The Foundations of Normal and Abnormal Psychology. Boris Sidis

      Preface

       Table of Contents

      In this volume I made an attempt to formulate the fundamental assumptions and main principles that underlie normal and abnormal psychology. Every science, mathematical, physical or biological, has its postulates as the foundation of its structure. Psychology as a science has also its own assumptions which have to be clearly formulated. The object of the first part of this volume is the unravelling of the principal concepts and hypotheses which form the basis of the study of mental phenomena.

      All through the domain of the sciences there is a vast movement for the search of fundamental concepts and for the close investigation of such concepts. Even such an exact science as mathematics has felt this spirit of examination of its fundamental assumptions, axioms, and postulates. Men like Lobatchevsky, Bolyai, Rieman and others have given the start and a number of mathematicians have recently followed in their footsteps, with the result of getting a wider horizon and of opening unknown regions. The same we find in the case of physical sciences, such as physics, mechanics and chemistry. Mach, Poincaré, Ostwald, Pearson and others have contributed to this spirit of investigation in the domain of physical sciences. This spirit of inquiry has become of late specially intensified by the revolutionary discoveries of radio-active bodies.

      We are acquainted with the great movement which has swept all over biological, sociological, and economical sciences due to the influence of the theory of evolution. The spirit of free inquiry into fundamental concepts has seized on all sciences Throughout the whole domain of human thought there is felt this rejuvenating and invigorating breath of the new revolutionary spirit. Philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, history, law, economics all have been, awakened out of their long sleep of centuries. Every science has been shaken by this mighty movement to its very foundation. Even such a dry study as logic has felt the vital breeze of the inquiring spirit of modern times.

      I make an attempt in this volume to examine in an elementary way the foundations of normal and abnormal psychology. This is all the more necessary as physiologists, biologists, biological chemists, and recently students of comparative psychology, a science which lies on the borderland of psychology and biology, have a tendency to make incursions into psychology proper, and favor mechanical or purely physiological concepts to the detriment and even total exclusion of mental processes.

      This tendency towards elimination of psychic life by mechanical processes or by "The Unconscious" is also observed in the writings of some workers in the domain of psychopathology. They think it is in the interest of strict science to express wherever possible mental states in terms of physical changes. Finally a stage is reached in which all consciousness is completely dispensed with in favor of physiological processes or "The Unconscious". Psychology is thus made a branch of physiology and biology.

      Again, philosophers and metaphysicians are apt to make intrusions into the domain of psychology, because the latter is regarded by them from time immemorial as legitimate prey, inasmuch as their own domain lies on the outskirts of mental life. In the interest of metaphysical systems philosophers attempt to subject psychology to their own speculative purposes.

      The popular mind has a tendency of regarding psychology as something mystical and of identifying psychology with all kinds of faith cures, mind cures, spiritism, telepathy, telaesthesia, and table rapping. It is unfortunate that even medical men of note, on account of lack of acquaintance with psychological subjects and inquiries, are apt to look askance at psychology and identify it with religious beliefs, mental cures as well as with the more shady side of spiritistic manifestations. Still more complicated is the plight in which the psychologist finds himself in regard to the recent claims put forth by some psychologists in having achieved results of importance to law, industry, and to the reformation of social ills. The demand for practical results in psychology is due to the industrial spirit of our times, a spirit which requires immediate results that can be cashed or expressed in dollars and cents. The earnest psychologist should repudiate such industrial business psychology, for the simple reason that such a psychology is imaginary; in other words, such a psychology does not exist. An experienced salesman, an intelligent business man knows infinitely more about business and how to obtain the best results out of certain combinations than all the psychologists with their laboratory experiments, their artificial statistics, and puerile trivial experimental arrangements, giving results no less trivial and meaningless.

      The claims made by psychologists as to industrial efficiency which psychology can give is ludicrous in the extreme. We may well expect the astronomer to claim that astronomy can give points how to conduct successfully a political campaign. As a matter of fact the psychologist has nothing to say on the subject of advertisements, industry, and business, but commonplace trivialities expressed with all the pomposity of scholastic authority. Industrial efficiency does not belong to the domain of psychology. We may as well expect the comparative psychologist to offer practical points on the efficiency of cows to give milk or on the efficiency of hens to lay eggs. The success of advertisement is a matter of experienced business men and not of academic psychologists who have to offer nothing but the merest platitudes.

      We must once for all enter a protest against those psychologists who claim that they have some great psychological truths to reveal to businessmen, manufacturers and workingmen. I trust that both the businessman and the workingman will have enough common sense to take such psychological truths for what they are actually worth. The ordinary psychologist understands little of business life, knows almost nothing of the life of the laborer, and is woefully ignorant of the economical questions of the times. Psychological business claims are illusory. The sooner the practical business man learns this fact the better

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