Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychologyDewey, John
Philosophy
Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology
Dewey, John
Habit; Social psychology
The traditional psychology of the original separate soul, mind or
consciousness is in truth a reflex of conditions which cut human nature
off from its natural objective relations. It implies first the severance
of man from nature and then of each man from his fellows. The isolation
of man from nature is duly manifested in the split between mind and
body--since body is clearly a connected part of nature. Thus the
instrument of action and the means of the continuous modification of
action, of the cumulative carrying forward of old activity into new,
is regarded as a mysterious intruder or as a mysterious parallel
accompaniment. It is fair to say that the psychology of a separate and
independent consciousness began as an intellectual formulation of those
facts of morality which treated the most important kind of action as a
private concern, something to be enacted and concluded within character
as a purely personal possession. The religious and metaphysical
interests which wanted the ideal to be a separate realm finally
coincided with a practical revolt against current customs and
institutions to enforce current psychological individualism. But this
formulation (put forth in the name of science) reacted to confirm the
conditions out of which it arose, and to convert it from a historic
episode into an essential truth. Its exaggeration of individuality is
largely a compensatory reaction against the pressure of institutional
rigidities.
Any moral theory which is seriously influenced by current psychological
theory is bound to emphasize states of consciousness, an inner private
life, at the expense of acts which have public meaning and which
incorporate and exact social relationships. A psychology based upon
habits (and instincts which become elements in habits as soon as they
are acted upon) will on the contrary fix its attention upon the
objective conditions in which habits are formed and operate. The rise at
the present time of a clinical psychology which revolts at traditional
and orthodox psychology is a symptom of ethical import. It is a protest
against the futility, as a tool of understanding and dealing with human
nature in the concrete, of the psychology of conscious sensations,
images and ideas. It exhibits a sense for reality in its insistence upon
the profound importance of unconscious forces in determining not only
overt conduct but desire, judgment, belief, idealization.
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