The Machinery of the Mind E-Book

Violet M. Firth (Dion Fortune)

• Herausgeber: David De Angelis
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

ORIGINALLY given as a popular lecture course, this little book does not pretend to be a contribution to the formidable array of psychological literature. It is intended for those who have neither the time nor the training necessary to assimilate the standard works on the subject, but who want to know its elements and to understand the principles on which our characters are formed and the means by which the process of thought is carried on, not so much from the scholastic point of view, but in relation to the problems of everyday life.

Leseprobe

The Machinery of the Mind

By

Violet M. Firth

(Dion Fortune)

1922

© David De Angelis 2017 – all rights reserved

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1. PHYSICAL VEHICLE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

CHAPTER 2. EVOLUTION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

CHAPTER 3. HOW AN IDEA ENTERS THE MIND

CHAPTER 4. ORGANISATION OF THE UPPER LEVELS OF THE MIND

CHAPTER 5. ORGANIZATION OF THE LOWER LEVELS OF THE MIND

CHAPTER 6. COMPLEXES

CHAPTER 7. THE INSTINCTS

CHAPTER 8. THE SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCT

CHAPTER 9. DISEASES OF THE SELF-PRESERVATION INSTINCT

CHAPTER 10. THE REPRODUCTIVE INSTINCT

CHAPTER 11. DEVELOPMENT OF THE REPRODUCTIVE INSTINCT

CHAPTER 12. DISEASES OF THE REPRODUCTIVE INSTINCT

CHAPTER 13. SUBLIMATION

CHAPTER 14. MALADAPTATION TO ENVIRONMENT AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

CHAPTER 15. CONFLICT

CHAPTER 16. REPRESSION

CHAPTER 17. DISSOCIATION

CHAPTER 18. SYMBOLISATION

CHAPTER 19. PHANTASIES, DREAMS, AND DELUSIONS

CHAPTER 20. PSYCHOTHERAPY

CHAPTER 21. PSYCHOANALYSIS

CHAPTER 22. HYPNOSIS, SUGGESTION, AND AUTOSUGGESTION

CHAPTER 23. THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF PSYCHOLOGY

CHAPTER 24. CONCLUSION

FOREWORD

I am very glad to have the opportunity of commending this little volume to those without any -previous knowledge, who desire to gain a clear idea of the way in which modern psychology regards the human mind.

For every time the words “psychology" and “psychological” were used in the newspapers ten years ago, they must be used fifty times today; and though very often some other word would do just as well, or a good deal better, this sudden vogue has a real meaning.

The public has become aware of the existence of psychology. People are beginning to realize that the human mind, the instrument by which we know and think and feel and strive, must itself be studied for its own sake if we are to gain a deeper understanding and a greater control of human life.

A distinct reaction from the rather narrow materialism of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, an increased realization of immaterial, of "spiritual" values, has helped towards giving the mind its rightful place in human interest.

On the one hand, modern academic psychology has, for many years now, been gradually emancipating itself from the chaotic subjectivities of competing philosophies, and developing on really scientific lines, with the aid of accurate observation, comparison and experiment. Its genuinely and increasingly useful applications to education and to industry are evidences of that.

On the other hand, the remarkable results of psychoanalysis have been made widely known, though often with that misleading one-sided emphasis which seems fated to attend the popularisation of any branch of scientific enquiry. And these results have been found not only interesting but exciting (to some morbidly exciting) because they appeal to instincts and emotions which our civilisation represses and often perverts. Psychoanalysis has indeed become a fashionable craze, and as such has doubtless done a certain amount of harm and has met with a good deal of opprobrium from the serious minded.

But psychoanalysis has come to stay, because, however much it may be misused by the ignorant, the unbalanced and the half-educated, it is both a sound technique of research and a sound therapeutic method. And it certainly has a most important contribution to make to the psychology of the future.

This little book, which can be read through at a sitting, succeeds in the difficult task of presenting the rudiments of the modern view of the mind in an easy, lucid and attractive form.

Though I may not agree with every sentence she has written, Miss Firth's development of the subject, and of its very intimate connection with human life and human troubles, seems to me not only substantially sound and accurate, but essentially sane and well balanced. Her explanation of the different levels of the mind and of the censors by the metaphor of the tank and the sieves is particularly ingenious and helpful. The book will certainly succeed, to use the author's words, in "planting certain fundamental concepts in untrained minds so that they may serve as a basis for future studies.”

A.O. TANSLEY.