The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)James, William
Science
The Principles of Psychology, Volume 2 (of 2)
James, William
Psychology
patients, affected with word-blindness, resort to these motor images
precisely to make amends for their other deficiency.... An individual
affected in this way cannot read letters which are placed before his
eyes, even although his sight be good enough for the purpose. This
loss of the power of reading by sight may, at a certain time, be the
only trouble the patient has. Individuals thus mutilated succeed in
reading by an ingenious roundabout way which they often discover
themselves: it is enough that they should trace the letters with their
finger to understand their sense. What happens in such a case? How can
the hand supply the place of the eye? The motor image gives the key to
the problem. If the patient can read, so to speak, with his fingers,
it is because in tracing the letters he gives himself a certain number
of muscular impressions which are those of writing. In one word,
the patient reads by writing (Charcot): the feeling of the graphic
movements suggests the sense of what is being written as well as sight
would."[64]
The imagination of a blind-deaf mute like Laura Bridgman must be
confined entirely to tactile and motor material. _All blind persons
must belong to the 'tactile' and 'motile' types_ of the French authors.
When the young man whose cataracts were removed by Dr. Franz was shown
different geometric figures, he said he "had not been able to form from
them the idea of a square and a disk until he perceived a sensation of
what he saw in the points of his fingers, as if he really touched the
objects."[65]
Professor Stricker of Vienna, who seems to have the motile form of
imagination developed in unusual strength, has given a very careful
analysis of his own case in a couple of monographs with which all
students should become familiar.[66] His recollections both of his
own movements and of those of other things are accompanied invariably
by distinct muscular feelings in those parts of his body which would
naturally be used in effecting or in following the movement. In
thinking of a soldier marching, for example, it is as if he were
helping the image to march by marching himself in his rear. And if he
suppresses this sympathetic feeling in his own legs, and concentrates
all his attention on the imagined soldier, the latter becomes, as it
were, paralyzed. In general his imagined movements, of whatsoever
objects, seem paralyzed the moment no feelings of movement either in
his own eyes or in his own limbs accompany them.[67] The movements of
articulate speech play a predominant part in his mental life.
"When after my experimental work I proceed to its description, as
a rule I reproduce in the first instance only words, which I had
already associated with the perception of the various details of the
observation whilst the latter was going on. For speech plays in all my
observing so important a part that I ordinarily clothe phenomena in
words as fast as I observe them."[68]
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