Meaning of Psychology

The Meaning of Psychology
by C. K. OGDEN
An introduction to the field where the influence of symbolism and language are of great importance.

xix :	PREFIX
I :	PRELIMINARY	1
	Reasons for the Study of Psychology	1
	The Subject Matter of Psychology	5
II :	THE MIND AND THE BODY	19
	Mind, Soul, and Spirit.	19
	The Seven Theories	20
	The New Orientation	27
III :	IMPULSE and INHIBITITION	36
IV :	HOW THE BRAIN WORKS	56
V :	PURPOSE AND INTEREST	78
VI :	THE GROWTH OF THE MIND IN ANIMALS	93
VII :	THE MENTALITY OF APES	111
VIII:	MENTAL GROWTH IN MAN	132
IX :	MANS LINGUISTIC HERITAGE	149
X :	BEHAVIOR	161
XI :	LOOKING INWARDS	173
XII :	LOOKING OUTWARDS	203
XIII:	HOW WE THINK	221
XIV :	EMOTION AND CHARACTER	238
XV :	HOW THE MIND GOES WRONG	256
XVI :	THE ABNORMAL	279
XVII:	LOOKING FORWARD	300
	The Future of Communication	309

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A FEW years ago the word Psychology was a technicality covering a field of inquiry in which none but specialists and perhaps a few enterprising teachers were expected to take an interest. But at the present time it would be hard to find a general reader of current literature who has not at any rate browsed through one or more of the books on psychological topics which appear every other day.

There are, however, among these readers many who feel a difficulty in comparing and combining together the views, opinions, and information thus casually obtained. Although interested, they have no leisure for the study of voluminous works on first principles. They would like to read Shand's Foundation of Character, Marshall's Consciousness, Mitchell's Structure and Growth of the Mind, Wundt, Lipps, and Stumpf, Hobhouse's Mind in Evolution, Dumas' Traité, the Analytic Psychology of Professor Stout (having dipped perhaps into a volume with almost the same title by Dr. Jung), Urban's exhaustive treatise on Valuation, Baldwin's Thought and Things, or Professor Ward's Psychological Principles; but they have no ready means of discovering which is about what.

It seems probable, therefore, that many who are seriously approaching Psychology for the first time, and who are vaguely aware that many hundreds of important volumes have appeared since the last of these works was written, will welcome a brief account of the nucleus of accredited opinion from which the growing science is tending to develop. In what follows will be found an endeavor to deal in the simplest possible language with the subject in the light of the most recent advances; and to deal with it more concisely than has been done by any comprehensive introduction hitherto.

My object, however, has not merely been to cover the field on accepted lines. No conscientious teacher could to-day put his own Outline forward without taking account of the existence of admirable summaries such as those of Woodworth, Warren, McDougall, Stout, Angell, Hunter, Pillsbury, Yerkes, and Titchenor. Each of these has its own advantages, and it would be no service to the public to attempt to combine their distinctive merits, or to forget that the two volumes of William James' Principles are generally accessible for reference with their abundance of unsurpassable descriptions. Nor can the physiological side of sense-perception, or the statistical handling of intelligence tests, for example, be usefully described in brief compass. For these the reader will be better advised to go direct to the original authorities, and I have therefore appended a short Bibliography of works available in the English language for his guidance in fuller reading.

It would be gratuitous to pretend that psychologists as a body are agreed on many fundamenta1 issues. On this point the first fifty volumes. of the "International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method" or the pages of The Psychological Review, on which much of the present work is necessarily based, are alone conclusive. The reader who compares this Outline with right- and left-wing works such as Fox's Educational Psychology (1926) on the one hand, and Watson's Behaviorism (1925) on the other, will also be able to judge to what degree departure from tradition or undue conservatism is in evidence in the following pages.

There remains always the probability that some apparent differences of opinion are actually but differences in formulation; this aspect of the problem, however, has already been discussed in The Meaning of Meaning (1923), to which the present work might serve as a stepping-stone for the linguistically inquisitive. On this occasion I have had the advantage of discussing numerous points with my former collaborator, Mr. I. A. Richards of Magdalene Calledge, Cambridge, to whose Principles of Literary Criticism I also owe much.
C. K. OGDEN.
ROYAL SOCIETIES CLUB,
ST. JAMES'S STREET,
January, 1926

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The Meaning of Psychology by C. K. OGDEN An introduction to the field where the influence of symbolism and language are of great importance.

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The Meaning of Psychology
by C. K. OGDEN
An introduction to the field where the influence of symbolism and language are of great importance.