James, William (1842-1910)

Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals

New York

Henry Holt and Company

1892, 1899

"The flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence."

In some of the books we find the various forms of apperception codified, and their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular form in the way so delightful to the pedagogic eye. In one book which I remember reading there were sixteen different types of apperception discriminated from each other. There was associative apperception, subsumptive apperception, assimilative apperception, and others up to sixteen. It is needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has always haunted psychology, and which perpetuates itself by lingering along, especially in these works which are advertised as 'written for the use of teachers.' The flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence.
(Chapter 14)

Motion::Flowing Liquid::Surface Uncategorized::Parcels

Reading

William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: And to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1899).

Lectures given in 1892. <Link to 1901 edition in Google Books>

01/10/2019