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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    imagination.* He tested the color-imagery of several stu¬ dents by pronouncing in a darkened room the names of colors and requiring them to describe the resulting experiences. One of these young men proved utterly incapable, with the strongest effort, of imagining any color whatever. Another historic example is Charcot’s patient, a man whose visual imagery was impaired through nervous disease. “ Asked to draw an arcade, he says, ‘ I remember that it contains semi¬ circular arches, that two of them meeting at an angle make a vault, but how it looks I am absolutely unable to imagine.’ . . . He complains of his loss of feeling for colors. £My wife has black hair, this I know; but I can no more recall its color than I can her person and features!’” f The auditory type of imagination is unquestionably less common than the visual, and it is almost always closely com¬ bined with imagery of the motor-tactual sort. It is the image- type of the great musicians, of Beethoven, for example, who composed his symphonies when totally unable to hear a note of them. But though less significant to most of us than the visual images, the concrete auditory imagination belongs, at least in some degree, to all people who are able to recall voices and melodies. The prevalence of auditory imagery is suggested by the ordinary ruse of violin players, who pro¬ duce the effect of a diminuendo, lengthened beyond the actual sound, by continuing the drawing motion of the bow when it no longer touches the string. The most significant type of tactual (or pressure) imagina¬ tion is frequently called the tactual-motor type — the imagi¬ nation of the pressures, often internal, which are originally * “Outlines of Psychology,” Section 27, 9. t Cf. James, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 59.
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