University of Virginia Library

AN INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. By William McDougall. Published by John W. Luce & Co., Boston, 1910.

Although this book was published a few years ago, nevertheless it seems sufficiently important to the reviewer to have it brought prominently before psychopathologists.

In the introduction McDougall reminds us that the instincts are the prime movers, the mental forces, the sources of energy, the springs of human action, the impulses and motives which determine the goals and course of all human activity, mental and physical. These instincts, being the fundamental elements of our constitution, must be clearly defined, and their history in the individual and the race determined. For this purpose, comparative and evolutionary psychology is necessary, for the life of the emotions and the play of motives in mental life are the least susceptible of introspective observation and description. "The old psychologising," says McDougall, "was like playing `Hamlet'

with the Prince of Denmark left out, or like describing steam-engines while ignoring the fact of the presence and fundamental role of the fire or other sources of heat." A knowledge of the constitution of the mind of man is a prerequisite for any understanding of the life of society in any or all of its many aspects. And this applies to psychopathology. I venture to assert that had certain individuals read and digested a book of this sort it might have been a prophylactic against an exclusively sexual conception of human conduct.

The work is divided into two sections. Section one deals with the mental characteristics of man of primary importance for his life in society, while section two is concerned with the operation of the primary tendencies of the human mind in the life of societies. The successive chapters of the first section take up in order the following questions: the nature of instincts and their place in the constitution of the mind, the principal instincts and the primary emotions of man; some general or non-specific innate tendencies, the nature of the sentiments and the constitution of some of the complex emotions; the development of the sentiments; the growth of self-consciousness and of the self regarding sentiment; the advance to the higher plane of social conduct; and volition. In the second section the author considers the reproductive and the parental instincts, the instinct of pugnacity, the gregarious instinct, the instincts through which religious conceptions affect social life, the instincts of acquisition and construction, and there is a final chapter on imitation, play and habit.

McDougall dividends the instincts into specific tendencies or instincts and general or non-specific tendencies. He calls attention to the abuse of the term "instincts" and himself defines an instinct as an inherited or innate psychophysical disposition which has the three aspects of all mental processes: the cognitive, the affective and the conative—or a knowing of some object or thing, a feeling in regard to it, and a striving towards or away from that object. "The continued obstruction of instinctive striving is always accompanied by painful feeling, its successful progress towards its end by pleasurable feeling, and the achievement of its end by a pleasurable sense of satisfaction." He reminds us that "the emotional excitement, with the accompanying nervous activities of the central part of the disposition, is the only part of the total instinctive process that retains its specific character and remains

common to all individuals and all situations in which the instinct is excited." We may experience the emotional excitement and the impulse to the appropriate movements of an instinct or the re-excitement of an instinctive reaction in its affective and conative aspects without the reproduction of the original idea which led to its excitation. Pleasure and pain but serve to guide these impulses or instincts in their choice of means towards these ends.

One of McDougall's important conclusions is that "each of the principal instincts conditions some one kind of emotional excitement whose quality is specific or peculiar to it, and the emotional excitement of specific quality that is the affective aspect of the operation of any one of the principal instincts may be called a primary emotion." This is McDougall's definition of emotion.

McDougall then takes up for discussion and analysis the principal instincts and the primary emotions of man which include the following: the instinct of flight and the emotion of fear; the instinct of repulsion and the emotion of disgust; the instinct of curiosity and the emotion of wonder; the instinct of pugnacity and the emotion of anger; the instincts of self-abasement (or subjection) and of self-assertion (or self-display) and the emotions of subjection and elation (or negative and positive self-feeling); the parental instinct and the tender emotion, and such other instincts of less well-defined emotional tendencies as the instinct of reproduction (with sexual jealousy and female coyness), the gregarious instinct, the instincts of acquisition and construction; and the minor instincts of crawling, walking, rest and sleep. McDougall denies the existence of such instincts as those of religion, imitation, sympathy and play.

There then follows a consideration of some general or nonspecific innate tendencies or pseudo-instincts which are not specific instincts with special accompanying emotions, and this leads to the analysis of sympathy or the sympathetic induction of emotion, suggestion and suggestibility, imitation, play, habit, disposition and temperament.

The sentiments are now taken up for analysis and definition. A sentiment, according to McDougall, who accepts Shand's definition, is an organized system of emotional tendencies or dispositions centred about the idea of some object. Among the complex emotions not necessarily implying the existence of sentiments McDougall includes admiration, awe and reverence, gratitude,

scorn, contempt and loathing, and envy. Among the complex emotions implying the existence of sentiments he considers reproach, anxiety, jealousy, vengeful emotion, resentment, shame, joy, sorrow and pity, happiness, surprise. The nature and the constitution of the sentiments and the complex emotions comes in for very illuminating analysis. The chapters on the growth of self-consciousness and of the self-regarding sentiment, the advance to the higher plane of social conduct, and volition are to be considered among the best chapters of this very excellent work. The discussion and analysis is very penetrating and clear. It is well worth while presenting the following abstract of the chapter on volition: All impulses, desires and aversions, motives or conations are of one of two classes: (1) from the excitement of some innate disposition or instinct; and (2) from excitement of dispositions acquired during the life of the individual by differentiation from the innate dispositions, under the guidance of pleasure and pain. When in the conflict of two motives the will is thrown on the side of one of them and we make a volitional decision, we in some way add to the energy with which the idea of the one desired end maintains itself in opposition to its rival. The idea of the self, or self-consciousness, is able to play its great role in volition only in virtue of the self-regarding sentiment. The conations, the desires and aversions, arising within this self-regarding sentiment are the motive forces which, adding themselves to the weaker ideal motive in the case of moral effort, enable it to win the mastery over some stronger, coarser desire of our primitive animal nature and to banish from consciousness the idea of the end of this desire.

Volition, therefore, following McDougall, may be defined as the supporting or re-enforcing of a desire or conation by the cooperation of an impulse excited within the system of the self-regarding sentiment. The sentiment of self-control is the master sentiment for volition and especially for resolution. It is a special development of the self-regarding sentiment. The source of the additional motive power, which in the moral effort of volition is thrown upon the side of the weaker, more ideal impulse, is ultimately to be found in that instinct of self-display or self-assertion whose affective aspect is the emotion of positive self-feeling. These remarks are given more or less verbatim.

McDougall next analyzes strength of character which he differentiates from disposition and temperament which are innate.

In section two, as stated previously, the author takes up for separate and more minute analysis the family (the reproductive and the parental) instincts, the instinct of pugnacity, the gregarious instinct, the instinctive bases of religion, and the instincts of acquisition and construction. Imitation, play and habit receive separate treatment in the final chapter.

The reviewer can freely recommend this book as one of the best, if not the best book of this sort that has come into his hands. His personal opinion is that it is the best. McDougall presents us with an acceptable and clean-cut classification of the instincts, emotions and sentiments, he accurately defines these terms, he gives the analysis and constitution of these instincts, emotions and sentiments, and develops the motive sources of human conduct. He adopts many original and novel standpoints. He is an independent thinker. He has here presented us with a book which, because of its clearness and its frank meeting of the problems, is of the utmost value to the psychopathologist and the psychiatrist. In fact the contents of just such a work as this should be the first lesson of every worker in this field. In this way only can he really begin to understand human conduct.

This work should find its place in the forefront of those books which should be read and digested by all workers in any of the social sciences.

For the reviewer it has been a genuine pleasure to read and to review this book and he most heartily recommends it to the reader of these pages.

MEYER SOLOMON.