This led to other experiments in Princeton in which suggestions were
actually made to the subjects that they were to become more or less
sensitive to distance and direction between the points on the skin,
with the striking result that these suggestions actually took effect
all over the body. This was so accurately determined that from the
results of the experiments with the compasses on the skin in this case
or that, pretty accurate inferences could be made as to what mental
suggestions the subject was getting at the time. There was no chance
for deception in the results, for the experiments were so controlled
that the subject did not know until afterward of the correspondences
actually reached between his states of mind and the variations in
sensibility of the skin.
This slight report of the work done in one laboratory in about two
sessions, involving a considerable variety of topics, may give an
idea, so far as it goes, of the sort of work which experimental
psychology is setting itself to do. It will be seen that there is as
yet no well-knit body of results on which new experiments may proceed,
and no developed set of experimental arrangements, such as other
positive sciences show. The procedure is, in many important matters,
still a matter of the individual worker's judgment and ability. Even
for the demonstrations attempted for undergraduate students, good and
cheap apparatus is still lacking. For these reasons it is premature as
yet to expect that this branch of the science will cut much of a
figure in education. There can be no doubt, however, that it is making
many interesting contributions to our knowledge of the mind, and that
when it is more adequately organized and developed in its methods and
apparatus, It will become the basis of discipline of a certain kind
lying between that of physical science and that of the humanities,
since it will have features in common with the biological and natural
sciences. Its results may be expected also to lead to better results
than we now have in the theory and practice of education.
CHAPTER VII.
SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS--HYPNOTISM.
In an earlier place certain illustrations of Suggestion have been
given. By Suggestion we mean the fact that all sorts of hints from
without disturb and modify the beliefs and actions of the individual.
Certain cases from my own observation may be given which will make the
matter clear.
_Physiological Suggestion._--Observation of an infant for the first
month or six weeks after birth leads to the conviction that his life
is mainly physiological. When the actions which are purely reflex,
together with certain random impulsive movements, are noted, we seem
to exhaust the case.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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