The Scientific Place and Principles of Medical Psychology

Extract

Upon a recent occasion we took some pains to review the various significations in which the word “psychology” has been of late employed. We found that among some writers the use of this word had absolutely run wild. We pointed out that the word had not been very long established in the language of science, and that its significance, even at present, admitted of some latitude. We expressed our opinion that the most warrantable use of the word is to signify the phenomenology of the human mind, including—1, the phenomena of knowledge; 2, the phenomena of feeling; and 3, the phenomena of effort; but that it seemed still possible to give an extension to its meaning, so that it should include the psychology of man in the sense just indicated, or anthropo-psychology, and the psychology of the dumb creation, or eneo-psychology. If such an arrangement as this were adopted, it would nearly correspond with that which may be termed metaphysical psychology. The epithet metaphysical, as here applied to psychology, is not to be regarded as tautological or superfluous, because it is designed to denote that old form of the science of the pneumatology of the human mind which rests exclusively upon what is taught by consciousness; while physiological psychology includes all that can be determined upon probable evidence of the phenomonology of the functions of consciousness in the animal kingdom at large.