Abstract
DR. SCHOFIELD has set himself the task of familiarising the English public with the famous German theory of unconscious mental states. In his anxiety to let more accomplished psychologists speak for themselves he has, in many parts of his book, been content simply to reproduce the ipsissima verba of his authorities without criticism. Unfortunately he is himself scarcely psychologist enough to distinguish good authorities from bad, and trusts far too implicitly to the crudities and vagaries of such writers as Eduard von Hartmann. His work will hardly do much towards shaking the conviction of most English students of the science that “unconscious mind” is much such another phrase as “invisible colour” or “unextended body.” Unconsciousness seems to mean very different things for him in the course of his argument. Instinct, he says, belongs to the “unconscious mind,” because the animal executing the instinctive movement is unaware of its purpose.
The Unconscious Mind.
By A. T. Schofield Pp. vii + 436. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898.)
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TAYLOR, A. The Unconscious Mind. Nature 59, 75 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/059075a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/059075a0