So, I found an interesting article that focuses a little more on Wundt and his ideas contained in Volkerpsychologie at http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/wundt/Folk/trans-preface.htm.
One part states, "Volkerpsychologie is a truly monumental work. The analysis and interpretation of language, art, mythology, and religion, and the criticisms of rival theories and points of view, which occupy its five large volumes of over three thousand pages, are at once so judicial and so suggestive that they may not be neglected by any serious student of the social mind."
It's short and sweet and informative...and was written locally-- Northwestern University. Check it out!
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Friday, February 6, 2009
Week 2 post and reflection
Here is a link to more information about Wundt's Volkerpsychologie, and Wundt in general:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#Vol
I wanted to find a link to more information about Volkerpsychologie because so little is known about, but it was hard to find and this link doesn't provide that much more information that what was already in the texts. I find it remarkable that Wundt, the acclaimed founder of psychology, could have such a great influence and so much written about him and be studied so much, when half of his work is negelected. According to this website and our texts, Wundt saw voluntarism and Volkerpsychologie as equally essential parts of his psychology. Volkerpsychologie was an alternative to experimental psychology, a way to gather other forms of evidence that could not be found through experimentation but were equally valid and worth study. He spent the last thirty years of his life writing this ten-volume work, and yet no one seems to think it's worth studying. Wundt did place great emphasis on experimentation, but the popular view that he was interested in no other things, which is supported by the lack of scholarship on Volkerpsychologie, is distorted.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/#Vol
I wanted to find a link to more information about Volkerpsychologie because so little is known about, but it was hard to find and this link doesn't provide that much more information that what was already in the texts. I find it remarkable that Wundt, the acclaimed founder of psychology, could have such a great influence and so much written about him and be studied so much, when half of his work is negelected. According to this website and our texts, Wundt saw voluntarism and Volkerpsychologie as equally essential parts of his psychology. Volkerpsychologie was an alternative to experimental psychology, a way to gather other forms of evidence that could not be found through experimentation but were equally valid and worth study. He spent the last thirty years of his life writing this ten-volume work, and yet no one seems to think it's worth studying. Wundt did place great emphasis on experimentation, but the popular view that he was interested in no other things, which is supported by the lack of scholarship on Volkerpsychologie, is distorted.
post and reflection 2/6
I found a website that offers an experiment/test of serial memory. http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/experiments/memtask.html
This week we discussed Wundt and Ebbinghaus a lot in class. We also performed an experiment of serial memory and associations. I had a very hard time trying to remember the list of words once the list became longer than about six or seven. If I remember right Bill told us that Wundt went well into the 40's with the length of his lists. I can't imagine how long it would have taken me just to remember 20 words.
I do not have a lot of background in the history of psychology and I was very impressed with the work done by Wundt. I thought it was very interesting how his ideas were just disregarded at the time he was presenting them and now so much later we have accepted his ideas and began to further the work he started. Its amazing how people can completely buy into one way of thinking and completely ignore other ideas for so long untill deciding to pursue another view. I wonder how much different the study of psychology and the areas Wundt specialized in would be different today if people would have jumped on his band wagon from day one?
This week we discussed Wundt and Ebbinghaus a lot in class. We also performed an experiment of serial memory and associations. I had a very hard time trying to remember the list of words once the list became longer than about six or seven. If I remember right Bill told us that Wundt went well into the 40's with the length of his lists. I can't imagine how long it would have taken me just to remember 20 words.
I do not have a lot of background in the history of psychology and I was very impressed with the work done by Wundt. I thought it was very interesting how his ideas were just disregarded at the time he was presenting them and now so much later we have accepted his ideas and began to further the work he started. Its amazing how people can completely buy into one way of thinking and completely ignore other ideas for so long untill deciding to pursue another view. I wonder how much different the study of psychology and the areas Wundt specialized in would be different today if people would have jumped on his band wagon from day one?
Week 3: Link & Reflection
So, seeing as how next Friday is payday for any student employee at the college, I think you should all consider investing in your own tachistoscope, found for the shockingly low price of $4,999.99 here: http://www.kpsurplus.com/products/view/9760
I was really interested to learn more about tachistocopes because a) chronoscopes bored and confused me and b) I can't imagine something with such an absurd name NOT being awesome. So, I did some further research and learned that tachistoscopes have been used to help those with dyslexia improve their reading abilities. As we talked about in class, these instruments were used originally to project images for the purpose of either improving recognition or flashing stimuli too fast to be recognized consciously. Tachistoscopes have come a long way since their invention by German psychologists in the 19th century, and have been implicated in a variety of experimental conditions in the field of cognitive science.
In an article published in Brain and Cognition, twelve dyslexic children underwent a four month treatment with tachistoscopic presentation. A list of words was presented in a standard lateral manner on a pc screen for one group, while the other group received the same stimuli in random lateral position. Though the method of this study is slightly confusing, I was able to gather the conclusion that the tachistoscopic treatment helped reading accuracy of both words and nonwords significantly for both groups. The link to the article is here: http://csaweb113v.csa.com/ids70/view_record.php?id=2&recnum=1&log=from_res&SID=2l26bc5sfs1r77cp1512fmbjh1&mark_id=search%3A2%3A0%2C0%2C2
In another realm, tachistoscopes are apparently popular for subliminal advertising purposes. The idea is that, although those subject to these stimuli will claim to never have read or even seen them, their brief appearance is supposedly enough to register with our subconscious and persuade us to act in accordance to their message. There is an interesting article on how the "t-scope" is used in advertising (and how it can be an arduous process) here: http://www.sykronix.com/researching/tscope.htm
I was really interested to learn more about tachistocopes because a) chronoscopes bored and confused me and b) I can't imagine something with such an absurd name NOT being awesome. So, I did some further research and learned that tachistoscopes have been used to help those with dyslexia improve their reading abilities. As we talked about in class, these instruments were used originally to project images for the purpose of either improving recognition or flashing stimuli too fast to be recognized consciously. Tachistoscopes have come a long way since their invention by German psychologists in the 19th century, and have been implicated in a variety of experimental conditions in the field of cognitive science.
In an article published in Brain and Cognition, twelve dyslexic children underwent a four month treatment with tachistoscopic presentation. A list of words was presented in a standard lateral manner on a pc screen for one group, while the other group received the same stimuli in random lateral position. Though the method of this study is slightly confusing, I was able to gather the conclusion that the tachistoscopic treatment helped reading accuracy of both words and nonwords significantly for both groups. The link to the article is here: http://csaweb113v.csa.com/ids70/view_record.php?id=2&recnum=1&log=from_res&SID=2l26bc5sfs1r77cp1512fmbjh1&mark_id=search%3A2%3A0%2C0%2C2
In another realm, tachistoscopes are apparently popular for subliminal advertising purposes. The idea is that, although those subject to these stimuli will claim to never have read or even seen them, their brief appearance is supposedly enough to register with our subconscious and persuade us to act in accordance to their message. There is an interesting article on how the "t-scope" is used in advertising (and how it can be an arduous process) here: http://www.sykronix.com/researching/tscope.htm
G. Stanley Hall, racist, sexist, Nazi
An interesting Biography of G. Stanley Hall by Clarence Karier can be found at:
http://mises.org/journals/jls/7_1/7_1_2.pdf in which he is characterized as an important historical intellectual, but also as a sexist, racist, pre-nazi.
Some quotes from the article below:
Through his "scientific" studies of human development came his elitism, his racism, his sexist chauvinism, his penchant for primitivism, as well as his authoritarianism: all the integral elements of his personal value system. So we find him recommending that, "there are many who ought not to be educated, and who would be better in mind, body, and morals if they knew no So, too, he argued, that to educate girls to be self-supporting is "wrong and vicious," for to scientifically follow nature, "Every girl should be educated primarily to become a wife and mother." He further insisted that Dressur was necessary for elementary students because the preadolescent was passing through an abbreviated form of the savage stage. In like manner, he believed the adolescent was passing through the stage when civilization and reason began to dawn and therefore courses in "heroalogy" were appropriate to teach the noble lesson of service to the collective soul of the people. Long after the recapitulation theory had been discredited, Hall continued to cling to this evolutionary structure. He fought a delaying action when confronting movements which ran counter to his belief system. Typical of his approach was his resistance to the women's rights movement. In a variety of public arenas he argued that women belonged in the home. However, when women began to gain some entrance to higher educa-
tion he insisted that at Clark University they were treated fairly. Nevertheless, in a private letter to Col. Bullock, one finds him saying, "I am strongly opposed to giving women the slightest foothold in the college, even if we could do so under the founder's will. I feel that they would crowd out the best men a little later." Hall went on to say that he was inclined to leave the doctoral degree open to women because so few had gone through in the last ten years. Besides, he added, "it would save us a good deal of pounding by feminists; and by depriving it we would needlessly shut off possible bequests from women who have borne a pretty large part in the endowment of universities."
Here Hall was practicing explicit institutional chauvinism. What would appear to many on the outside as a relatively open system was, in fact, highly discriminating in intent as well as practice. Hall knew women had a place and for hi it was not in the advanced centers of learning. He romanticized women as something very special, close to nature, hearen of the race, and, indeed, the conduit through which "Mansoul" might some day become a "supermansoul." Hall's personal values were perhaps best revealed when he reacted to his son's announcement that he had found a girl whom he wished to marry. Hall said, "I hope she is physically strong and with good heredity. What's her complexion? Send me her photo." Hall had raised physical and mental health to a near cult. His book on Morale, which was subtitled "The Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct," was addressed to the physical and moral athlete, calling for a new collective ideal firmly rooted in the collective Yolk. As he described it: Thus my book is a plea for nothing less than a new criterion of all human worths and values. I would have the home, the state, the church, literature, science, industry, and every human institution, not excluding religion, and
perhaps it most, rejudged and revaluated by the standard of what they contribute to individual, industrial and social morale. This would give us a new scale on which to measure real progress or regression.
Hall's scale for measuring progress toward a new order was clearly a totalitarian one. While the social system could thus be improved, Hall also stressed heredity as of great importance and argued that a pound of heredity is "worth a hun-
deadweight of education." Thus it is necessary to pay attention to better breeding:
"The nation that breeds best, be it Mongol, Slav, Teuton or Saxon, will rule the world in the future." Eugenics, he insisted, was not merely medical certificates for fitness to marry or taxing bachelors for failing to breed their kid, or even steps to prevent the unfit from propagation, but rather it meant the constant encouragement of the "Abrahams" of the race to breed a better race. If farmers who can breed cattle. shew and horses. can also learn how to breed good men and women, the problem is solved: Germ plasm is the most immortal thing in the physical wodd. Backward it connects us by direct and unbroken lines of continuity with our remotest ancestor, be it Adam, the anthropithicus. the amoeba or whatever else ... [T]he best survive and the worst
perish.
His complete vision ultimately would include breeding for a super-race. Hall went on, If God, [one should be reminded here that "God for Hall is a collectiveterm for "Mansoul" l the great stim-culturist of man were to create or choose ... an ideal environment for improving the human stock where the pure air and water and right, simple living and high thinking with correct adjustment of all the influences that work for the right balance between those supreme human
forces. individuation ... is struck, and thus establish a nursery for the slow evolution of the superman who will in body and soul realize ail the richest human ideals and make what we have already dreamed must sometime come to the world, a new paradise, what better cradle or nest in which to incubate the overman of the future could he [be] found than here? The new Paradise which Hall had in mind was the superstate9' which he portrayed in the "Fall of Atlantis." In Hall's ideal kingdom men practiced religion in all forms, from fetish and nature worship to Mansoul worship according to each person's development on the evolutionary scale. Everyone in this society dedicated his total self to the interest and service of the society under the enlightened guidance of those Hall called "heartfomrs" (psychologists). The entire society was organized into groups according to their working productive function in that society.' Each group was dedicated to the ideal of being the very best of what they were destined to be. Thus, service was emblazoned on everyone's consciousness. At the top of the social hierarchy could be found the supermen, in the form of scientific researchers, constantly seeking more and more knowledge of Mansoul. Hall's message was clear: through selective breeding, genetic psychology, and a well- planned educational system, the real nature of Mansoul could flower in the form of the superstate. However, something went wrong. Hall's idyllic state eventually ended in chaotic destruction. Individual freedom at the expense of the collective ideal had eaten away at the very foundation of Hall's totalitarian collective ideal. Here, Hall's second message was also clear: if America was to arrive at the promised land of "Mansoul" it would have to learn to tighten up and discipline itself to the collective ideal of Morale. This, then, was Hall's ultimate vision and promise for America.
Charles Burgess best captured the sense of what Hall strove for when he said: ... with the colossus of a Christ-like superman standing on Liberty's vacated pedestal, with sublimation of self to the State therefore permeating every hierarchical layer from the slave to the uebermensch, Hall would at last be able to say that his battle had ended. The dawn of the new day would be upon the world.9' Before World War I, Nietzsche's view of the uebemnsch often served as Hall's model man. In many ways Hall's superman was virtually the same as Nietzsche's. However, after the disillusioning experience of the war, Hall came to believe that his superman was unlike Nietzsche's which he believed had succumbed to German militarism. Nietzsche's uebemnsch became for Hall a superman of sheer power. In contrast he believed his superman was more moral and cultural. His was more a Christ-like colossus, a product of the evolutionary Mansoul. For Hall, the Germany he had loved so dearly had destroyed itself by its turn toward militarism. This militarism, he believed, could also infect other cultures and nations and would ultimately lead, if not checked, to the destruction of all culture. While Hall's ideal state was not a militarized state, it was clearly a totalitarian state, for Hall had the mind of a totalitarian. He envisioned not only a total culture where all would be subservient to the ideal, but a total humanity where ultimately the best would come to see, as he, Christ, and Buddha had seen, that view from the mountaintop.
Hall had thus preached a new religion, a totalitarian, naturalistic faith fortwentieth century man, where the psychologist replaced the priest and where sickness replaced the age-old concept of sin. Hall, however, was more. He was also a prophet of the twentieth century's totalitarian man. Being tuned into the deeper under-currents of western culture, he felt the pangs of man's alienation and intuitively sensed the symbolic structure for which such vulnerable people came to yearn. Thus he not only sensed the truly reactionary longings of an alienated man, but also intuitively grasped the kind of symbols which could satisfy those longings and, in doing so he seemed to touch the future. Hall was not long in his grave when western man began to hear those strange Hallian themes of hack to nature, soil, fatherland, hearth and home, health, strength through joy, agrarian virtue, world order, new order, charismatic leadership, supermen and superrace, ancestral calling, thinking with one's blood, and ultimately the Triumph of the echoing off those cold gray walls of the sports colossus at Nuremberg. Hall had touched the symbolic structure which the National Socialists would use to weld Germany into an ironclad soul of "obedient servants." Perhaps Hall was correct in arguing that it was not German cultural ideology that led Germany astray in World War I but rather the growth of German militarism that was to blame. Nevertheless, the unanswered question remains: what role did these complex ideological, cultural currents play in keeping the trains running on time to Auschwitz and the fires burning in the crematoriums? It might be, as Hall had argued, that these "cultural currents" of Mansoul were innocent "victims" rather than "perpetrators" of the catastrophe which ensued. The fault lies, he might have said, with a growing cancerous military mind. Then again it just might be the case, as another enlightened utopian visionary once claimed, that, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."' Perhaps if we were to look more carefully at those conditions which require illusions, we might find those cultural ideological conditions which helped propel Germany not only into National Socialism, but into militarism itself. It is possible that Hall was wrong in blaming solely the military. Perhaps some combination of cultural conditions along with militarism concocted that witch's brew. The current American trends toward longing for a reactionary past, charismatic leadership, health cults, back to the soil, nature, religious cults, as well as a search for mystical roots and the simple virtues of "manhood," "womanhood," and "motherhood," stand pale in isolation. However, it may well be that such an ideological pallor in conjunction with the growth of American militarism in our atomic age may be the spark that will light the path of Mansoul to an even greater if not final catastrophy.
However one interprets these American developments, it does seem that Lawrence Cremin was correct when he said of Hall: "he injected into the mainstream of American educational thought some of the most radical-and I happen to think virulent--doctrines of the twentieth century, and there is no understanding the present apart from his contribution."
While many of Hall's doctrines can be viewed as "virulent" in the context of the twentieth century, it is equally and perhaps more importantly clear that the conditions which gave rise to such ideas need further, more intensive examination. It is, however, also clear that just when it seemed that America was about to lose its traditional religious moorings, G. Stanley Hall, as a priestly prophet of the twentieth century, did more than any other single individual to help construct that new faith, that new religion of psychology, in which so many have now come to believe.
http://mises.org/journals/jls/7_1/7_1_2.pdf in which he is characterized as an important historical intellectual, but also as a sexist, racist, pre-nazi.
Some quotes from the article below:
Through his "scientific" studies of human development came his elitism, his racism, his sexist chauvinism, his penchant for primitivism, as well as his authoritarianism: all the integral elements of his personal value system. So we find him recommending that, "there are many who ought not to be educated, and who would be better in mind, body, and morals if they knew no So, too, he argued, that to educate girls to be self-supporting is "wrong and vicious," for to scientifically follow nature, "Every girl should be educated primarily to become a wife and mother." He further insisted that Dressur was necessary for elementary students because the preadolescent was passing through an abbreviated form of the savage stage. In like manner, he believed the adolescent was passing through the stage when civilization and reason began to dawn and therefore courses in "heroalogy" were appropriate to teach the noble lesson of service to the collective soul of the people. Long after the recapitulation theory had been discredited, Hall continued to cling to this evolutionary structure. He fought a delaying action when confronting movements which ran counter to his belief system. Typical of his approach was his resistance to the women's rights movement. In a variety of public arenas he argued that women belonged in the home. However, when women began to gain some entrance to higher educa-
tion he insisted that at Clark University they were treated fairly. Nevertheless, in a private letter to Col. Bullock, one finds him saying, "I am strongly opposed to giving women the slightest foothold in the college, even if we could do so under the founder's will. I feel that they would crowd out the best men a little later." Hall went on to say that he was inclined to leave the doctoral degree open to women because so few had gone through in the last ten years. Besides, he added, "it would save us a good deal of pounding by feminists; and by depriving it we would needlessly shut off possible bequests from women who have borne a pretty large part in the endowment of universities."
Here Hall was practicing explicit institutional chauvinism. What would appear to many on the outside as a relatively open system was, in fact, highly discriminating in intent as well as practice. Hall knew women had a place and for hi it was not in the advanced centers of learning. He romanticized women as something very special, close to nature, hearen of the race, and, indeed, the conduit through which "Mansoul" might some day become a "supermansoul." Hall's personal values were perhaps best revealed when he reacted to his son's announcement that he had found a girl whom he wished to marry. Hall said, "I hope she is physically strong and with good heredity. What's her complexion? Send me her photo." Hall had raised physical and mental health to a near cult. His book on Morale, which was subtitled "The Supreme Standard of Life and Conduct," was addressed to the physical and moral athlete, calling for a new collective ideal firmly rooted in the collective Yolk. As he described it: Thus my book is a plea for nothing less than a new criterion of all human worths and values. I would have the home, the state, the church, literature, science, industry, and every human institution, not excluding religion, and
perhaps it most, rejudged and revaluated by the standard of what they contribute to individual, industrial and social morale. This would give us a new scale on which to measure real progress or regression.
Hall's scale for measuring progress toward a new order was clearly a totalitarian one. While the social system could thus be improved, Hall also stressed heredity as of great importance and argued that a pound of heredity is "worth a hun-
deadweight of education." Thus it is necessary to pay attention to better breeding:
"The nation that breeds best, be it Mongol, Slav, Teuton or Saxon, will rule the world in the future." Eugenics, he insisted, was not merely medical certificates for fitness to marry or taxing bachelors for failing to breed their kid, or even steps to prevent the unfit from propagation, but rather it meant the constant encouragement of the "Abrahams" of the race to breed a better race. If farmers who can breed cattle. shew and horses. can also learn how to breed good men and women, the problem is solved: Germ plasm is the most immortal thing in the physical wodd. Backward it connects us by direct and unbroken lines of continuity with our remotest ancestor, be it Adam, the anthropithicus. the amoeba or whatever else ... [T]he best survive and the worst
perish.
His complete vision ultimately would include breeding for a super-race. Hall went on, If God, [one should be reminded here that "God for Hall is a collectiveterm for "Mansoul" l the great stim-culturist of man were to create or choose ... an ideal environment for improving the human stock where the pure air and water and right, simple living and high thinking with correct adjustment of all the influences that work for the right balance between those supreme human
forces. individuation ... is struck, and thus establish a nursery for the slow evolution of the superman who will in body and soul realize ail the richest human ideals and make what we have already dreamed must sometime come to the world, a new paradise, what better cradle or nest in which to incubate the overman of the future could he [be] found than here? The new Paradise which Hall had in mind was the superstate9' which he portrayed in the "Fall of Atlantis." In Hall's ideal kingdom men practiced religion in all forms, from fetish and nature worship to Mansoul worship according to each person's development on the evolutionary scale. Everyone in this society dedicated his total self to the interest and service of the society under the enlightened guidance of those Hall called "heartfomrs" (psychologists). The entire society was organized into groups according to their working productive function in that society.' Each group was dedicated to the ideal of being the very best of what they were destined to be. Thus, service was emblazoned on everyone's consciousness. At the top of the social hierarchy could be found the supermen, in the form of scientific researchers, constantly seeking more and more knowledge of Mansoul. Hall's message was clear: through selective breeding, genetic psychology, and a well- planned educational system, the real nature of Mansoul could flower in the form of the superstate. However, something went wrong. Hall's idyllic state eventually ended in chaotic destruction. Individual freedom at the expense of the collective ideal had eaten away at the very foundation of Hall's totalitarian collective ideal. Here, Hall's second message was also clear: if America was to arrive at the promised land of "Mansoul" it would have to learn to tighten up and discipline itself to the collective ideal of Morale. This, then, was Hall's ultimate vision and promise for America.
Charles Burgess best captured the sense of what Hall strove for when he said: ... with the colossus of a Christ-like superman standing on Liberty's vacated pedestal, with sublimation of self to the State therefore permeating every hierarchical layer from the slave to the uebermensch, Hall would at last be able to say that his battle had ended. The dawn of the new day would be upon the world.9' Before World War I, Nietzsche's view of the uebemnsch often served as Hall's model man. In many ways Hall's superman was virtually the same as Nietzsche's. However, after the disillusioning experience of the war, Hall came to believe that his superman was unlike Nietzsche's which he believed had succumbed to German militarism. Nietzsche's uebemnsch became for Hall a superman of sheer power. In contrast he believed his superman was more moral and cultural. His was more a Christ-like colossus, a product of the evolutionary Mansoul. For Hall, the Germany he had loved so dearly had destroyed itself by its turn toward militarism. This militarism, he believed, could also infect other cultures and nations and would ultimately lead, if not checked, to the destruction of all culture. While Hall's ideal state was not a militarized state, it was clearly a totalitarian state, for Hall had the mind of a totalitarian. He envisioned not only a total culture where all would be subservient to the ideal, but a total humanity where ultimately the best would come to see, as he, Christ, and Buddha had seen, that view from the mountaintop.
Hall had thus preached a new religion, a totalitarian, naturalistic faith fortwentieth century man, where the psychologist replaced the priest and where sickness replaced the age-old concept of sin. Hall, however, was more. He was also a prophet of the twentieth century's totalitarian man. Being tuned into the deeper under-currents of western culture, he felt the pangs of man's alienation and intuitively sensed the symbolic structure for which such vulnerable people came to yearn. Thus he not only sensed the truly reactionary longings of an alienated man, but also intuitively grasped the kind of symbols which could satisfy those longings and, in doing so he seemed to touch the future. Hall was not long in his grave when western man began to hear those strange Hallian themes of hack to nature, soil, fatherland, hearth and home, health, strength through joy, agrarian virtue, world order, new order, charismatic leadership, supermen and superrace, ancestral calling, thinking with one's blood, and ultimately the Triumph of the echoing off those cold gray walls of the sports colossus at Nuremberg. Hall had touched the symbolic structure which the National Socialists would use to weld Germany into an ironclad soul of "obedient servants." Perhaps Hall was correct in arguing that it was not German cultural ideology that led Germany astray in World War I but rather the growth of German militarism that was to blame. Nevertheless, the unanswered question remains: what role did these complex ideological, cultural currents play in keeping the trains running on time to Auschwitz and the fires burning in the crematoriums? It might be, as Hall had argued, that these "cultural currents" of Mansoul were innocent "victims" rather than "perpetrators" of the catastrophe which ensued. The fault lies, he might have said, with a growing cancerous military mind. Then again it just might be the case, as another enlightened utopian visionary once claimed, that, "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."' Perhaps if we were to look more carefully at those conditions which require illusions, we might find those cultural ideological conditions which helped propel Germany not only into National Socialism, but into militarism itself. It is possible that Hall was wrong in blaming solely the military. Perhaps some combination of cultural conditions along with militarism concocted that witch's brew. The current American trends toward longing for a reactionary past, charismatic leadership, health cults, back to the soil, nature, religious cults, as well as a search for mystical roots and the simple virtues of "manhood," "womanhood," and "motherhood," stand pale in isolation. However, it may well be that such an ideological pallor in conjunction with the growth of American militarism in our atomic age may be the spark that will light the path of Mansoul to an even greater if not final catastrophy.
However one interprets these American developments, it does seem that Lawrence Cremin was correct when he said of Hall: "he injected into the mainstream of American educational thought some of the most radical-and I happen to think virulent--doctrines of the twentieth century, and there is no understanding the present apart from his contribution."
While many of Hall's doctrines can be viewed as "virulent" in the context of the twentieth century, it is equally and perhaps more importantly clear that the conditions which gave rise to such ideas need further, more intensive examination. It is, however, also clear that just when it seemed that America was about to lose its traditional religious moorings, G. Stanley Hall, as a priestly prophet of the twentieth century, did more than any other single individual to help construct that new faith, that new religion of psychology, in which so many have now come to believe.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Wundt Books
I found some books that you can look through. They were written by Wundt. Through amazon.com you can look through "An Inroduction to Psychology". The link directly to the book is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1443723088/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link. If the link doesn't work you can search "wundt" in the search box on amazon and this book will be the frist one. There are also other books that you can search through about Wundt.
There are also Wundt books in the library!
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
post and reflection
Looking around for websites, and by searching under the name Wundt, I found a piece on many of the psychologists we have recently been talking about. Given it is a wikipedia article, but it still has some interesting concepts. (search Wikipedia: Mathematical Psychology, sorry couldn't make the link work)
I have been interested in particular by reading about the sensory theories (such as placement theory, etc.) I also am still a little bit confused as to the exact reason why Wundt has had so much emphasis as the start of Psychology when it seems like Fechner has done just as much. I know that it was the "marriage" between physiology and philosophy, but Fechner seems to have started more and possibly accomplished more (although it doesn't seem like anyone could have written more than Wundt!)
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