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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    associations which distinguish the imaginative from the prosaic type of mind, which are the essence of all metaphor and the very heart of humor, belong, all of them, to the ‘ partial’ type. No opposition is too fixed, no separation of time or place too wide, to be bridged by this sort of association. We have, therefore, the following types of association:2 * — ASSOCIATION I. Total or Concrete Association, of complete experiences (with or with¬ out persistence of the first term). II. Partial Association, of persisting elements of consciousness: — a. Multiple Association (starting from a large group of elements). b. Focalized Association (starting from a single element or from a small group of elements). Before taking up the more practical question of the definite di¬ rection of association, two theoretical comments must be made. It must be pointed out in the first place that one’s experiences never recur, in the sense that the percepts or images of one moment are actually identical with those of a preceding mo¬ ment. On the contrary, my present image of Faneuil Hall, of my uncle, or of the date of the fall of Khartoum is quite a different event from my earlier perception or image of the same building, person, or date. Unquestionably, however, I assume a certain ‘ recurrence ’ of the past experience, and this assumed identity or recurrence is rightly recognized by the psychologist as a character of association. A further dis¬ cussion of the possibility and nature of recurrence would be metaphysical. A second theoretical remark is the following: evidently * The student should not fail to practise himself in the analysis of cases of association. For suggestions, cf. Appendix, Section VII. (§ 2).
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