Psychology by Robert S. Woodworth (top rated ebook readers .TXT) 📕

years up to forty seems to be the most favorable for inventiveness. Imagination Considered in General

Finally, we must return to the question of definition or general description that was left open near the beginning of the chapter. There seem to be two steps in the inventive response, one preliminary, the other strictly inventive. The preliminary step brings the stimuli to bear, and invention is the response that follows.

Typically, the preliminary stage consists in recall; and association by similarity, bringing together materials from different past experiences, is very important as a preliminary to invention. Facts recalled from different contexts are thus brought together, and invention consists in a response to such novel combinations of facts. The two steps in invention are, first, getting a combination of stimuli, and second, responding to the combination.

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Sometimes it has been said that imagination consists in putting together material from different sources, but this leaves the matter in mid-air; recall can bring together facts from different sources and so afford the stimulus for an imaginative response, but the response goes beyond the mere togetherness of the stimuli. Thinking of a man and also of a horse is not inventing a centaur; there is a big jump from the juxtaposition of the data to the specific arrangement that imagination gives them. The man plus the horse may give no response at all, or may give many other responses besides that of a centaur; for example, a picture of the man and the horse politely bowing to each other. The particular manipulation, or imaginative response, that is made varies widely; sometimes it consists in taking things apart rather than putting them together, as when you imagine how a house would look with the evergreen tree beside it cut down; always it consists in putting the data into new relationships.

Imagination thus presents a close parallel to reasoning, where, also, there are two stages, the preliminary consisting in getting the premises together and the final consisting in perceiving the conclusion. The final response in imagination is in general like that in reasoning; both are perceptive reactions; but imagination is freer and more variable. Reasoning is governed by a very precise aim, to see the actual meaning of the combined premises; that is, it is exploratory; while imagination, though it is usually more or less steered either by a definite aim or by some bias in the direction of agreeable results, has after all much more latitude. It is seeking, not a relationship that is there, but one that can be put there.

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EXERCISES

1. Outline the chapter.

2. Make a list of hobbies and amusements that you specially enjoy, and try to discover the sources of satisfaction in each.

3. Recall two stories that you specially enjoyed, and try to discover the sources of satisfaction in each.

4. How far does the account of daydreams given in the text square with your own daydreams, and how far does it seem inadequate?

5. An experiment on the speed of revery or of daydreaming. Beginning at a recorded time, by your watch, let your mind wander freely for a few moments, stopping as soon as your stream of thoughts runs dry. Note the time at the close. Now review your daydream (or revery), and tally off the several scenes or happenings that you thought of, so as to count up and see how many distinct thoughts passed through your mind. How many seconds, on the average, were occupied by each successive item?

6. Why do dreams seem real at the time?

7. Analysis of a dream. Take some dream that you recall well, and let your thoughts play about it, and about the separate items of it--about each object, person, speech, and happening in the dream--with the object of seeing whether they remind you of anything personally significant. Push the analysis back to your childhood, by asking whether anything about the dream symbolizes your childish experiences or wishes. To be sure, the psychoanalyst would object that the individual cannot be trusted to make a complete analysis of his own dream--just as the psychologist would object to your accepting the recalled experiences and wishes as necessarily standing in any causal relation to your dream--but, at any rate, the exercise is interesting.

8. Problems in invention. Solve some of these, and compare the mental process with that of reasoning.

(a) Devise a game to be played by children and adults together, to everybody's satisfaction.

(b) Imagine a weird animal, after the analogy of the centaur.

(c) Imagine an interesting incident, bringing in an old man, a little girl, and a waterfall.

(d) Design the street plan for an ideal small town, built on both sides of a small river.

9. Show how empathy might make us prefer a symmetrical building to one that is lop-sided.

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REFERENCES

On the imagination and play of children, see Norsworthy and Whitley's Psychology of Childhood, 1918, Chapters IX and XII.

For Freud's views regarding dreams, see his Interpretation of Dreams, translated by Brill, 1913.

For a view which, though psychoanalytical, diverges somewhat from that of Freud, see Maurice Nicoll, Dream Psychology, 1917; also C. W. Kimmins, Children's Dreams, 1920.

For studies of play, see Edward S. Robinson, "The Compensatory Function of Make-Believe Play", in the Psychological Review for 1920, Vol. 27, pp. 429-439; also M. J. Reaney, The Psychology of the Organized Group Game, 1916.

On invention, see Josiah Royce, "The Psychology of Invention", in the Psychological Review for 1898, Vol. 5, pp. 113-144; also F. W. Taussig's Inventors and Money-Makers, 1915.

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CHAPTER XX

WILL

PLANNED ACTION, ACTION IN SPITE OF INTERNAL CONFLICT, AND ACTION AGAINST EXTERNAL OBSTRUCTION

If the psychologist were required to begin his chapter on the will with a clean-cut definition, he would be puzzled what to say. He might refer to the old division of the mind into the "three great faculties" of intellect, feeling, and will, but would be in duty bound to add at once that this "tripartite division" is now regarded as rather useless, if not misleading. It is misleading if it leads us to associate will exclusively with motor action, for we also have voluntary attention and voluntary control in reasoning and inventing, and we have involuntary motor reactions. "Will" seems not to be any special kind of response, but rather to refer to certain relationships in which a response may stand to other responses--but this is certainly too vague a definition to be of use.

"Will" is not precisely a psychological term, anyway, but is a term of common speech which need not refer to any psychological unit. In common speech it has various and conflicting meanings. "Since you urge me", one may say, "I will do this, though much against my will." Let the dictionary define such words. What psychology should do with them is simply to take them as a mining prospector takes an outcropping of ore: as an indication that it may pay to dig in the neighborhood.

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Voluntary and Involuntary Action

About the first thing we strike when we start digging is the distinction between voluntary and involuntary. A man has committed homicide, and the question in court is whether he did it "with malice aforethought", i.e., with full will and intention, whether he did it in a sudden fit of anger, i.e., impulsively rather than quite voluntarily, or whether it was an accident and so wholly unintentional or involuntary. The court wishes to know, since a man who has committed one sort of homicide is a very different character from one who has committed another sort; different acts can be expected from him in the future and different precautions need to be taken accordingly.

It is a fact, then, that an act may be performed either with or without foreknowledge--a remarkable fact both ways! An intentional act is remarkable from the side of physics or chemistry or botany--which is to say that it is very exceptional in nature at large. On the other hand, a completely involuntary act is rather exceptional in human behavior and perhaps in animal behavior as well, for almost always there is some striving towards an end, some impulse. The simplest reflexes, to be sure, are completely involuntary. The pupillary reaction to light is not done with malice aforethought, cannot be so done. The lid reflex, or wink of the eye, occurs many times in the course of an hour, without foreknowledge, or after-knowledge for that matter, though the same movement can be made voluntarily. Sneezing and coughing are not voluntary in the full sense, but they are distinctly impulsive, they strive towards desired relief. To sneeze voluntarily is to sneeze when you don't want to, and to sneeze involuntarily is to sneeze when you want to--which seems queer, since we usually think of a voluntary act as one done to further our wishes. The solution of this puzzle is, {525} of course, that a voluntary sneeze is desired not because of a direct impulse but to gain some ulterior end, such as to prove we can do it, or for histrionic purposes--in short, for some purpose beyond the immediate satisfaction of an impulse.

Thus we may classify acts as wholly involuntary or mechanical, as impulsive, and as distinctly voluntary or purposive. Or, we may arrange acts in a scale from those that have no conscious end, through those aimed directly at an immediate end, up to those done to accomplish an ulterior end which is imagined beforehand. The last class of fully voluntary acts belongs under the general head of manipulation, just as imagination does. We imagine some change to be produced in the existing situation and then proceed to put our imagination into effect; and this is a typical voluntary act.

We seldom, however, picture a complete act in imagination before executing it. Even so simple an act as closing the fist cannot be completely pictured beforehand; for if you try to imagine how the closed fist is going to feel and then close it, you will find that you left out of your image many details of the actual kinesthetic sensations. What we imagine and intend is some change in the situation, and we then proceed to execute that change and other changes incidentally.

Besides the simple reflexes, there is another sort of involuntary and mechanical action. Through practice and repetition, an act may become so habitual as to be done automatically, that is, without being imagined beforehand, and even without conscious impulse. The practised typist responds in this way to the words he is copying. We should notice, however, that this does not mean that the total behavior and state of mind of the typist is mechanical and devoid of impulse. The typist may write the letters {526} mechanically, and if expert may write even words in this way, but all the time he is consciously aiming to copy the passage. His attention and impulse have deserted the fully mastered details and attach themselves to the larger units. In the same way, in signing your name you have no conscious intention or impulse to write each successive letter; but you fully intend to sign your name.

Development of Voluntary Control

The child's actions are at first impulsive but not voluntary in the full sense, since obviously he cannot imagine and intend an act till he has had experience of that act, and he must usually have experienced doing the act himself before he can effectively imagine it. At least, this is true of the simpler movements; compound movements, made up of familiar elements, may be first observed in other persons and then voluntarily imitated. The child's process of acquiring voluntary control over a movement is illustrated by the story of how the baby learned to put his hand in his mouth. He first made this movement in the course of "aimless" throwing of his arms about, liked the sensation of the hand in the mouth, tried apparently to get it there again, and in the course of a few days was able to put it there at will. The child's "aimless" movements at