enigma, and j becomes a more or less convenient term wherewith to desig- nate those marginal neural actions which evidently modify the reactions we make, without, however, producing notice- able mental ehanges. Summary.—If we take stock of the various points which we have canvassed in this chapter, we see that although the self undoubtedly manifests tendencies toward the systematic unification of its own experiences, it is far from being a sim- ple unity. It is highly complex in constitution, and in many particulars highly unstable. It is distinctly and character- istically a life phenomenon, with periods of growth and expansion, periods of maturity, and periods of decay and disintegration. But after all, the feeling of selfhood is the I very core of our ]isychical being. About it are gathered all ! the joys and all the miseries of life. However much a ! critical philoso])hy may shake our confidence in the implica- , tion of the feeling, the fact of its existence is for each of us ' the one absolutely indubitable fact.