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The Soul and its Mechanism - Introduction
Dr. Rubin says, "the physical appearance of the individual, his psychic traits, or what might be called the chemistry of his soul, are demonstrated [22] in a great measure by the character and amount of the internal secretions of his various glands." - Rubin, Herman H., M.D., Your Mysterious Glands, p. 54. Some schools go so far to deny consciousness altogether and regard it (the East investigator would say they rightly regard it) as inherent in matter. Dr. Leary says: "Consciousness characterizes nerves as vibration characterizes other forms of matter." - Leary, Daniel H., Ph.D., Modern Psychology: Normal and Abnormal, p. 116. Thus it is defined elsewhere as "a complex integration and succession of bodily activities which are closely related to or involve the verbal and gestural mechanisms and hence most frequently come to social expression." - Hunter, Walter S., Psychologies of 1925, p. 91. Watson warns his readers that they "will find no discussion of consciousness and no reference to such terms as sensation, perception, attention, will, image and the like. These terms are in good repute, but," he says, "I have found I can get along without them both in carrying out investigation and in presenting psychology as a system to my students. I frankly do not know what they mean nor do I believe that anyone else can use them consistently." - Psychologies of 1925, p. 201, footnote. Finally we are told that "When psychology has become quite divorced from psyche and gets in bed with living beings we shall be able to throw the word 'consciousness' into the discard - along [23] with 'mind' and 'memory.' Human behavior then will be on a scientific basis and not a branch of literature, or philosophic or religious speculation. 'Mind' will give way to personality, 'consciousness' in general to specific exhibitions of learned behavior, and 'memory' to the calling out of some part of the individual's striped or unstriped muscle-tissue organization." - Dorsey, George A., Why We Behave Like Human Beings, p. 333. This intensely materialistic trend of Western psychology is the more surprising when we remember that, according to its derivation, psychology is the 'logos' or word of the psyche or soul. The West, however, has its dissenting voices. There is the introspective school of psychology, more frequently called the introspectionist, and also the mentalist. They admit the fact of consciousness and assume a conscious entity. Dr., Leary defines these groups as follows: "The introspectionist is interested in consciousness, awareness, awareness of awareness, the self, the 'I' images, and all sorts of other things that the behaviorist of strict training and rigid technology scorns, ignores and denies... The introspectionist turns his attention inwardly; remembers, compares mentally, derives data from self-communion, asks others to do the same; the behaviorist theoretically treats the human animal the same as he would any lower form of life, and observes merely the overt and objective responses the animal makes in much the same manner as would be used by the physicist or chemist in observing the reactions of bodies or compounds in their laboratories. [24] Furthermore, the subjective school is apt to be ultra-rational and systematic; the behavioristic more empirical and pragmatic... "The mentalists insist that psychical activity is not the mere reflection of physical activity; that over and above the body and the brain there is something different, on a different level, call it mind, spirit, consciousness, what you will. Thought is not the functioning of matter. The materialists on the other hand, while differing among themselves, would hold just the reverse, namely, that all is physical, and that all human conduct, be it thinking, feeling, emotions, muscle activity or nerve activity, is all the functioning of physical, material cells, and that without such structure there can be no activity at all. Whatever acts is physical, however it acts. On the one hand we have an informing power or spirit using the structure of the physical body; on the other we have structure as the basis, solely and indispensably, of function, however complex, however delicate, however noble that functioning may be in terms of morals or religion." - Leary, Daniel B., Ph.D., Modern Psychology: Normal and Abnormal, pp. 6-7. The introspectionists and mentalists have not, however, demonstrated their point scientifically, and the position of these schools is still further weakened by the many diverse groups into which psychology is divided. Dr. Hocking, of Harvard, says: "True, psychology does not speak with a single voice. There is dynamic psychology and purposive psychology, Gestalt psychology and reaction psychology, Freudian psychology, structural psychology, behavioristic psychology, and various other schools. They produce [25] different portraits of the self. But the composite of them has a distinctly physiological cast; and we may take behaviorism as the pure instance, because it is the extreme instance, of this character." - Hocking, Wm. E., Self, Its Body and Freedom, pp. 17,18.
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