The Journal of Abnormal Psychology | ||
THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHARACTER. By A. F. Shand. Macmillan and Company, London, 1914. Pp. xxx+532.
In his preface the author says: "A great difficulty which I have found in the course of my work has been to collect the facts or observations of character on which I had to rely. Such material as I have obtained has been drawn much more from literature than from any other source; and this was inevitable, because psychology has hardly begun to concern itself with these questions." This reproach levelled against psychology rebounds on the author, for throughout the book he shows himself evidently unacquainted with those branches of psychology, notably the medical ones, that have contributed so brilliantly and extensively to the science of characterology. It need hardly be pointed out, further, that to rely on second-hand material, which cannot be checked, analysed, or immediately studied, as the living facts can is a procedure that is open to insuperable objections.
The author repudiates any analytical approach to his problems, preferring what he terms "a concrete and synthetic conception of character," and so "avoids breaking up the forces of character into their elements, and being driven to consider the abstract problem of their mutual relation." His method consists in assuming the existence of these forces, as part of his working hypothesis, and in formulating general laws based on a study of them. As he himself puts it, "It is in the first place a method of discovery rather than of proof;—a method reaching no further than a tentative formulation of laws; for organising the more particular under the more general; for interpreting the generalised observations which every great observer of human nature forms for himself, and by this interpretation making some advance towards their organization. "It follows from this that the book is predominantly descriptive in nature, and in this field it must be said that the author has accomplished great work, one that will be of almost indispensable value to future students of the various emotions.
The book is really a study of the emotions rather than of character, and so we have to pay special attention to what the
Mr. Shand's view of the relation between the emotions and the instincts has led to an animated controversy with Dr. McDougall, published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society for 1914-1915. According to the latter writer, every emotion has a corresponding instinct, and is merely the affective aspect of this instinct. Mr. Shand, on the contrary, holds that there are vastly more instincts than emotions, that a given instinct may enter into several different emotional systems, and that each emotional system may at various times, and according to its needs, make use of almost any number of different instincts. The reviewer is unable to determine whether these different points of view have any further implications than a difference in the definitions adopted by the two writers. McDougall obviously employs the term
In the discussion of this interrelation there occurs, by the way, the following suggestive passage: "There are no fears so intense as those which arise in situations from which we cannot escape, where we are forced to remain in contemplation of the threatening events. There is no anger so intense as when the blood boils and all the sudden energy that comes to us cannot vent itself on our antagonist. The arrest of an instinct is that which most frequently excites the emotion connected with it; and therefore we feel the emotion so often before (or after: Reviewer) the instinctive behaviour takes place, rather than along with it." This seems to after-shadow the modern views on intrapsychical conflict and abreaction.
Another conception peculiar to the author, first propounded in 1896, is that regarding the sentiments. Sentiments, in the author's sense, are "those greater systems of the character the function of which is to organize certain of the lesser systems of emotions by imposing on them a common end and subjecting them to a common cause." A constant conflict seems to go on between the organizing tendency of these sentiments and the tendency of the constituent emotions to achieve freedom and autonomous action, a conception quite in harmony with the modern views of "complex-action," although Shand's "sentiments" are far from being synonymous with either "complexes" or "constellations" in our sense. The implications that follow from his conception of the sentiments, and the importance he attaches to it, are well shown by the following interesting passages. "The result of the modification which the systems of the emotions undergo in man, and especially the multiplication of the causes which excite and sustain them, is (1) to make man the most emotional of animals, and (2) to render possible the debasement of his character. For that which is a condition of his progress is also a condition of his decline,—the acquired power of ideas over emotions, and the subsequent power of each indefinitely to sustain the other. Hence the existence of the emotions constitutes a serious danger for him though not for the animals, and the balance which is lost when the emotions are no longer exclusively under the control of those causes which originally excite them can only be replaced by the higher control of the sentiments. There are then three stages in the evolution
We have given some indication of the positive side of the book, one which deserves great praise for both its matter and style. On the negative side we have to remark on the following important omissions. As was mentioned to start with, no acquaintance whatever is shown with either the methods or findings of what may broadly be called medical psychology, the only psychology that has at its disposal the material on which a science of character could be founded. That the important work of Klarges on characterology
An inadequate index closes an unsatisfactory, though in many respects valuable, book. We note no fewer than twelve references to "Seneca," but none to "sex" or "shame;" sixteen to Hudson, but none to Freud, Janet, Prince, Adler, or Klarges.
ERNEST JONES.
The Journal of Abnormal Psychology | ||