be sure, but the method of observation of these objects is not essentially different in the three branches of science. Given increased accuracy and scope of technique, and the behaviorist will be able to give a complete account of a subject's behavior both as regards immediate response to stimulation, which is effected through the larger muscles; delayed response, which is effected through the same muscles (so-called action after deliberation)―these two forms comprising what I have called explicit behavior; and the more elusive types, such as the movements of the larynx, which go on in cases where action upon stimulation is delayed (so-called thought processes). This latter form of behavior, which manifests itself chiefly in movements of the larynx, but which may go on in (to the eye) imperceptible form, in the fingers, hands, and body as a whole, I should call implicit behavior. For years to come, possibly always, we shall have to content ourselves with experimental observation and control of explicit behavior. I have a very decided conviction, though, that not many years will pass before implicit behavior will likewise yield to experimental treatment.
"Possibly the most immediate result of the acceptance of the behaviorist's view will be the elimination of self-observation and of the introspective reports resulting from such a method." The view taken by Watson is physico-biological. While one can sympathise with his views in making psychology more of a biological study, still one cannot help realizing the fact that he takes an extreme view when he wishes to reduce all mental processes to behavior. His view of affection as being essentially sense processes seems to be sound. He should not, however, involve his view of affection with the more narrow sectarian view of sex analysis forced gratuitously on clinical facts, Affection and emotion are no doubt peripherally induced and are probably due to the action of the central nervous system and glandular secretions of internal organs. In this respect one, may fully agree with the behavior hypothesis. There is no need of invoking sex to that effect as Watson himself states it: "It is not essential to my contention that the above vague suggestion should be true. It is essential to our position to have affection reducible to sense processes. It is even more probable that the mechanism is glandular; that very slight increase in the secretion products gives us the one group; checking or decreasing the secretion, probably the other."
What, however, one cannot accept is the extreme view of the denial of introspection. Introspection will ever remain the fundamental method in normal and abnormal psychology. The very problem of sensations, ideas, images, thoughts, affects, emotions, has no meaning without introspection. We must know the psychic states or mental processes from our own experiences. Pain, pleasure, feelings, anger, fear, love, acquire their meaning only from the introspective attitude of the observer.
VII Psychology and Psychopathology
The popular scientific literature of today often asserts dogmatically the belief that the investigation of the normal precedes that of the abnormal. This belief is erroneous and is only given credence to by people who had not thought much on the subject, and especially by those who belong to the so-called "new psychology" school. As a matter of fact the abnormal in scientific research precedes that, of the normal. The investigation of the abnormal is one of the most potent instruments for new discoveries. The method of experimentation, the most powerful tool of modern science, is in fact the creation of artificial conditions, in other words, the effecting of abnormal states. Where the compound is highly complex, where the constituent factors and their relations are imperfectly or all but unknown and are not therefore under control, the spontaneous occurrence of some anomaly ought to be greeted enthusiastically, as it discloses the role played by the modified or excluded factor. This is specially true in the case of mental life, where the phenomena under investigation are the most complex in the whole domain of science, where a direct modification of the functioning mental activity is as a rule impossible without the production of some anomaly.
In the case of psychic life experimentation may be conducted on two different lines of research. The one is the modification of the objective content by means of changing the objective stimulus. The other method, and by far the most efficient and fruitful, is the modification of the very function on which the psychic content depends.
Memory, for instance, may be studied by giving the subject a series of auditory or visual impressions at given intervals, and then seeing how many of the series the subject can remember after a given interval. We can thus determine the role played by such factors as time, number of impressions, number of repetitions, etc. The function of memory remains the same, and only the stimuli of the psychic content are modified. We may, however, study memory from a totally different standpoint, and that is by the disturbance of its function. Disturbance of function may be studied in artificial states produced by drugs, or induced by hypnosis; or by investigating cases in which the function is accidentally disturbed, such, for instance, as are to be found in different forms of amnesia and aphasia.
The second method is by far the more important of the two, and is extremely valuable. For it is only by disturbances in the function of thought that we can learn something about the factors and nature of mental life. We cannot possibly learn about the nature of a process, unless we disturb it artificially, or unless we try to study cases in which we can find the process in different stages or degrees of perturbation; here one factor is missing, there another is exaggerated, and so on. From such cases it is easy to analyze the constituent factors and their interrelations. In mechanics, for instance, the law of inertia would have never been discovered, if not for the imagining of such a case as the absence of all friction, or its approximate removal. The ancients who looked to the ordinary phenomena of common life, that is to the normal, considered that bodies are bound to stop. The ancient physicists, relying on their observations of the normal, believed that bodies in falling traverse space in proportion to their weight; it required a Galileo to detect the fallacy and show that bodies, no matter what their size and weight be, falling from a high place or in a vacuum, fall to the ground at the same time. The same holds true in the case of chemistry; no observer of water in its "normal" state would have detected the presence of hydrogen and oxygen. Only under highly artificial or abnormal conditions was it possible to discover the constituents that go to make up the compound water.
If we turn to the sciences dealing with more complex phenomena, we find illustrated the same truth. We know how highly instructive Darwin found it to follow closely for a period of many years experiments of breeds in artificial selection, and to what capital account he turned his highly valuable observations of all forms of curiosities and monstrosities. We all know how valuable the observation and study of all forms of anomalies or variations from the normal type or species proved to the final establishment of the theory of evolution. The pre-Darwinian zoologist ignored variation regarding it simply as an exception to the normal, as a mere abnormality, as a pathological manifestation which is of little value to the scientist, who is only occupied with the discovery of general laws, laws of the normal. As a matter of fact, it was just these neglected variations, deviations from the normal that turned out to be at the very foundation of biology, revealing the nature and mechanism of the evolution of species.
The same truth we find illustrated in the investigations of the functions of the different parts of the organism. Experiments on animals such as vivisection, injecting of toxin matter, etc., experiments that actually mean the putting of animals in pathological states, as well as the investigation of pathological cases in man, have given physiology its most valuable treasures. Knowledge of the normal arises out of knowledge of the abnormal. In fact we may even say that the normal itself originates in the abnormal. It is in variation, in anomalies, that the normal species takes its origin.
Strictly speaking the normal is not at all a scientific concept, it is purely provisional in its nature, and holds only good from a restricted point of view in transitional stages of science. The normal is that which is common; the normal is the usual; and it is not the usual, but the unusual that gives birth to new life in science. The unusual attracts our attention and reveals to us the
