Mary Whiton Calkins
The Self in Scientific Psychology
Mary Whiton Calkins (1915)
First published in American Journal of Psychology, 26, 495-524.
A. INTRODUCTION
The self is often bowed out of psychology on the ground that scientific
introspection has failed to discover it. The object of this paper is to examine
and to estimate this charge. The problem is two-fold. First, is the fact as
stated: have scientific psychologists really found no trace of a self? Second,
if the fact be admitted, is the failure to produce a self due to the inadequacy
of the methods or to the non-existence of the self? (Is there no fox at all or
does he avoid the traps we have set for him?) The discussion of these main
questions will follow upon an introductory section which considers the nature of
scientific method and the meaning given to the term 'self' by those who claim it
for psychology. These preliminary topics will be discussed in reversed order.
I. The Nature of the Psychologist's Self
The self is indefinable. To define is to assign the object defined to a given
class and to distinguish it from other members of the class; and the self is sui
generis and therefore incapable of definition. To quote Oesterreich, it "is a
kind of thing which one can merely indicate (auf das man nur hinweisen kann) but
which one can as little demonstrate to the I-blind as one can demonstrate color
to the color-blind."[1] But Oesterreich's simile must not mislead us. The self,
though indefinable, is not on this account elemental and thus indescribable. Its
characters, as Miss Gamble points out, are 'properties' not 'differentiae.'[2]
The characters of the experienced self on which the self-psychologists lay their
emphasis are, first, its persistence or self-identity; second, its individuality
or uniqueness; third, the fact that it is fundamental or basal to its
experiences, and finally the fact that [p. 496] it is related to its
environment, social and physical. These characters have elsewhere been discussed
by the writer and will be very briefly stated.[3]
(1) From Stuart Mill, in his well-known Note on James Mill's "Analysis of the
Phenomena of - the Human Mind,"[4] to Knight Dunlap, with his 'notion of the Ego
as an essential presupposition of psychology,'[5] everybody who admits the self
at all credits it with relative persistence, or identity. "Suppose," Dunlap
says, "three items of content, -- a, b, and c. Suppose I am aware of a, then of
b, then of c. . . . The fact that I perceive all three . . . remains to the end
an ultimate fact. The important thing is that the three items are perceived by
the same I. The perceptions are not the same; they may be separated by
considerable intervals. What is the identity? Merely the identity of the I."[6]
(2) The individuality, or uniqueness of each self, is the character which
distinguishes it from every other: all self psychologists, and often even those
who deny the self, agree that "psychic facts belong to individuals " that "a
feeling is either mine or somebody else's."[7]
(3) Both the persistence and the individuality of the self imply the fact that
it is basal to the specific, concrete experiences -- to the perceivings,
imaginings, and emotions. In the words of Oesterreich, "all genuine psychic
processes [are] states or functions of a subject, belong to an I."[8] Or, in
Dunlap's simpler statement, "we cannot talk of experiencing without an I which
experiences."[9] The self to be sure is never divorced from the specific
experiences; as Oesterreich says, "it is not a something existing for itself
beyond or beside" the experiences. On the contrary, the experiences [p. 497]
exist in the self; in Ach's phrase, it constitutes their 'essential
foundation.'[10]
(4) The relatedness of the self to the objects making up its environment has
been specially stressed by the 'social' and 'differential' psychologists,[11] by
Ward,[12] Mitchell[13] and Rehmke,[14] and by those 'functional' psychologists
-- notably Angell and Judd - who admit a self. "The standpoint of psychology" as
Ward says " is that of the living subject in intercourse with his special
environment."
In conclusion it should be stated explicitly that no finality is claimed for the
enumeration of these characters as given in the pages preceding. The
psychological description of self needs to be clarified, widened, and enriched
by the efforts of all psychologists working in all branches of the science.[15]
II. Psychological Methods
Up to this point, only the first of the terms of our problem has been
considered. From the formulation of the meaning of 'self' we turn, therefore, to
a discussion of the nature of psychological method. Like the other sciences
psychology may be said to employ two methods -- observation and experiment. The
first-named is fundamental since experiment always involves observation.
Scientific observation is distinguished from the every-day consciousness of
objects first, because it analyzes the objects which the plain man sees en bloc
and as wholes; second, because it is always supplemented by classification of
the observed objects. Experiment, as distinguished from observation, has the
two-fold purpose of aiding analysis and of explaining the observed facts by dis-
[p. 498] closing their relation to each other or to still other phenomena. The
remainder of this section will discuss these methods as applied in psychology --
first, experiment; and second, the fundamental method, observation, or, as used
in psychology, introspection.
a. The method of experiment
In order to decide whether experimental psychology is adapted to the discovery
of a self it is essential to keep in mind the nature of experiment. Roughly
speaking, experiment consists in the artificial manipulation of one's material
in such wise as to repeat, to isolate, and to vary it at will. Rigid experiment,
as carried on by physical scientists, demands also measurement of the phenomena
that they may be exactly repeated and varied. It is obvious from this statement
that, in the strictest sense of the word, experiment is impossible to psychology
since psychic facts, like other phenomena of life, can be neither repeated and
varied at will nor accurately measured. On the other hand, the physical
conditions of perception -- and indirectly of the predominantly sensational
experiences, memory and imagination -- can be isolated, accurately measured,
repeated, and varied. And the motor reactions due to changes in either physical
or psychical conditions can be measured, though they can not be exactly varied
at will.
In a more or less modified sense, therefore, psychology maybe called
experimental in so far as it deals with perceptual experience or with motor
reactions conditioning, accompanying, or following on consciousness. But this
widening of the concept of experiment offers little hope of discovering the self
through experiment. For, as regards experiments on perception and the allied
forms of consciousness, self-psychologists teach either that it is difficult or
that it is utterly impossible to observe the self in the perceptual experience.
And the study of motor reactions, however important, is a subsidiary part of
psychology.
The inevitable presence of the self in all experience constitutes another reason
why the thorough-going self-psychologist should question his right to lay claim
to the experimental method for the discovery of the self. This difficulty may be
stated as follows: A phenomenon under experimental investigation may be regarded
as the effect of its artificially manipulated stimulus. An experiment thus
conceived should be judged by its conformity with the acknowledged inductive [p.
499] methods. Under the given conditions, in an experimental study of any
phenomenon, as X, one must study first, repeated phenomena which include X, and
second, a series of phenomena resembling the first group except as they exclude
X; and only in case of confirmatory results from both parts of the study has one
a strictly valid experimental result.[16] But this exclusion of X, when X is the
self, can obviously never be secured if whenever I am conscious I am conscious
of self. And so the omnipresence of the self disqualifies it as object of
experiment.[17]
The conclusions from this study of experiment as a psychological method are then
the following: Experiment is possible only in a modification of the physicist's
sense of the word to psychology as a whole. And psychological experiment is, for
two reasons ill adapted to the investigation of self. Because self is
'ubiquitous,'[18] we can not test its presence under rigidly verifiable
experimental conditions. And because the self is unemphasized in perception and
imagination we are unlikely to find it by the modified experimental method which
must limit itself mainly to the field of sensational experience.
b. The method of introspection
From ordinary scientific observation introspection is distinguished solely by
its object which is a psychic not a physical nor a logical object. To quote
Titchener, who more strongly than any other writer urges this truth,
introspection "is in all essentials identical ...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Go to the beginning of the document
Go to previous page
Go to next page
Go to the end of document
