Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical PsychologyAtkinson, William Walker
Science
Your Mind and How to Use It: A Manual of Practical Psychology
Atkinson, William Walker
Psychology
(4) Demand good service of your memory, and it will learn to respond.
Learn to trust it, and it will rise to the occasion. How can you expect
your memory to give good service when you continually abuse it and tell
every one of "the wretched memory I have; I can never remember
anything"? Your memory is very apt to accept your statements as truth;
our mental faculties have an annoying habit of taking us at our word in
these matters. Tell your memory what you expect it to do; then trust it
and refrain from abusing it and giving it a bad name.
FINAL ADVICE.
Finally, remember this rule: You get out of your memory only that which
you place in it. Place in it good, clear, deep impressions, and it will
reproduce good, clear, strong recollections. Think of your memory as a
phonographic record, and take care that you place the right kind of
impressions upon it. In memory you reap that which you have sown. You
must give to the memory before you can receive from it. Of one thing you
may rest assured, namely, that unless you take sufficient interest in
the things to be remembered, you will find that the memory will not take
sufficient interest in them to remember them. Memory demands interest
before it will take interest in the task. It demands attention before it
will give attention. It demands understanding before it will give
understanding. It demands association before it will respond to
association. It demands repetition before it will repeat. The memory is
a splendid instrument, but it stands on its dignity and asserts its
rights. It belongs to the old dispensation--it demands compensation and
believes in giving only in equal measure to what it receives. Our advice
is to get acquainted with your memory, and make friends with it. Treat
it well and it will serve you well. But neglect it, and it will turn its
back on you.
CHAPTER IX.
Imagination.
The imagination belongs to the general class of mental processes called
the representative faculties, by which is meant the processes in which
there are re-presented, or presented again, to consciousness impressions
previously presented to it.
As we have indicated elsewhere, the imagination is dependent upon memory
for its materials--its records of previous impressions. But imagination
is more than mere memory or recollection of these previously experienced
and recorded impressions. There is, in addition to the re-presentation
and recollection, a process of arranging the recalled impressions into
new forms and new combinations. The imagination not only gathers
together the old impressions, but also _creates_ new combinations and
forms from the material so gathered.
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