Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 3-4.djvu/90

 344 JAMES S. VAN TESLAAR

in rapid succession the discoveries of new energies in nature, the harnessing of electricity, steam, and other labor-saving forces, the multiplication of means for creating power, the rise of large cities, of international trade combinations and of corporations for the exploitation of natural resources on a tremendous scale-— all in keeping with the new cultural development.

At that stage Darwin introduced the concept of unfoldment, of scientific evolution. It became the fashion of scientiISc endeavor to explain what a thing really is by showing how it came to be, that is, by giving its developmental history.

In the history of psychology ' associationism ' represents the atomistic phase of the science of mind. The pre-Freudian conception of psychic dynamism is a sort of metaphysical, philosophic, specula- tive energeticism. Though rooted in physiology and often expressed in terms current in biology, it is at bottom but little more than the psychology of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Alexander Bain— to mention only some of the chieftains of British speculative psychology.

Even the psychology of Herbert Spencer does not typify the true evolutionistic development. In his day the data were not yet available for the adoption of evolution as a working principle in psychology; but to Spencer belongs the credit of having anticipated ■with many keen generalizations, though speculatively, the next phase in the development of the science of mind.

At any rate the adoption of the evolutionistic or developmental concept in biology and the rapid spread of that viewpoint to contiguous sciences represents the next great general phase m the history of culture. Even disciplines of speculative character, philosophy, sociology, ethics, adopted the new viewpoint. Bui clinical psychology remained strangely aloof, and experimental psychology lagged behind. The 'energeticism' of Herbart and Lotze, fruitful and significant as they have been, remain a secondary development. No working basis had been devised for the adoption of evolution as a guiding principle in the practical concerns of psychology. The main course of development in the study of mind during health and disease alike persisted on the old path of atomism. The doctrine of the association of ideas and the more recent doctrine of the 'conditional reflex' are typical of the standpoint of non-Freudian psychology to this day in spite of the