Psychotherapy by Hugo Münsterberg (world of reading .TXT) 📕

We started, for instance, from the old observation that two impressions which come to our mind at the same time have a tendency to reawaken one another; and we saw that psychology was well able to formulate these facts in general statements of the association of ideas. But we realized that that in itself is not really explanation. If the odor which we smell awakes in us the name of a chemical substance, and if we now bring this under the general heading of association of ideas, an explanation is not really given by it. That smell sensation itself is not really understood as a cause of those sound sensations of the word. We have no insight into the connection of those two happenings. But the situation is entirely changed, if we consider the smell effect from the point of view of the parallelistic theory. Now the association of facts would indicate that we got the first two impressions together, because two brain processes were going on at the same time. My nose brought me the smell stimulus, my ear gave me the sound stimulus, each going on in a particular center, or, to express it in a simplified schematic way, each reaching particular brain cells, and the excitement of these brain cells being accompanied by the particular sensations. The physiologist has many possibilities of conceiving the further stages of the process, in order to satisfy the demand of explanation. He may say the excitement of each of these two brain cells, the one in the olfactory center, the other in the auditory center, irradiates in all directions through the fine branches of the brain fibers. Each cell has relations to every other cell in the brain; thus there is also one connecting path between those two cells which were stimulated at once. Now if the two ends of an anatomical path are excited at the same time, the path itself becomes changed. The connecting way becomes a path of least resistance, and that means that if, in future, one of the two brain cells becomes excited again, the overflow of the nervous excitement will not now go on easily in all directions, but only just along that one channel which leads to that other brain cell. A theory like this explains in real explanatory terms, in ways which physics and chemistry can demonstrate as necessary, that any excitement of the odor cell runs over into the sound cell and vice versa. In short, the psychological association of ideas, which we should simply have to accept as inexplainable fact, is thus transformed into a connection which we understand as necessary; and the fact is really explained.

This simple scheme of the physiology of association for a hundred years has given a most decided impulse to the progress of psychology. As the association process can so easily be expressed in physiological terms, the aim was prevalent to understand the interplay of mental life more and more as the result of association. The underlying thought of this whole association psychology was thus a conviction that whenever two mental experiences occur together, either of them keeps the tendency to reawaken the other at a later time. Through the endless combination which life's impressions awaken in the mind from the first hour after birth, the whole stream of memory images and thoughts and aims and imaginations is thus to be explained.

The whole theory of physiological associationism works evidently with two factors. First, there are millions of brain cells of which each one may have its particular quality of sensation, and second, each brain cell may work with any degree of energy, to which the intensity of the sensation would correspond. If I distinguish ten thousand different pitches of tone, they would be located in ten thousand different cell groups, each one connected through a special fiber with a special string in the ear. And each of these tones may be loud or faint, corresponding to the amount of excitement in the particular cell group. Every other variation must then result from the millionfold connections between these brain cells. Indeed, the brain furnishes all possibilities for such a theory. We know how every brain cell resolves itself into tree-like branch systems which can take up excitements from all sides, and how it can carry its own excitement through long connecting fibers to distant places, and how the endings of these fibers clasp into the branches of the next cell, allowing the propagation of excitement from cell to cell. We know further how large spheres of the brain are confined to cells of particular function, that for instance cells which serve visual sensations are in the rear part of the brain hemispheres, and so on. Finally we know how millions of connecting fibers represent paths in all directions, allowing very well a coöperation by association between the most distant parts of the brain. The theories found their richest development, when it was recognized that large spheres of our brain centers evidently do not serve at all merely sensory states, but that their cells have as their function only the intermediating between different sensory centers. Such so-called association centers are thus like complex switchboards between the various mental centers. Their own activity is not accompanied by any mental content, but has only the function of regulating transmission of the excitement from the one to the other. Above all their operation would make it possible that through associative processes, the wonderful complexity of our trains of thought may be reached.

Yet even the highest development of the association theories did not seem to do justice to the whole richness of the inner life. We may well understand through those association processes that a rich supply of memory pictures is at our disposal, that ideas stream plentifully to our minds and enter into new and ever new combinations. But that alone is not an account of our inner experience. If there is anything essential for inner life, it is the attention which gives emphasis to certain states and neglects others. And that means that certain mental contents are growing not only in strength but in vividness and clearness, and that others are losing their vividness, are inhibited and suppressed. Here were always the real difficulties of the association theories; they seemed so entirely unable to explain from their own means why certain states become foremost in our minds and others fade away, why some have the power to grow and others are neglected. These facts of attention and vividness, inhibition and fading, worked almost as a temptation to give up the physiological explanation altogether and to rely on some mystical power, some mental influence which could pull and push the ideas without any interference and help from the side of the brain. Yet since we have seen that the truth of psychophysical parallelism has the meaning of a postulate which we cannot escape unless we want to give up explanation altogether, it is evident that such falling back into un-physiological agencies would be just as inconsistent as if the naturalist should posit miracles in the midst of chemistry or astronomy. If the facts which cluster about attention cannot be understood by the simple scheme of associationism, the demand must be for a better physiological theory.

The development of physiological psychology in recent years has indeed shown the way to such a wider theory, which furnishes the physiological accompaniment also for those experiences of attention and vividness which form the weakness of associationism. This new development has come up with the growing insight that the brain's mental functions are related not only to the sensory impressions, but at the same time to the motor expressions. The older view, still prevalent to-day in popular writings, made the brain the reservoir of physical stimuli, which come from the sense organs to the cortex of the brain hemispheres. There the perceptions arose and through associative interplay the memory pictures and the ideas of action and the feelings arose, and the whole inner life was thus bound up with the processes in these sensorial spheres. When the mind had done its work, finally an impulse was sent to some motor apparatus in the brain which then sent off the impulse to some acting muscles. That whole motor part was thus a kind of appendix to the brain process. The psychical life had nothing to do with it but to give the command for its action. The process in the motor part thus began when the mental proceeding was completed. But it became clear that this view was only the outgrowth of the strong interest which physiology took in the sense processes. If a neutral fair account of the brain actions is attempted, there can hardly be doubt that this whole sensorial view of the brain is only half of the story and that the motor half has exactly the same right to consideration. The cortex of the brain, the functions of which are accompanied by mental processes, is always and everywhere not only the recipient of sensory stimuli but at the same time the starting point of motor impulses. That which is centripetal, leading to the cortex, is therefore not more important for the central process than that which is centrifugal, leading from the cortex. The cortex is the apparatus of transmission between the incoming and the outgoing currents, between the excitements which run to the brain and the discharges which go from the brain, and the mental accompaniments are thus accompaniments of these transmission processes. If the channels of discharge are closed and the transmission is thus impossible, a blockade must result at the central station and the accompanying mental processes must be entirely different from those which happen there when the channels of discharge are wide open. Here too all the special theories are still in the midst of tumultuous discord. Yet this new emphasis on the motor side of the psychical process seems to influence modern psychology more and more.

Nobody can deny that first of all this is the necessary outcome of a biological view of the brain. What else can be the brain's function in the midst of nature than the transforming of impressions into expressions, stimuli into actions? It is the great apparatus by which the organism steadily adjusts itself to the surroundings. There would be no use whatever biologically in a brain which had connections with the sense organs, but which had no connections with the muscular system, and on the other hand, a brain which had motor nerves and muscular adjustment would be entirely useless if it had not sensory nerves and sense organs connected with it. In the one case the world would be experienced, but no response would be possible; in the other case, the means for response would be given, but no adjustment could set in because no experience of the surroundings would be possible. Adjustment every moment demands the relation of the brain in both directions. Through the sensory nerves the brain receives; through the motor nerves the brain directs, and this whole arc from the sense organs through the sensory nerves, through the brain, through the motor nerves and finally to the muscles, is one unified apparatus of which no part can be thought away. The brain in itself would be just as useless