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
the thought-process or the composition of the work of art may undergo
deviations or additions in its separate parts. The regularity of the
process as a whole remains undisturbed by this. A work of art is just
as little a mere product of association as is a thought arranged in
sentences.
Various phenomena of everyday experience find their explanation in
these psychological observations. First of all must be mentioned the
seldom-noted fact, that we are able in our speech to bring to an end
a fairly complicated thought without difficulty, although at the
beginning of the sentences we are not at all clear as to the separate
words and ideas or their combinations. Some people, when they are
obliged to speak in public, fail simply because their confidence in
this self-regulation of the train of thoughts is lacking at such
moments. And this again is due to the fact that they think they must
first of all find the suitable transition from one word to the next.
In free conversation they can carry to an end without a break the most
complicated sentences, while in public their speech is hesitating and
embarrassed, and they are every moment in danger of breaking down.
In such a case absolute confidence in the possibility of expressing
freely and involuntarily the thought in one's mind is the surest help
to overcome these difficulties. Of course a sensible training will also
help.
Let us call to mind the processes by means of which the beginning and
end of an expression of thought are held together into one sentence or
into several sentences joined together by the same thought. We note at
once that the general content in its whole feeling-quality is already
present as soon as the first word is spoken, while the ideas and the
corresponding words are not clearly in consciousness beyond that first
beginning. If the process continues without associative distractions
and additions, by which, occasionally, parts that lie far from the
original thought are added to it, then we notice at the same time
that that beginning feeling corresponds perfectly with the terminal
feeling that accompanies the termination of the spoken thought. This
terminal feeling is generally at first much stronger than the initial
feeling, but then it gradually goes over into the feeling-quality that
is preparing the next thought. Now it is obvious at once that all
these phenomena correspond in essentials with those we observed in
our metronome experiments. In these experiments the conditions were
much more simple and exact, so that they strengthen the more uncertain
observations in ordinary reading and thinking.
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