Now one word about conflicts. Undoubtedly conflicts play a most important
part in such psychological disturbances as we have to deal with in the
psycho-neuroses, but I cannot agree that psychological conflicts conform
only to, or are synonymous with ethical conflicts. Undoubtedly there are a
large number of conflicts between ideas and sentiments which we have all
agreed to label as ethical, but there are also a large number of conflicts
between sentiments which cannot be pigeon-holed as ethical. For example, the
mother whose child is threatened with danger and who herself would incur
danger in rescuing her child, undergoes a conflict between her fear
instinct, on the one hand, and her love on the other, exciting also her
anger emotion. The anger and love conflict with the fear, down and repress
it. There you have a conflict but I think it could not be classed as an
ethical conflict. It is a general law, whenever one instinct antagonizes
another instinct there is a conflict. It is a conflict which has its
prototype in the lower organic processes. Thus Sherrington's spinal
reflexes, that he has worked out so beautifully, involve conflicts between
opposing organic impulses. In the scratch reflex, for instance, the impulse
which excites the flexor muscles inhibits the excitation of the extensor
muscles. I believe this principle underlies the higher processes and upon it
is built up the whole of the psycho-physiological mechanisms.
DR. TOM A. WILLIAMS, Washington, D. C.: I want Dr. Putnam to reply to two
objections to his position. One, the manifestations of functional
capacities which are themselves dependent upon structural differences. I am
not talking now of psychogenetic determinants, but alone of the trends of
which Dr. Putnam has spoken. Is he not assuming the contrary to Darwin when
he says that function precedes structure? Are not the potentials dependent
upon the variation which has determined this function? I am speaking now in
the broadest possible terms and not confining myself to the cerebrum. Do we
not find it in the tadpole who is prepared for breathing not because he
wants to breathe, but because he is going to have a new kind of breathing
apparatus and the duck who takes to the water because he has the mechanism
to swim?
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.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account