at least, in terms of a principle which I discussed at the beginning of
this chapter. If A has been associated with B, A will not reproduce
B, if the properties of A are changed. We know that such a change will
occur when, the stimuli corresponding to A being given, A becomes
part of a new organization. If during learning a syllable A is read
naturally, it is taken simply as a whole. However, if the subject later
obeys the instruction to interchange the first and the last letters
of the syllable A, he will view the syllable in terms of this task.
Consequently, it will appear in a new organization, the first and the
last letters being seen as outstanding members of the syllable, or
whatever else may be changed by its entrance into a new total field.
This might suffice to make A unable to reproduce B. The explanation
seems to be corroborated by the observation that in most cases the
subjects did not even notice the presentation of _known_ syllables
among the new ones. In any case, it is advisable to make similar
experiments using other material, the properties of which would be more
characteristic and less likely to be changed in a new total field.
Neither Dr. Lewin nor I yet feel convinced that an adequate theory
of the whole matter has been formulated. In some of his experiments
the subject’s attitude towards the syllables was practically the same
during learning as it was during the subsequent testing, but it did not
lead to reproduction either, so long as other circumstances remained as
I have described them. If objects normally do not effect the automatic
reproduction of their names (cf. above pp. 333-335), it would be a
bold assumption to make in every case that reproduction did not occur
because the properties of the objects had been altered too much by our
actual attitude.
In certain very interesting experiments Lewin has finally succeeded
in creating reproductions or inhibitions on the basis of previous
associations, _against_ the task given by the experimental instruction.
This was achieved by arranging the whole situation in a special manner.
If, in the case of certain syllables, reproduction will effect the
same result as would the procedure strictly corresponding to the
instructions, and if, then, the subject is seduced into relying upon
reproduction as the easier way, his attitude may unintentionally become
completely one of reproducing. The total field having now acquired this
direction temporarily, the next syllable will tend to reproduce its
partner, though in this case _reproduction_ may be absolutely wrong
with respect to the experimental task. Both erroneous reproduction
and inhibition of the correct performance were demonstrated by Lewin
in these neat experiments. This would almost seem to show that
reproductive tendencies cannot influence a given total field before the
actual attitude has been transformed into one of reproducing.
Still I hesitate to adhere to such a radical assumption. I take it
as definitely established that psychology has gone much too far in
admitting the free play of independent and automatic reproductions.
But shall we suppose that during our whole lifetime no reproduction
will occur without our attitudinal direction being one of reproducing?
It may be so. Until much more is known about the matter through further
experimentation, however, we should hold our judgment _in suspenso_.
Moreover, if actual attitude should be shown to be all but decisive
for the reproduction issuing from a part of the field, another equally
important problem will become that of the genesis and change of
attitudes themselves. Certainly, attitudes do arise, they persist, they
change and disappear, for many reasons. And we may safely say that the
problem of reproduction is here again. We do not know very much about
the reproduction of attitudes _as such_. But the possibility of this
kind of reproduction, even in the simplest and most “classical” form,
cannot be denied in our present state of knowledge.
In no case shall we be inclined to give our discussion of reproduction
an exaggerated meaning. Current theories of habit, association
and reproduction, it is true, do not realize how very special the
conditions are which must be fulfilled before a well-organized
situation is seriously influenced by “foreign” reproductions. It is
also true that we are just beginning to see the most important problems
in this field. Again it is fortunately true that reproduction will not
occur in millions of cases in which we should have predicted it from
the viewpoint of the rather superficial classical theories. But, after
all, enough remains of reproduction which must be taken into account.
If, in writing these pages, I am not continually deflected from my
task by a great many accidental reproductions, on the other hand, I
could not write a single word if I had no reproductions at all. English
words are continually though hesitantly arising from somewhere--by
reproduction. In writing, my hand moves across the paper in forms much
more easily reproduced. There is no question about the occurrence and
the _value_ of reproduction in almost every moment of our life. The
problem is merely to explain why, excluding instances of occasional
error, of stupidly repeated habit, and so forth, reproduction should be
restricted mainly to those cases _in which it has a value with respect
to the actual total field and its dynamical development as a functional
whole_.[72]
* * * * *
This is a chapter of criticism and of open problems. I cannot avoid
adding one more question which has not yet found adequate attention in
all quarters, though von Kries pointed it out thirty years ago.
Suppose A and B have become associated; how does a process A (or A^1,
very similar to A), bring about the reproduction of B? In addition to
the problems discussed in the preceding pages, here is a question
of great difficulty. In some textbooks, it is true, reproduction is
explained easily enough on the basis of machine theory. The process
A has been conducted along a definite path in the nervous system;
similarly, and at practically the same moment, B has been conducted
along another path. Between the central terminal nuclei of both paths,
it is assumed that fibers become specially conductive, in consequence
of those simultaneous processes in the central nuclei of paths A and B.
From this viewpoint reproduction will occur later on when a new process
A (or A^1) is conducted along the same path to the same final station
which, now, is especially well connected with the terminal nucleus of
path B. Taking the line of least resistance, the process will spread
to the place of B and reactivate it. Every one knows figures like
this (Fig. 24) which, neglecting some minor complications and giving
simple lines instead of neurones, contains the whole functional scheme
involved in that idea. Obviously, this is purely a machine theory, in
which reproduction does not depend upon the properties of associated
processes. If A reproduces B, this is the case because, once and for
all, the process A is conducted along one definite path to a nucleus
of termination from which one set of conductive mechanisms--in the
direction of B’s nucleus--has previously been made more pervious and
permeable than _any_ others.
Fig. 24
The nature of this scheme makes it unfit to explain real reproduction,
for two reasons:
(1) If a process X, altogether different from A, should happen to
be conducted along A’s path to its final nucleus, it would take the
line of least resistance from there, spread to the nucleus of B and
reproduce it, though X has never occurred together with B a single
time. You object, claiming that this scheme was to be applied only to
such processes as had occurred simultaneously before? But in the scheme
itself such a restriction is not mentioned; in any case we cannot
deduce from the scheme why it should be so. Therefore, the scheme will
not explain one essential condition of reproduction.
(2) If the process A should happen to start from quite another point
of the receptor organ along another path, it will not be conducted
to that cerebral cells which have been especially connected with the
cerebral nucleus of B. Consequently there is no reason why it should
spread to B rather than to any other cells. This means that, in such
a case, A will not reproduce B, though it is associated with it. If,
under experimental conditions, however, a process A, starting from one
region of the retina, has been associated with another process B, a
process A (or A^1) projected upon quite another part of the retina,
will reproduce B without great difficulty. So much has been shown by E.
Becher.[73]
If you object that between the new path of A and the cerebral area of B
there _may_ also be some highly conductive path, you introduce chance
conditions instead of an explanation by definite acquired machine
arrangements, i.e., you give up your claim to precise explanation.
Moreover, if coming from this new point of origin A should happen to
find such readily conductive paths to B, the same might conceivably be
true of all possible processes D, E, F and so forth, which, therefore,
should “reproduce” B at any time without previous association.
The weakness of the whole scheme is, then, that it makes reproduction
depend upon _the specific location of paths and nuclei_ in each
particular case, as though such simple location were a true
representative of definite process. Only if this were so, might a
theory of reproduction become a purely topographical matter. In the
optic sector of the nervous system, at least, a given process may be
conducted in one bundle of fibers at one time, and another process may
be conducted in the same bundle shortly afterwards. Furthermore, the
same process may be conducted in certain fibers now, and in other
fibers later on. Therefore, the necessary requirement for making the
machine theory of reproduction possible is not fulfilled in the case of
our most important sense organ. In the optical system the correlation
between the different kinds of process and the different localities
in which they may occur is very near to zero. This should destroy all
hope of treating reproduction exclusively in terms of topographical
conditions.
I shall admit at once that, in this respect, we are as yet no better
off with the hypothesis about association which was proposed in the
last chapter. It is similar to the old view insofar as it assumes a
physiological trace of (AB) and insofar as, in each case, this trace
must have some _place_ in the nervous system. If, then, the process A
enters the nervous system from a different point of origin and along
another path, how does it arrive at the specific locus of that trace?
One feels inclined to give a dynamical explanation. The similarity
between A and its trace might work _as though_ A were attracted to the
trace. I shall not venture an explanation here, however, for a very
simple reason. The problem is formulated as if automatic reproduction
were the simplest and most common event in the world. But we have seen
that it probably is not. Perhaps, when we learn a little more about the
concrete rules and conditions of reproduction _as such_, we shall be
better able to treat its physiological basis.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. Becher: _Gehirn und Seele_. 1911.
J. von Kries: _Die materiellen Grundlagen der
Bewusstseinserscheinungen_. 1901.
K. Lewin: Psychol. Forsch. 1 and 2. 1921, 1922.
K. Lewin: _Vorsatz, Wille und Bedürfnis_. 1926.
W. Poppelreuter: Zeitschr. f. Psychol. 61. 1912.
X
_Insight_
IF habit and reproduction are not to be regarded as the main motors
of so-called mental life, what shall we say are the real ones? To
this question there is one answer, not well formulated but implicitly
accepted, which we may call the layman’s belief. It is the layman’s
belief that, in general, he himself directly feels _why_ at one time
he has one attitude, and later on another; also that, for the most
part, he knows and understands directly _why_ he is inclined to do
one thing in a certain particular situation and _why_ a definitely
different thing under subsequent different conditions. In his view,
then, he is experiencing directly and truly much of that dynamical
context, the development of which constitutes mental life. Opposed to
this belief and altogether foreign to it, we have the view of most
learned psychologists at the present time. From their viewpoint, one is
inclined to do one thing now and then another, because, in the first
instance, certain nerve paths are most available and, in the second
instance, certain other paths are most open. Fortunate those people in
whom the most permeable nerve paths in practise are usually the right
and appropriate ones! From the psychologist’s point of view it would
be a pure mystery if a person’s behavior should ever be determined, as
the layman believes, directly by the concrete properties of the actual
situation. The layman’s belief is in full agreement with everyday
experience; the learned view harmonizes with what we suppose to be the
viewpoint of natural science. I shall confess at once that I choose the
layman’s belief whole-heartedly. In the treatment of sensory process
_gestalt_ psychology prefers the data of naïve description to the
findings of prejudiced introspection. Following this line, the theory
of the sensory field has begun to have a much more intimate contact
with the natural sciences than it ever had when it imitated a self-made
ideal of these disciplines. Similarly if, with regard to the total
field, we adopt the view of common experience, what is _called_ the
viewpoint of natural science will soon be given up, in place of which
we shall substitute the theory of dynamics. At the start of our present
discussion, therefore, the obvious, almost the vulgar, will have to be
said. It is not our fault that, to a deplorable degree, the obvious
has disappeared from learned psychology, so that we have to rediscover
it. Later in the course of this analysis the obvious aspects of common
experience will be found to express certain fundamental properties of
physical dynamics in the nervous system. This is exactly the contrary
of the prevailing opinion.
We have attacked the atomistic theory of sensory experience. After
things and the self, events and groups, have been recognized as natural
parts of the field and its development, the worst mistake which might
occur would consist in our falling back upon atomism at this higher
level. It was once the psychologist’s primary aim to look for all
possible sensations, to collect and to order them in something like a
museum. After they were thus gathered and arrayed as independent bits
of experience, the sensory field had consequently to be regarded as
a mosaic of indifferent spots. We would face the same danger in this
present treatment if, after discussing a certain type of segregated
whole in one chapter, and another type in a later chapter, the self
in one chapter, and attitudes in another, we should again seem to be
opening a museum to the public. The ways of real life do not coincide
with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the
members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical
reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of
dynamical context occur between members of altogether different
classes. It is instructive to see hundreds of hearts together in a
collection; but, in operation, a heart has much more to do with a
lung than with another heart. We should not learn very much about
their specific coöperation in a classifying museum. In a similar way,
when we treat sensory wholes as one class, selves as a second and
attitudes as a third, we might easily be misled into the view that out
of some sensory objects, some self and some attitudes, actual total
fields might be composed _ad libitum_. It is evident to any one that
such an assumption would be altogether childish, there being certain
_correlations_ between the objects, the selves and their attitudes
occurring in one common field. Even from the viewpoint of traditional
psychology, it would be so. However, we cannot be satisfied with this
statement because, generally, much more than mere correlation will
occur between the most essential parts of a given total field. Just
this surplus is the obvious aspect of every one’s life to which we
have alluded and it is forgotten in at least one-half of scientific
psychology.
One attitude in which I sometimes find myself is admiration. But I
am never simply “admiring.” My admiration always is “of” something;
it does not occur as something by itself and indifferently. Nor is
there the slightest doubt about what its object is at a given moment.
In the concert-hall, yesterday at 9 o’clock, it was that _alto_
voice, singing calmly, confidently and seriously, toward which my
admiration was directed,--not the nose of my neighbor, not the back
of the conductor, none of the thousands of other objects and events
before me. How is that? Admiration is a directed attitude; the voice
is heard as singing at a definite place. Do I state that the direction
of the first goes to the place in question and stops there, as a long
stick might be fastened between me and that place, and end there? Do
I notice something like that and say, then: “Oh, I guess this curious
attitude of mine somehow has something to do with that singing!”? I
certainly do not. As my attitude arises, it is experienced as being the
natural outcome of what characterizes the singing voice. So long as the
attitude persists, it is felt as being founded upon the properties of
that performance. No indirect criteria, no coefficients of correlation
are needed, then, to teach me about some probable connection here,
because this actual attitude _is experienced as depending directly upon
something definite_.
Some weeks ago I saw my little child smiling for the first time, and
I was charmed. How did I know that my attitude was concerned with
that smile? If the total field were a mosaic of states, events and
things, some of them directed and some not, but all of them distributed
indifferently in consequence of some hidden mechanism, I could not
guess their mutual connection except by the indirect procedure of
scientific induction: a change here would be followed by a change
there; elimination of this part would be accompanied by disappearance
of that other part. Empirical rules of concomitant variation, and so
forth, would be all I could find out about the connections existing
between the several parts. In my case, the frequent concomitance of
the smile on the child’s face with that other bit of experience, my
being charmed, would have made me assume that probably there was some
connection between the two. How far have we gone in psychology that
it is possible, or even seems advisable, to carry on such discussion
seriously! One side of my child’s face is a little darker because of a
shadow. Before the sufficient number of experiences have occurred, I
might as well refer my being charmed to that shadow!
After a long walk, on a hot summer day, I drink a glass of fresh
beer. There is the cool touch and a characteristic taste in my mouth;
there is also great pleasure. Did I have to learn gradually that
the second refers to the first? That it has nothing to do with the
spider that I see on the wall, or the size of that chair? I did _not_
learn it. I am no more sure of my enjoyment as such, and of touch and
taste by themselves, than I am of enjoying just this touch and taste.
Enjoyment is felt as the adequate attitude _belonging to_ those actual
experiences, or as their natural result. Between the attitude and its
sensory basis we experience what in German is called _ihr sachlicher
Zusammenhang_.[74]
The same is true in a great many cases which differ from the last ones
only insofar as the attitude has a “negative” character.
For two weeks I have been busy arranging a carefully adjusted set
of instruments for experimentation. This morning I found them
completely out of order. Whoever may be guilty, I am angry. If, now,
I should say that here is the window, there the desk, in one corner
the instruments out of order, in another a chair, and near the door
myself in an attitude of anger, would that be an adequate description
of the total situation? It would not. I am sure that the door has no
connection whatever with my attitude; for I know that, on discovering
the unfortunate change, I was angry _about the alteration_. Again, the
attitude is felt as _founded upon_ something definite, its character
being the natural and direct consequence of that something’s properties.
One beautiful night in Tenerife, when I was working calmly at my desk,
I was suddenly frightened as I have never before been frightened. The
house was rattling and shaking violently--my first experience of an
earthquake! There was no doubt whatever about my being frightened _by_
that sudden rattling and shaking. Once more the attitude--if fright may
be called an attitude--_was felt as obviously and naturally produced
by that new experience_. We do not gradually learn that unexpected
events of a strongly dynamical type will be accompanied by fright, as
though _a priori_ any other experiences, a friendly face or the smell
of a rose, might be accompanied by fright just as well. Fright is
_experienced as_ jumping at us right out of the very nature of certain
definite events.
After sitting for half an hour in a restaurant, full of smoke and of
talk all around me, I feel “nervous” and ready to go. My “nervousness”
_refers to_ those properties of my environment. I know this, not only
because in past experience I may have discovered the rule that under
such conditions I shall feel uneasy after a time. I experience myself
directly as disturbed and confused _by_ those surroundings. I might
say also that I feel myself _necessarily growing “nervous” under the
pressure of_ sticky air and loud, disorderly noise. Actually these
conditions can only produce that one effect upon me. That is how I feel
them.
Last but not least, I was very much depressed two days ago. At the
same time I could not hit upon an adequate presentation of what I
conceived to be the subject-matter of this chapter. Were there two
separate facts, then, the probable connection of which I might have
stated by some indirect method? No need to! When I was trying to solve
my problem, I felt my depression _as based upon_ my failure directly.
Just such a feeling had to grow out of such a situation because of its
properties.
If, in all these examples, I feel how my own attitude is determined
by the nature of something before me, in other instances something
before me will be experienced quite as naturally as growing out of my
attitude.
When I look at Fig. 1 without any special effort, I have two groups
of dots before me. But if, for some reason, I become interested in
oblique lines, the figure will be transformed into three oblique pairs
of dots, for instance, each of which runs like an oblique line from a
lower dot to the right to a dot higher up to the left. Suppose that
the transformation really occurs; it grows out of my attitude quite as
naturally as my anger develops out of a definite event. When I scratch
my head or hum a tune simultaneously, I do not feel the slightest
connection of these activities with the described transformation
of Fig. 1. But the transformation is _felt as depending upon_ that
particular attitude directly.
What was the name of that town on the Santa Fé Railroad? There it
comes! When I am searching for a name, searching does not occur as
one thing apart; nor does the gap of the forgotten name occur as an
isolated item among other things--a headache, the noise of the wind,
the lamp before me, and so forth. Searching is experienced as directed
toward that definite name, hidden as yet, but now, at last, yielding
to the stress of my attitude. As it appears, its coming is felt as
_being achieved by_ just this little stress of mine. I ask again, Did
I learn gradually through numerous experiences that in this particular
situation such an attitude will be _followed_ by a name so that now
I may venture to guess about their mutual relation? Without previous
training, would that noise outdoors be connected with the given
attitude as well?
I hold my arm horizontally for a while. Very soon the arm will not
remain in that position unless I exert a special effort. In my total
field there is, besides this effort, the blue sky, a lark’s song,
the aspect of the lifted arm, a smell of moist ground. There is also
a curious feeling in the lifted arm, growing more intense as the
minutes go by, and, with this feeling, something like a downward
pull in the arm. Geometrically, as it were, or logically, my actual
experiences allow a large number of different combinations into pairs.
My effort may be combined with the lark’s song, the smell, the color
of the lifted hand, and the blue of the sky. But my effort is not an
isolated something, equally indifferent to all parts of the field. It
is experienced as keeping the arm horizontal _against that downward
pull_. The nature of the pull is felt as requiring just such an
effort in compensation, and the nature of the effort is experienced
as compensating just this pull. If some one tries to describe the
situation in terms of indifferent data, each of which has a place,
some of which have a direction (but independently of each other), some
occurring at one time, and some at another, and all of them having
hundreds of mutual “relations” as to place, distance, succession or
simultaneity, intensity and so on,--he will not even touch what
psychologically is the main feature of the situation.