An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German EditionWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German Edition
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Educational psychology; Psychology
according to its feelings. And so at bottom our will coincides with our
"ego." Now this ego is neither an idea, nor a specific feeling, but it
consists of those elementary volitional processes of apperception which
accompany the processes of consciousness. They are always changing but
they are always present, and in this way form the lasting substratum
of our self-consciousness. The inner line of fortifications of this
ego are the feelings, which represent nothing more than the reactions
of apperception to outer experience. The next line consists of this
experience itself--the ideas, of which the ones that are nearest to
us, i.e. those of our own body, are most closely connected with the
volitional processes that are at work in the apprehension of them. And
so it happens at a naive stage of consciousness that they are combined
together with the ego itself into one unity.
We have now learned to recognise the emotions, dispositions, and
volitional processes as psychical contents, all of which differ from
each other in their characteristic processes. None of them, however,
contain anywhere specific elements. They can all of them be analysed
into the same forms of feelings. Although the volitional process in
especial is very peculiar, yet this peculiarity nowhere depends upon
specific ideational or affective elements, but solely upon the mode
of combination of these elements into emotions with their end stages
again composed merely of general affective forms. Still there remains
another question to be answered, which has not yet been settled by
the reduction of all feelings to the above-mentioned six principal
forms, viz. pleasure, displeasure, strain, relaxation, excitation, and
quiescence. Is each of these forms perfectly uniform? Does it always
return in the same quality? Or does it stand in a similar relation as
the colour "blue" stands to the different shades of that colour, so
that the principal form may not only appear in different grades of
intensity, but also in various qualities? To answer these questions
let us turn again to our metronome. It has again the advantage of
illustrating our problem by means of a very simple example. Let us take
two rows of beats in 4/4 time with the accents arranged differently as
in A and B, obtained by the method of subjective rhythm as described
above.
[Illustration]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account