Psychology

by James, William

• ISBN13: 9780268015572
• ISBN10: 0268015570
• Edition: Abridged
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1985-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Notre Dame Pr

Summary

Condensed and reworked from James's monumental "Principles of Psychology," this classic text examines habit; stream of consciousness; self and the sense of personal identity; discrimination and association; the sense of time; memory; perception; imagination; reasoning; emotions, instincts; the will and voluntary acts; and much more. This edition omits the outdated first nine chapters.

Table of Contents

Prefatory Note	xi
Introduction	xiii
Gordon Allport
Introductory (Original Chapter 1)	xxv
Habit	1	(17)
Its importance, and its physical basis	1	(2)
Due to pathways formed in the centers	3	(2)
Its practical uses	5	(2)
Concatenated acts	7	(1)
Necessity for guiding sensations in secondarily automatic performances	8	(1)
Pedagogical maxims concerning the formation of habits	9	(9)
The Stream of Consciousness	18	(25)
Analytic order of our study	18	(1)
Every state of mind forms part of a personal consciousness	19	(2)
The same state of mind is never had twice	21	(2)
Permanently recurring ideas are a fiction	23	(1)
Every personal consciousness is continuous	24	(3)
Substantive and transitive states	27	(3)
Every object appears with a 'fringe' of relations	30	(4)
The 'topic' of the thought	34	(1)
Thought may be rational in any sort of imagery	35	(2)
Consciousness is always especially interested in some one part of its object	37	(6)
The Self	43	(41)
The Me and the I	43	(1)
The material Me	44	(2)
The social Me	46	(1)
The spiritual Me	46	(1)
Self-appreciation	47	(4)
Self-seeking, bodily, social and spiritual	51	(2)
Rivalry of the Mes	53	(4)
Their hierarchy	57	(3)
Teleology of self-interest	60	(2)
The I, or 'pure ego,'	62	(1)
Thoughts are not compounded of 'fused' sensations	63	(4)
The 'soul' as a combining medium	67	(1)
The sense of personal identity	68	(2)
Explained by identity of function in successive passing thoughts	70	(2)
Mutations of the self	72	(2)
Insane delusions	74	(3)
Alternating personalities	77	(2)
Mediumships or possessions	79	(3)
Who is the Thinker	82	(2)
Attention	84	(22)
The narrowness of the field of consciousness	84	(1)
Dispersed attention	85	(1)
To how much can we attend at once?	86	(1)
The varieties of attention	87	(4)
Voluntary attention, its momentary character	91	(2)
To keep out attention, an object must change	93	(1)
Genius and attention	94	(1)
Attention's physiological conditions	95	(1)
The sense-organ must be adapted	96	(3)
The idea of the object must be aroused	99	(4)
Pedagogic remarks	103	(1)
Attention and free-will	104	(2)
Conception	106	(5)
Different states of mind can mean the same	106	(1)
Conceptions of abstract, of universal, and of problematic objects	107	(3)
The thought of 'the same' is not the same thought over again	110	(1)
Discrimination	111	(9)
Discrimination and association; definition of discrimination	111	(1)
Conditions which favor it	112	(1)
The sensation of difference	113	(2)
Differences inferred	115	(1)
The analysis of compound objects	115	(2)
To be easily singled out, a quality should already be separately known	117	(1)
Dissociation by varying concomitants	118	(1)
Practice improves discrimination	119	(1)
Association	120	(27)
The order of our ideas	120	(2)
It is determined by cerebral laws	122	(1)
The ultimate cause of association is habit	123	(1)
The elementary law in association	124	(1)
Indeterminateness of its results	125	(1)
Total recall	126	(2)
Partial recall, and the law of interest	128	(3)
Frequency, recency, vividness, and emotional congruity tend to determine the object recalled	131	(3)
Focalized recall, or 'association by similarity	134	(4)
Voluntary trains of thought	138	(2)
The solution of problems	140	(4)
Similarity no elementary law; summary and conclusion	144	(3)
The Sense of Time	147	(7)
The sensible present has duration	147	(1)
We have no sense for absolutely empty time	148	(2)
We measure duration by the events which succeed in it	150	(2)
The feeling of past time is a present feeling	152	(1)
Due to a constant cerebral condition	153	(1)
Memory	154	(15)
What It is	154	(2)
It involves both retention and recall	156	(1)
Both elements explained by paths formed by habit in the brain	157	(2)
Two conditions of a good memory, persistence and numerousness of paths	159	(3)
Cramming	162	(1)
One's native retentiveness is unchangeable	163	(2)
Improvement of the memory	165	(1)
Recognition	166	(1)
Forgetting	167	(1)
Pathological conditions	168	(1)
Imagination	169	(10)
What it is	169	(1)
Imaginations differ from man to man; Galton's statistics of visual imagery	170	(3)
Images of sounds	173	(1)
Images of movement	174	(1)
Images of touch	175	(1)
Loss of images in aphasia	176	(1)
The neural process in imagination	177	(2)
Perception	179	(23)
Perception and sensation compared	179	(1)
The perceptive state of mind is not a compound	180	(3)
Perception is of definite things	183	(1)
Illusions	184	(1)
First type: inference of the more usual object	185	(3)
Second type: inference of the object of which our mind is full	188	(5)
'Apperception,'	193	(1)
Genius and old-fogyism	194	(2)
The physiological process in perception	196	(1)
Hallucinations	197	(5)
The Perception of Space	202	(16)
The attribute of extensity belongs to all objects of sensation	202	(2)
The construction of real space	204	(1)
The processes which it involves: 1) Subdivision	205	(1)
Coalescence of different sensible data into one 'thing,'	206	(1)
Location in an environment	207	(1)
Place in a series of positions	208	(1)
Measurement	209	(3)
Objects which are signs, and objects which are realities	212	(1)
The 'third dimension,' Berkeley's theory of distance	213	(3)
The part played by the intellect in space-perception	216	(2)
Reasoning	218	(19)
What It is	218	(2)
It involves the use of abstract character	220	(1)
What is meant by an 'essential' character	221	(4)
The 'essence' varies with the subjective interest	225	(2)
The two great points in reasoning, 'sagacity' and 'wisdom,'	227	(2)
Sagacity	229	(2)
The help given by association by similarity	231	(3)
The reasoning powers of brutes	234	(3)
Consciousness and Movement	237	(3)
All consciousness is motor	237	(2)
Three classes of movement to which it leads	239	(1)
Emotion	240	(18)
Emotions compared with instincts	240	(1)
The varieties of emotion are innumerable	241	(1)
The cause of their varieties	242	(1)
The feeling in the coarser emotions, results from the bodily expression	242	(5)
This view must not be called materialistic	247	(1)
This view explains the great variability of emotion	248	(1)
A corollary varified	249	(1)
An objection replied to	250	(1)
The subtler emotions	251	(1)
Description of fear	252	(1)
Genesis of the emotional reactions	253	(5)
Instinct	258	(24)
Its definition	258	(1)
Every instinct is an impulse	259	(3)
Instincts are not always blind or invariable	262	(3)
Two principles of non-uniformity	265	(8)
Enumeration of instincts in man	273	(1)
Description of fear	274	(8)
Will	282	(46)
Voluntary acts	282	(1)
They are secondary performances	282	(3)
No third kind of idea is called for	285	(2)
The motor-cue	287	(2)
Ideo-motor action	289	(6)
Action after deliberation	295	(1)
Five chief types of decision	296	(5)
The feeling of effort	301	(1)
Healthiness of will	302	(1)
Unhealthiness of will	303	(1)
The explosive will: (1) from defective inhibition	304	(2)
(2) from exaggerated impulsion	306	(2)
The obstructed will	308	(1)
Effort feels like an original force	309	(2)
Pleasure and pain as springs of action	311	(4)
What holds attention determines action	315	(1)
Will is a relation between the mind and its 'ideas,'	316	(1)
Volitional effort is effort of attention	317	(5)
The question of free-will	322	(3)
Ethical importance of the phenomenon of effort	325	(3)
EPILOGUE Psychology and Philosophy	328	(6)
What the word metaphysics means	328	(1)
Relation of consciousness to the brain	329	(2)
The relation of states of mind to their 'Objects,'	331	(2)
The changing character of consciousness	333	(1)
States of consciousness themselves are not verifiable facts	334