Abstract
MISS CALKINS is well known among psychologists for her treatment of psychology as the science of selves rather than as the science of mental processes. In her view, the science is best treated as “a study of conscious selves in relation to other selves and to external objects-in a word, to their environment, personal and impersonal.” The aim of the present book is to give a systematic account of the various psychological topics, ordinarily treated in introductory text-books, from this point of view. As might be anticipated, Miss Calkins is least successful in her method when dealing with perception, imagination, memory, and thought, although the special point of view gives an added significance to the facts, and brings a new interest for those students who have already become familiar with the ordinary descriptions. When dealing with the more individualising and active forms of consciousness-emotion, will, belief, and the religious consciousness the author is able to benefit by her method to the full, and gives the impression of concreteness and reality so often missing in the descriptions of these aspects of conscious life. There is no chapter specially devoted to the nature of the self, but many facts generally given under this head are very fully discussed in a section on “Abnormal Psychology “in the appendix. This appendix forms quite a third of the entire volume, and contains masses of detail the enumeration and discussion of which might obscure the general line of argument. It adds very greatly to the value of the book, and is clearly arranged, and well provided with figures and diagrams. The final section contains a large number of good “review questions.”
A First Book in Psychology.
By Prof. Mary Whiton Calkins. Pp. xvi + 419. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1910.) Price 8s. net.
Erkenntnistheorie.
Von Prof. E. Drr. Pp. viii + 362. (Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer, 1910.) Price 8 marks.
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B., W. A First Book in Psychology Erkenntnistheorie . Nature 88, 139 (1911). https://doi.org/10.1038/088139a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/088139a0