A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins.

  • Mary Whiton Calkins
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A first book in psychology / by Mary Whiton Calkins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PRODUCTIVE IMAGINATION, MEMORY, SUCCESSIVE AS¬ SOCIATION I. Productive and Reproductive Imagination This chapter is devoted to the study of imagination from a new point of view.* Imagination has, up to this point, been described as sensational, unified, and ‘ private’ consciousness of particularized objects, and has been classified according to sense-types. We are now to take account of the distinction, practically and aesthetically significant, between reproduc¬ tive (or recurring) and productive (or inventive) imagination. Relatively accurate and complete reproductive imagination is called memory. It must at once be noted that the ‘structural elements’ of imagination always are reproduced (that is, repeated) and not in any sense ‘novel.’ They are part of our original endow¬ ment, instinctive forms of consciousness, as we may call them. I can imagine no brand-new color, and no new taste. The novelty involved in so-called creative imagination is therefore a novelty of combination, for one complex experience may differ from every previous one, though, taken singly, no ele- * Before reading farther, the student should answer, in writing, the follow¬ ing questions: (i) What seems to you to be the difference between imagining and remembering? (2) What method would you use in order to memorize (a) the objects in a jeweller’s window? (b) a Shakespearian sonnet?
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