ABNORMAL 
PSYCHOLOGY 
AND EDUCATION 
FRANK WATTS THE CONDUCT OF MIND SERIES 
EDITED BY 
JOSEPH JASTROW 
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
AND EDUCATION THE CONDUCT OF MIND SERIES 
Edited By Joseph Jastrow, Ph.D. 
VOCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 
By H. L. Hollingworth, Ph.D. 
CHARACTER AND TEMPERAMENT 
By Joseph Jastrow, Ph.D. 
PSYCHOLOGY IN DAILY LIFE 
By C. E. Seashore, Ph.D. 
MENTAL ADJUSTMENTS 
By Frederic Lyman Wells, Ph.D. 
THE CONTROL OF THE SOCIAL MIND 
By Arland D. Weeks, M.A. 
PLEASURE AND BEHAVIOR 
By Frederic Lyman Wells, Ph.D. 
ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY AND EDUCATION 
By Frank Watts, M.A. 
212 A ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
AND EDUCATION 
BY 
FRANK WATTS, M.A. (London) 
LATE LECTURER IN PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF 
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND 
INTRODUCTION BY 
JOSEPH JASTROW 
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK :: :: MCMXXIV COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INTRODUCTION 
The keynote of this volume is the emphasis upon the 
concepts and conclusions of Abnormal Psychology as 
aids to the comprehension and control of the educative 
processes. By way of perfecting his knowledge of 
human nature as well as his professional equipment, the 
teacher should be at home in the point of view of the 
abnormal. He will thus add a dimension to his insight; 
and if he has also the gift of the clinical sense, he will 
recognize and interpret character-traits and symptoms 
of behaviour in the school room more adequately and 
more correctly. What applies to teachers is equally 
true of parents. 
There is a justifiable aversion to the term "educa- 
tion," because of its too close association with the tech- 
nical business of the school; it must be restored to its 
full meaning as inclusive of the total processes of 
psychic growth-control. The concept of education is 
shaped by the view of the child nature; this determines 
the educative plan. The close inter-relation of the 
social-moral growth with the intellectual growth, and 
indeed, the acceptance of the former as the deeper and 
the larger factor in formative value, emphasize the 
bearing of Abnormal Psychology upon education. The 
point of view presents a double purpose: the one to 
illuminate the nature of childhood; the other to give 
V VI 
INTRODUCTION 
insight and direction to the educative processes. These 
purposes have brought about a movement which prom- 
ises to exercise a considerable influence upon the educa- 
tional trends of the near future. The advance guard 
of the movement is formed by a small company of inde- 
pendent contributors, each with an individual approach 
to the common viewpoint. Their doctrines are certain 
to gain adherents rapidly; for the central ideas are in 
the air. What is needed is to make the movement artic- 
ulate. Mr. Watts deserves recognition as a worthy 
pioneer. The progressive educationalist will accept his 
programme and commend its execution. 
Abnormal Psychology is differently centred, differ- 
ently focussed, than is the study of the insanities-the 
major and minor liabilities of the mental life to distor- 
tion and disaster. Historically and practically, the 
ministering to a mind diseased provides the dominant 
motive for the study of the insane. Abnormal Psychol- 
ogy profits by Psychiatry, but conceives its problems 
with a larger and a different interest, which is directed 
to the bearing of this knowledge upon the normal 
mental functions. There is no sharp division between 
the two expressions of a common nature and function. 
The abnormal is the normal in distortion and exaggera- 
tion ; the normal harbours the features of the abnormal 
in miniature. 
Abnormal Psychology includes a larger range of 
phenomena than find a central place in Psychiatry; 
it includes the study of the slighter deviations in 
status, the lapses, the traces, the intrusions of the sub- 
conscious, the varieties of irregular functioning, the INTRODUCTION 
VII 
extremes of temperamental trends-the eccentric, the 
unbalanced, the genius, the criminal. It expands as 
distinctively on the side of the concepts which it de- 
velops and employs. Though these may find their more 
complete and dramatic application in the abnormal life, 
they find a richer and a more "educational" illustration 
in the normal types of behaviour and composition. This 
is notably true of the concept of the subconscious, 
which if rightly conceived rounds out the comprehen- 
sion of total behaviour and personality in general sig- 
nificance as well as in light of specific mechanisms. 
It applies to the emphasis upon the deeper life of the 
emotions and instincts, tracing their importance in the 
analysis of character, in the composition of motives, as 
well as in the genesis of the neuroses; it makes plain 
how indispensable is a healthy emotional life in the 
maintenance of a proper mental hygiene. It applies to 
the concept of arrested development, which on the one 
side sets forth the nature of the defect, of all grades of 
feeble-mindedness and moral incapacity, and on the 
other traces similar limitations in the subnormals, who 
must make what adjustment they can to the social en- 
vironment in which their lives fall. It applies in a dif- 
ferent sense to the superior group, often complicated by 
special abilities and special liabilities. It applies to the 
social abnormal phenomena, the frailties of mob action, 
the suggestibility of contagion, the lowering of the level 
of response under prejudice and sentiment, as well 
as to the appeal to the social consciousness for co- 
operative values. It applies peculiarly to the concepts 
underlying the delineation of character types, which in VIII 
INTRODUCTION 
some aspects follow the clue of their abnormal and 
extreme expressions. In all these relations the concepts 
of Abnormal Psychology take the lead and move away 
from the special problems of Psychiatry. It is pre- 
cisely these basic views that bear intimately upon the 
educative processes, and not only as protection against 
mental disaster, but as contributing to the insight into 
everyday character-traits and ordinary motives of 
behaviour. 
The two disciplines, Psychiatry and Abnormal Psy- 
chology, proceed with large overlapping interests and 
the fullest mutual appreciation. They converge upon 
the problems of Mental Hygiene in which education has 
a profound stake. The fundamental purpose of this 
combined approach is to offer to education the benefits 
of the wisdom of the psychiatrist, the cumulative knowl- 
edge of the assets and liabilities inherent in the vicissi- 
tudes of abnormal mental functioning. For the same 
inherent traits which dispose the human mind to 
abnormal manifestations are equally responsible for the 
potencies that, when realized, develop into the rich 
achievements of a well matured personality. To direct 
the child to the completest expressions of its endowment 
requires an understanding of the dangers and distor- 
tions that are as fundamentally involved in its nature- 
set limitations, as are the standard and desirable mani- 
festations of the growing organism. 
From these several approaches there emerges a gen- 
eral principle which may be spoken of as the "neuro- 
logical" concept of behaviour. Behaviour thus becomes 
a matter of nerves. Naturally and properly, from the IX 
INTRODUCTION 
point of view of value for the social-moral life, be- 
haviour is a matter of morals, guided by reason. The 
goal of education is to make one a reasonable and moral 
being. It keeps steadily in mind the purpose to ration- 
alize conduct and socialize it, so as to make good and 
effective citizens. The two formulations are not incon- 
sistent; each is dominant within its proper domain. 
Yet the two must come to terms; and the claim of neu- 
rology must be fairly faced and freely accepted. With- 
out it the possibility of clash is imminent; and the 
danger of treating as moral defects what are far more 
truly neurological symptoms is a real one. An imper- 
fect view of the sources of behaviour is doubtless 
responsible for a good deal of the mistraining that 
invites moral crises, unfortunate emotional episodes, 
wrecked careers, and maladjusted individuals. It is 
the purpose of the movement to which Mr. Watts con- 
tributes, to prevent such disaster by a proper co-opera- 
tion of the diagnostic skill of the neurologist with the 
wisdom of the sympathetic moralist. 
In speaking of the "neurological" concept of beha- 
viour, it is plain that the term is used for convenience 
only; nor is it exact. As a fact we know far less of the 
detailed neural basis of behaviour, than we do of its 
psychological nature. It would be more accurate to 
refer to it as the "psycho-biological" concept of be- 
haviour. But the term "neurological" has become cur- 
rent and has the sufficient advantage that it refers 
definitely to a well-established neural basis of action. 
It keeps in mind that character-traits and behaviour- 
responses are matters of neural disposition, even though INTRODUCTION 
X 
we know little of the precise mechanisms which make 
the character-traits and behaviour-tendencies of a well- 
adjusted, normal, efficient, contented, individual differ- 
ent from the quite otherwise manifested traits and 
behaviour of a maladjusted, uncertainly poised, un- 
happy and futile personality: which makes one child a 
normal, tractable, average pupil, and the other a difficult, 
irregular, partly superior, yet generally uncertain prob- 
lem ; which in different application may make the differ- 
ence between success and failure. What applies to the 
larger problem applies to the details. In the wise inter- 
pretation of any and all traits and behaviour-responses 
with a view to guidance and direction, in adjusting the 
daily tasks and guiding the step-by-step unfoldment of 
the educative processes, the same principles are di- 
rective. 
In regard to the special phases of the problem to 
which Mr. Watts confines attention, brief comments 
will be sufficient. The first illustration of his thesis 
relates to the modification of the educative problem 
introduced by the fact that the pupil is reacting group- 
wise in a social environment; that his responses are 
affected from the outset and continuously by the often 
neglected consideration that he is under social observa- 
tion, and reacts in or with a group. Whether this com- 
plication is desirable or otherwise, need hardly be con- 
sidered, since it is imposed by necessity and the educa- 
tive processes must be adjusted to this condition. Yet 
the herding of children is clearly undesirable. To 
utilize the advantages and escape the disadvantages of 
the social milieu of the schoolroom requires tact and INTRODUCTION 
XI 
discernment. The teacher becomes "a high-minded 
crowd leader." He justifies this function because he 
utilizes the susceptibility of the young to the technique 
of prestige, suggestion, and imitation to "elevate and 
energize." He appreciates that in so doing he is in so 
far postponing or laying aside the far more valuable 
method of response by independent reason. Both 
methods are justified; for the susceptibility to prompt 
sympathy and social suggestion is needed for many 
forms of co-operation; moreover, the former is often 
the more economical method of producing social cohe- 
sion and of shaping the individual to his part in the 
process. It works more directly and promptly than the 
slower technique of conviction which in some measure 
and increasingly plays its part. The use of the prestige- 
suggestion-imitation technique in the political field is 
widespread and illustrative, likewise in the inculcation 
of good manners and a social sense of decorum. Fur- 
thermore, there is but one time to fix habits, and that is 
while one is young; and the fixation by prestige and 
example, partly aided by reflection, works best for that 
period. That the tendency to be overinfluenced by 
crowd suggestion to the detriment of personality has 
its abnormal expression serves to re-enforce its signifi- 
cance as an educational procedure. While this appli- 
cation is in its central tendency social, it receives a 
sidelight from the "abnormal" approach. 
For the application to the analysis of personality, the 
status of the earlier, deeper, subconscious forms of 
response is the guiding clue. The Freudian position 
must be met and a definite conclusion reached. For XII 
INTRODUCTION 
Mr. Watts, as for most psychologists who retain a sense 
of proportion, the leading ideas of the Freudian system 
are sound and fruitful, while the extreme views and 
many of the details and implications are equally un- 
scientific and unsupported. The emphasis upon the 
significance of the early experiences of childhood is a 
wholesome educational warning. Still more important 
is the recognition that the child begins life in a state 
of psychical anarchy, out of which the guidance of 
experience must gradually form a consistent person- 
ality. The nature of this unorganized "complex" of 
impulses appears in the abnormal varieties of behaviour 
to which it leads; for this the term "complex" has been 
reserved in a special sense. Child behaviour conforms 
to the type in which these "sub-self" expressions domi- 
nate ; they are all strongly anchored to instinctive 
tendencies; they operate on the emotional, sub-conscious, 
only partially reflective plane. Out of them the life of 
reflection, the habit of reasoned action, is to be slowly 
developed. The educational bearing is manifest. On 
the one side, all desirable modes of behaviour must be 
linked to strong instincts; learn by doing, and give to 
doing a sufficient motive in an instinctive-emotional 
appeal. On the other side, the utilization of this driving 
force, from which all actions-whether blessings or the 
reverse flow-requires "sublimation," which is but a 
Freudian name for a process well enough recognized in 
older days. It is nothing more or less than finding a 
"moral equivalent" for strong impulses, an outlet de- 
sirable to replace an outlet natural but undesirable. For 
outlets must be found, and streams of impulse dammed INTRODUCTION 
XIII 
make for later trouble. "The human soul is a battle- 
field upon which the irrational impulses of the person- 
ality strive with the rational and ethical interests of the 
personality for the supremacy. The educator must 
justify his vocation by effectually assisting the latter 
forces to establish such a mastery that the conquered 
systems of desire will function not as rebels, but as 
willing citizens in the little kingdom of the mental life." 
The third application is to the problem of the defec- 
tive, introducing the concept of the subnormal and the 
unstable, both of which groups may find their represen- 
tatives in the schoolroom. But this consideration is but 
a partial factor in their importance. The lessons of 
defect and arrest-derived from the study of the ab- 
normal-bear directly upon the educational procedure. 
They have brought into prominence the individual 
factor out of which has developed-naturally re- 
enforced by many other practical considerations-the 
technique of Mental Tests. The conclusion that sub- 
normal individuals cease to progress at an early stage 
of development, and that the "mental age" represents 
the imposed terminus of the genetic process, is a mo- 
mentous one for education and for psychology alike. 
It indicates how inevitably tasks must be adjusted to 
capacity, and how the nature-set limitations must be 
recognized. It directs attention to the mental level of 
different orders of learning. It makes clear that work- 
ing upon and with concrete material is a simpler order 
of mental functioning than working with the symbols 
of ideas known as words. It directs attention to the 
complex factors compositely represented in what we XIV 
INTRODUCTION 
call for convenience efficiency. From a different angle, 
allied considerations have brought forward the difficult 
cases of personality in which defect is less conspicuous 
than distortion and perversion and resistances to normal 
impulses. Yet again it has made clear that the slower 
mental development of defectives, with their lower 
barriers, or stages of arrest, makes possible analysis of 
minute steps in the educative process, that are too 
hurried and too condensed for ready observation as 
they take their rapid course in the normally maturing 
and the bright child. It provides a slowed down genetic 
"film" of moving pictures showing relations escaping 
ordinary observation. In these and other aspects, the 
study of the abnormal contributes directly and indirectly 
to the insight that must guide the teacher's course and 
policy. 
Mr. Watts' plan includes a selected group ot lus- 
trations, each contributing a distinctive feature to the 
total impression. These brief lessons in Abnormal 
Psychology carry their point and deliver their educa- 
tional message. They constitute a pioneer venture in 
what promises to be a richly settled domain. 
Joseph Jastrow PREFACE TO THE THIRD 
EDITION 
The present edition has been improved by the 
insertion, at the end of Chapter II, of particulars of 
the Celebration Movement, and by a fuller discussion 
in Chapter IV of Intelligence Tests. A slight re- 
arrangement of some of the subject matter has been 
effected, and the opportunity taken to correct several 
minor faults. 
It is hoped that the American teacher, who, no 
doubt, has begun to tire of the extravagant claims of 
many psychologists to the possession of secrets about 
human nature unguessed at by the vulgar, will find this 
book a sober account of some modern developments. 
The test of novel doctrine must always be : Does it help 
us to understand better the things worth understanding? 
Here we have tried to show that abnormal psychology, 
which deals with the irrational rather than the rational, 
the unconscious rather than the conscious, and the 
defective rather than the sound and whole, has in defi- 
nite ways helped us to see some of the problems of 
education in a clearer light. 
London 
F. W. CONTENTS 
PAGE 
Introduction 
Preface to the Third Edition xv 
CHAPTER 
I. The Scope of Abnormal Psychology . i 
§ i. The Pre-scientific View of Mental 
Abnormality i 
Normal and abnormal-Historical sketch- 
Witch burning-The era of imprisonment 
-Modern curative methods 
§ 2. The Biological Standpoint . . 7 
The biological view-The psychological 
approach-Psychology, experimental and 
abnormal-Normal and abnormal-The 
nature of abnormality-A biological defi- 
nition-Crowd psychology-Ethical defi- 
nitions-The defective mind-Scope of 
abnormal psychology 
II. The Crowd at School: Its Control 
and Education 19 
§ 1. The Mob-mind and the Group- 
mind19 
Mob-mind and group-mind-Class man- 
agement-The mob-mind-The irrational- 
ity of the crowd-A definition of "crowd" 
-Characteristics of the crowd-mind- 
Mob, group, community 
XVII XVIII 
CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
§ 2. Suggestibility, Sympathy and Imi- 
tation-(the Herd Instinct) . 26 
Suggestibility, sympathy, imitation-The 
threefold aspect of mind-The spread of 
sympathy-McDougall's view of sympathy 
-Instinct and intelligence-The class, a 
group not a mob-Crowd management- 
Suggestibility and intelligence-Berillon's 
view of suggestibility-McDougall's view 
of suggestibility-Prestige suggestion 
§ 3. Crowd-Management .... 39 
Early work in education-Habit forma- 
tion-Right and wrong suggestion-Re- 
inforced tendencies-The art of suggestion 
-The danger of indiscriminate publicity 
-The art of propaganda-Prestige sug- 
gestion-The teacher as crowd leader- 
Greek patriotism-The power of music- 
Music in the school-Commemoration 
days-The right use of suggestion-At- 
tributes of the good teacher-The teacher's 
prestige-The importance of habit-Habit 
and health-"Why do the volts rise?"- 
Irritation and energy-Limits of sugges- 
tibility-The development of reason 
§ 4. Educational Applications ... 67 
School celebrations-The work of Dr. 
F. H. Hayward 
III. Psychopathology and the Develop- 
ment of Personality ... 75 
§ 1. The Reality of the Subconscious . 75 
Older views of subconsciousness-Modern 
views of the mind-The concept of "sub- 
consciousness"-Subconscious activity- 
Genius and the subconscious-The facts 
of hypnosis-Post-hypnotic suggestion- 
Determining tendencies in association- 
Examples of pre-determined association- 
Forms of memory CONTENTS 
XIX 
CHAPTEX PAGE 
§ 2. Mental Dissociation .... 89 
Multiple personality-Reactions of inter- 
est-Somnambulistic consciousness-Emo- 
tional interference-Correction and re- 
proof - Hypnotic "personalities" - The 
cause of multiple personality 
§ 3. The Cause of Mental Dissociation 98 
Psychasthenia and hysteria-Theories of 
Janet and Freud - The "complex" - 
"Complex" and "sentiment"-Tendency 
to rationalization-Post-hypnotic sugges- 
tion-Rationalization and the complexes 
-A method of sane self-criticism-Dis- 
cipline and self-discipline 
§ 4. Historical Resume 108 
Origins of modern psychotherapy-Char- 
cot's discoveries-Janet's theory of disin- 
tegration-Freud's new method-Cathar- 
sis and abstraction-Origins of psycho- 
analysis-Psychoanalysis and hypnotism- 
A Freudian analysis-The role of repres- 
sion-The "unconscious"-Freud's "com- 
promise" theory 
§ 5. Dreams and Their Significance . 120 
"Dream" theories-Freud's view of the 
dream-Condensation and displacement- 
"Unconscious" and "preconscious" - 
Jung's view of the unconscious-Sym- 
bolism in dreams-Importance of early 
childhood-Throng methods of discipline 
-A dream analysis-Regression-River's 
view of regression-The dream as a para- 
ble-Analysis by Jung's method 
§ 6. Psychoanalysis and "Word Asso- 
ciation" 134 
Word association - Transference - The 
word association method-An experiment 
in word association-An experiment-The 
secret of sanity - Sublimation - Early 
childish tendencies-Instinctive tendencies 
-Moral equivalents XX 
CONTENTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
IV. The Psychology of the Defective 
Mind: Its Influence upon 
Teaching Methods .... 147 
§ 1. The Psychological Treatment of 
Mental Defect 147 
The defective mind-Great French pio- 
neers-The psychological method-Seguin 
as psychologist 
§ 2. The Measurement of Defect . . 152 
Measuring mental defect-Types of de- 
fect-Standard measurement-Intellectual 
defect-Value of practical instruction- 
Differentiation of curricula-Specialized 
curricula-Intelligence tests-Origin of 
intelligence tests-Improvement of the 
Binet tests-Performance tests-Defects 
in the "improved" methods-The basis of 
intelligence tests-Specific ability tests- 
Defects in intelligence tests-Ability, gen- 
eral and specific-Intelligence and intellec- 
tual ability-Present position of tests 
§ 3. The Classification of Defectives . 170 
Types of defect-Defect as arrested devel- 
opment-Idiots, imbeciles, morons-Cri- 
teria of capacity-Obscured defect-The 
moral defective-Crystallized infancy-A 
hierarchy of ability 
§ 4. Historical Survey of Methods Em- 
ployed in Educating Defectives 180 
The savage of Aveyron-Hard's psycho- 
logical method-Speech training should 
begin early-Sublimation of tendencies- 
Psychic blindness-Sense training-Se- 
guin and his methods-Physical education 
-Development of bodily control-Sense 
development-Influence of music-Speech 
training-Individual occupations-'Learn- 
ing to write-Self-realization-Results of 
Seguin's work-The Montessori method- CHAPTER PAGE 
The play-way-Desire and cognition- 
Individual occupations-Limitations of 
sense training-The deaf and the blind- 
The value of the humanities-Importance 
of language training 
§ 5. The Emotional Defective . . . 207 
Emotional defect-Individual and com- 
munity-The importance of the home- 
Emotional instability-Mental age and de- 
linquency-Self-discipline-The task for 
the future 
Index , , 217 
CONTENTS 
XXI ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
AND EDUCATION 
CHAPTER I 
THE SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
§ 1. The Pre-Scientific View of Mental Abnormality 
It is our intention in this book to take up the study 
of some of the recent advances in abnormal psychology 
with the object of discovering how far they have signifi- 
cance for the teacher. A complete account of the subject 
must be sought elsewhere. Our method is selective. 
We have omitted to discuss many interesting topics that 
might make the thoroughgoing psychologist think the 
book more useful, and have preferred to deal with such 
matters only as would seem to affect the work of school 
and classroom. 
Abnormal psychology is the somewhat precocious off- 
spring of the recent happy union of medicine and 
general psychology, those two sciences which divide the 
task of providing a knowledge of the ways and means 
whereby humanity may continue to keep itself sound in 
body and sane in mind. According to the view of 
many, the scope of the psychology of the abnormal 
should be limited merely to the investigation of the 
phenomena of psychopathology. Now, it is seriously 
to be questioned whether this limited view of the scope 
1 2 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
of the subject is the most profitable one. But it is 
beyond doubt that the deliberate and systematic study 
of the subject, however delimited, for the sake of the 
light it may throw upon the functioning of the normal 
mind, is quite a modem undertaking. A few brief 
remarks will serve to make this point clear. 
The conception of the study of the abnormal as an 
aid to the understanding of the normal was naturally 
impossible while the obvious and more startling differ- 
ences between normal and abnormal minds obscured 
their fundamental similarities; indeed, as long as the 
abnormal was thought to comprise factors at once 
mysteriously incomprehensible and unique, so long was 
the serious and disinterested study of the subject held 
to be a matter suitable merely for the occupation of the 
more eccentrically minded among philosophers, littera- 
teurs, and doctors. It is noteworthy, therefore, that all 
the terms used in the pre-scientific period to denote 
abnormal qualities and conditions of mind were terms 
which stressed the facts of difference between the ab- 
normal and the normal, and the appearance in English 
of the word "ab-normal" itself, indicating some rela- 
tion at least with the normal, between the years 1830 
and 1840, may well seem to herald in its origin and 
first use a more comprehensive view and a treatment of 
mental anomalies more in accordance with the dictates 
of common sense.1 
1 In the Dictionary of Medicine compiled by Hoblyn in 1835, the 
term "abnormal" does not appear, but a variant of the term, namely, 
"anormal," makes its maiden appearance in print instead. THE PRE-SCIENTIFIC VIEW 
3 
Until almost as late as our own times, it was the 
universal custom to explain unusual types of mind 
among men and women by reference to the agency of 
gods or of demons, just as the manifestations under 
notice were of a benevolent or a malevolent character. 
The sacred writings of many peoples may be made to 
yield abundant examples of this method of explanation. 
The Jews, for example, depicted King Saul in his 
periods of ungoverned fury as the prey of an alien and 
malignant spirit, and King Nebuchadnezzar during his 
seven years of madness as a victim of the vengeance of 
a god whom he refused to acknowledge. The Greeks, 
on the same principle, ascribed the insanity of Ajax and 
Orestes, of Lycurgus and Cambyses, either to the spleen 
or to the arbitrary judgment of the offended gods. The 
Buddhist writings, the Vedas and the Brahminical law 
books, also abound in examples of similar unhappy 
visitations of the doom of the supernatural powers upon 
the children of men. Indeed, we need go no farther 
than our own European history to find comparatively 
recent examples, as notably in the cases of Joan of Arc 
and Anne Askew, in the causation of whose abnormal- 
mindedness friends detected the finger of God and 
enemies that of Satan. 
In consequence of the prevalence of such beliefs 
which were well-nigh universally held for many cen- 
turies, very little progress took place in the treatment 
and cure of abnormal-mindedness, and beyond the usual 
priestly attempts at exorcism, nothing disturbed the 
orthodox procedure-which was to deify, illtreat, or 4 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
destroy, according to fashion or prejudice, those whom 
it pleased men to regard as mad. 
It is true that at one period of history there were 
indubitable signs of the dawn of an era of intelligent 
methods of treatment for the more socially obnoxious 
classes of the abnormal as represented, for example, by 
the madman and the lunatic. The later Greeks and the 
wiser among the Romans came to regard the abnor- 
mally-minded person as deserving of care and pity, 
rather than of contempt and ostracism. An attempt at 
systematic attention, and a method of dieting which was 
unquestionably an improvement on the older method 
of "cure" by hellebore, was introduced, but it was not 
allowed to develop to any extent, for after the break-up 
of the Roman Empire in the west Christendom became 
overshadowed by the black clouds of superstition, and, as 
far as mental abnormality was concerned, for a thousand 
years ignorance and credulity reigned supreme. Some- 
times, in moments of faith and enthusiasm, saints from 
among the abnormal were created and adored, but 
oftener, in the longer intervals of suspicion and distrust, 
the darker passions burst through into expression and 
were responsible for the untimely death in Europe alone 
of thousands of unhappily eccentric women, wrho were 
burned or otherwise put to death as witches. 
From 1645 to 1647 a witch-finder named Matthew 
Hopkins succeeded in getting a hundred and twenty 
women burned as witches in Essex, Norfolk, and Suf- 
folk. Lecky, in his history of Rationalism in Europe, 
says, in the course of a survey of the age of superstition, THE PRE-SCIENTIFIC VIEW 
5 
"At Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition, four hundred 
persons perished for sorcery at a single execution, and 
fifty at Douay in a single year. Remy, a judge of 
Nancy, put to death eight hundred witches in sixteen 
years. The executions which took place at Paris were, 
in the words of an old writer, 'almost infinite.' In 
Flanders, the persecution of witches raged throughout 
the whole of the sixteenth and the greater part of the 
seventeenth century, and every variety of torture was 
employed in detecting the criminals. In Italy, a thou- 
sand persons were executed in a single year in the 
province of Como; and in other parts of the country 
the severity of the Inquisitors at last created an absolute 
rebellion. The same scenes were enacted in the wild 
valleys of Switzerland and of Savoy. In Geneva, which 
was then ruled by a bishop, five hundred alleged witches 
were executed in three months." 
In England, the laws which penalized "witchcraft" 
were repealed in 1736, but even when the burning of 
abnormally-minded women as witches became the ex- 
ceptional rather than the general practice throughout 
Christendom, those persons who were unfortunate 
enough to lose their reason, or suffered conspicuously 
from marked mental disturbance or derangement, were 
shut away from any form of care, and imprisoned 
with the vilest of criminals in the dark and filthy dun- 
geons characteristic of the older times, to be kept there 
like dangerously wild animals and loaded with chains. 
In 1815 the unhappily celebrated lunatic Norris was 
seen by many members of Parliament at the Bethlem 6 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
Hospital, in London-where he languished in all for 
eighteen years-with a collar of iron on his neck, a 
belt of iron about his body, and fetters of iron on his 
hands and feet. 
Burdett, in his Hospitals and Asylums of the World, 
wrote in 1891 as follows : "It is very difficult, no doubt, 
for the present generation to realize that less than forty 
years ago the treatment of the insane in this country 
[England] was horrible in many respects, and previous 
to that time was so brutal and inhuman as to make us 
hesitate to recall the actual facts." 
Fortunately, by the end of the eighteenth century a 
better method of treatment was beginning to make its 
effects felt. Pinel and Esquirol in France, and Con- 
nelly of Hanwell in England, were earning well-merited 
fame as the champions of a more humane and altogether 
wiser method of treatment. It was Pinel who struck 
off the fetters of his imbecile patients and set them to 
work in freedom in the fields. He is the representative 
forerunner of the modern psychiatrist, and it is in his 
day and no earlier that we must look for the beginnings 
of the science of Abnormal Psychology.2 
2 Professor George Roberston. writes to me with respect to the 
innovations of Pinel: 
"The work of Pinel at the Salpetriere in striking off the chains 
of the insane was not an isolated act, on his part, of humanity to 
the insane nor a sudden resolve. It was the result of several 
years of humane endeavour in the private asylum of Dr. Bel- 
hornrne as is indicated by several pamphlets he wrote, so early 
as 1787. The government of France, moreover, had decided as 
the result of several Commissions of Enquiry and Reports to 
institute Reforms, and they selected as their agent for this par- THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 
7 
In the first edition this work of Pinel was wrongly at- 
tributed to Spanish influence, and I gladly accept correc- 
tion. 
§ 2. The Biological Standpoint 
It should not be forgotten, however, the nineteenth- 
century biologist played a not unimportant part in the 
genesis of the new science; it was he who dragged into 
the light of investigation those organic anomalies and 
abortions which had been relegated by the mediaeval 
philosophers and doctors into the limbo of obscurity, 
and it was he who was able to point to the stranger fac- 
tors which were operating in the organic world as pro- 
viding valuable clues to the nature of the normal be- 
haviour, and to the comprehension of the methods of 
the development of life in general. With the accept- 
ance of the Darwinian hypothesis in biology, the 
abnormal was at once seen to be no more than the nor- 
mal, functioning in an accidental or exaggerated form, 
or in unusually favourable or unfavourable circum- 
stances. 
ticular purpose, Pinel. This resolve and this appointment, how- 
ever, did not prevent the government from obstructing him when 
he instituted his reforms. 
"According to Esquirol, the favourite pupil of Pinel who came 
from the same part of the country and who succeeded him, the 
first germs of the humane idea are to be attributed to the work 
of Howard in prisons, in which at that date many of the insane 
were confined. There was, of course, a movement throughout the 
whole world in the direction of freedom and humanity. In the 
year 1792 it was decided to found The Retreat at York. It 
however was not opened till four years afterward. The week 
before The Retreat at York was founded the Royal Asylum at 
Morningside was also founded." 8 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
Thus we arrive at the modern biological conception 
that mental abnormalities are not unique, unclassifiable, 
and without useful significance, but that rather they are 
the expressions of normal tendencies which are more 
marked than usual, and which may, therefore, if suit- 
ably examined, throw much light upon the essential 
nature of the normal itself. 
The fruits of this conception first came to maturity 
in the physiological field. The causes of mental aber- 
rations were sought in congenitally faulty or damaged 
brain structure, and by a comparison, on the one hand, 
of the psychical effects of the extirpation of different 
areas of the brain substance, or artificial stimulation of 
the brain by the administration of drugs and other 
agents with the study on the other of cerebral degenera- 
tion and its effects upon behaviour, a satisfactory local- 
ization of the functions of the mind in the cerebral 
hemispheres was finally achieved, and the attempt to 
find physiological correlates for all psychical processes 
was justified as a sound principle of research. It can- 
not be said, however, that the expectations which were 
aroused by the brilliant discoveries of Munk,3 Ferrier,4 
Goltz,5 and others in this sphere have altogether been 
fulfilled in the commonly accepted results which stand 
today. For many mental functions no physiological 
concomitants at all have as yet been found such as will 
3 Ueber die Functionen der Grosshirnrinde, Berlin, 1881. 
4 The Functions of the Brain, London, 1886. The Croonian 
Lectures on Cerebral Disease, 1890. 
8 Beitrage 2ur Lehre von den Functionen der Nervencentren des 
Froches, Berlin, 1869. THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 
9 
help us to understand the unique quality of the mani- 
fold forms of insanity. Consequently, the need for an 
alternative method of approach has been urgently felt 
by some investigators, and its direction has been clearly 
indicated through the researches of Charcot, Janet, 
Breuer, Freud, Jung, Morton, Prince, and Rivers. 
It may be interesting and helpful at this stage to 
attempt a brief comparison between Abnormal Psy- 
chology and another vigorous offspring of the same 
parent, Experimental Psychology, accepting them in 
the ordinary but of course erroneous sense as distinct 
sciences. Experimental Psychology follows generally 
the method of the older physical sciences, and depends 
largely upon the artificial isolation under suitable and 
pre-arranged conditions of those factors which it in- 
tends quantitatively or qualitatively to study, relying 
upon repetition and variation of the conditions of the 
experiment to provide adequate means for the exhaus- 
tive study of the problems which may arise. In the 
province of Abnormal Psychology, nature has already, 
by the intensification of certain psychic factors, prac- 
tically isolated, under the most favourable conditions, 
interesting material for study, or, as in the total or 
partial omission of mental factors, has furnished suffi- 
cient data to enable the student to form trustworthy 
estimates of their normal nature and functions without 
resort to the artifices of experiment. It may thus be 
said, then, that the experimental psychologist has to 
find the data which the abnormal psychologist has al- 
ready to hand. The former may study, for example, 10 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
the phenomena of memory by artificially introducing 
disturbances of function-by employing such means as 
the administration of drugs, or by hypnosis; while the 
latter may devote his attention to those pathological 
forms of memory represented in cases of amnesia and 
aphasia. Again, the experimental psychologist may 
study the phenomena of belief by means of skilful 
manipulation and arrangement of experiments in testi- 
mony and suggestibility, while the abnormal psycholo- 
gist, with the same object in view, may take up the 
investigation of delusions and obsessions, of illusions 
and hallucinations. As time progresses, however, the 
scope of the two branches of general psychology must 
inevitably and to a very great extent overlap. Up to 
the present, the effect of experimental psychology upon 
the methods of abnormal psychology may be seen in 
the growing desire for artificial variation of the data 
of study with a view to the more thorough scrutiny of 
the theories which have been formulated-in many 
cases only too lightly-about the nature of the abnor- 
malities involved, while the influence of the latter 
branch of psychology upon the former may be seen in 
the increasing transference of the interest of the ex- 
perimenter from the investigation of matters of 
sensory discrimination, which have been proved to have 
very little-if any-value as indicating the general 
trend and efficiency of the mind, to the investigation of 
the facts of the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic life 
of man. 
From what has already been said, it may be gathered THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 
11 
by the reader that the normal may easily be separated 
off from the abnormal in practical work: this is not so. 
The delimitation of the one from the other follows 
purely arbitrary lines, and these have only been laid 
down with any attempt at scientific precision during the 
past few decades.6 A graphical representation of men's 
mental "efficiency," based on the examination of large 
random groups of examples, would show us probably 
the characteristic bell-shaped frequency curve, with a 
huge number of cases representing the normal heaped 
about the dome and upper slopes of the curve, and a 
lesser number of doubtful interpretation shading off on 
each side by imperceptible gradations into the compara- 
tively few cases of the definitely abnormal. 
Before such curves could be even roughly inter- 
preted an arbitrary definition of the nature of abnor- 
mality would have to be chosen. Even today it cannot 
be said that any single definition is free from defect, 
and as the subject becomes more <md more thoroughly 
investigated, it will be found that the criteria of ab- 
normality are almost infinitely more elusive than they 
were at first thought to be. For example, abnormal 
mental deficiency was treated at first as though it were 
merely a matter of defective intellect, and therefore 
discoverable by intelligence tests, but we are now be- 
ginning to see that the "reason" is only one of several 
factors which may be faulty enough to cause the kind 
6 It may perhaps be said that to the all-wise inquirer there will 
never be anything abnormal, but to the finite mind the distinction 
is worth while as a working principle. 12 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
of abnormality which we designate by the term "feeble- 
mindedness." 
It may be said, however, that the conceptions of 
scientific biology, by supplying a new criterion, made 
the approach to a simple and satisfactory definition pos- 
sible. When it was seen that all life was teleological in 
nature, then all processes which tended to serve the 
survival needs of the organism as one of a species could 
be accepted as normal processes, while those tendencies 
which were observed to have an opposite effect could be 
taken as abnormal. It is not enough, as is so often 
done, to take merely the average or the usual as the 
normal, and the unusual or the exceptional as the ab- 
normal. In many periods of history, and among many 
peoples, practices were followed almost universally 
which we must nevertheless declare to be the expression 
of abnormal mentality. Examples of such practices 
may be found in the pages of Westermarck's Origin 
and Development of the Moral Ideas. In the field of 
ethics and social psychology these anomalies of social 
life should provide for the investigator what the or- 
ganic anomaly provides for the biologist and the 
physiologist, an invaluable clue to the nature of normal 
living. 
Having accepted the biological point of view, the 
reader will understand why some writers do not regard 
the science of Abnormal Psychology as limited to the 
study of psychopathology. The researches of Janet, 
Freud, Kraepelin, Jung, Rivers and others, while com- 
prising the most interesting and brilliant contributions THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 
13 
to our youthful science, do not completely exhaust its 
possibilities, or completely deal with all its aspects. 
The scope of the subject is much wider, and some 
would include in it the investigation of the subnormal, 
including a study of the idiot, the imbecile, and the 
feeble-minded, with the addition, possibly, of some 
aspects of the supernormal, as illustrated, for example, 
in the data provided by religious mysticism and 
thought-transference. Moreover, the phenomena dis- 
played in the behaviour of the mob-mind as distin- 
guished from that of the group-mind may be justifiably 
regarded, perhaps, as data suitable for the attention of 
the student of abnormal processes of mind. 
With regard to the latter point, Trotter, in his re- 
cently published book on The Instincts of the Herd in 
Peace and War, holds, in opposition to earlier writers, 
that the peculiarities of conduct which men display 
while participating in the activities of a crowd are quite 
normal in the biological sense, although they may be 
very different from the ordinary everyday behaviour of 
the separate individual members of whom the crowd is 
composed. The instinct of gregariousness, says Trot- 
ter, is sufficient to account for all that differentiates 
man as an individual from man as one of an active 
crowd. But while Trotter is quite right in protesting 
against the treatment of the qualities of the crowd- 
mind as abnormal in the sense which Le Bon 7 intends 
when he says of the crowd that "from the mere fact 
of their being assembled, there result certain new char- 
7 Le Bon, The Psychology of Crowds, London, 1903.  SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
14 
acteristics which are added to the racial characteristics," 
yet it is obvious that there may be serious derangement 
of the social mind, as there may be of the individual 
mind, and that such derangements do not serve the 
survival needs of the organism (whether individual or 
social) as one of a species in any real or proper sense. 
The more extravagant manifestations of uncontrolled 
public anxiety, hope, fear, or suspicion, expressed, for 
example, in such wild rumours as that about the legend- 
ary Russian army which nearly all of us believed to be 
passing through England en route for France in the 
autumn of 1914, in the "well-authenticated" tales 
during war-time of victories and defeats which have 
never occurred, in the slanders which are always on 
the wing regarding personages of exalted rank, in the 
more extreme fluctuations of the values of stocks and 
shares, and in sudden panics which arise at moments 
of both real and also apparent danger-surely all such 
phenomena as these are abnormal expressions of mind. 
It is difficult to discover a survival value in them, and 
they cannot be fully explained by the single normal 
factor of gregariousness. We shall therefore be 
obliged to admit that crowd psychology, on such 
grounds alone, is a not unimportant branch of the 
science of abnormal psychology, and accordingly give 
it due attention. 
By way of digression, another view of what consti- 
tutes the normal when applied to conduct may be men- 
tioned, since it is very widely held, and expresses well 
the popular point of view. It stands for the attempt to THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 
15 
classify psychological facts in terms of ethics. Thus 
McDougall, in his classic Social Psychology, suggests 
that the normal type of action among human beings is 
irrational action, and states that moral and rational 
action is abnormal. This recalls the famous distinction 
of Huxley between humarumorality and cosmic moral- 
ity, and the same fallacy underlies both attempts at 
distinction. Cosmic morality and human morality can- 
not satisfactorily be placed in separate categories, and 
difference of category cannot psychologically be claimed 
for rational moral action and irrational immoral action, 
for both may be the expression of the same biologically 
normal tendency. It is normal on the part of the im- 
perfectly developed child to prefer, in the cosmic man- 
ner, present satisfaction to future and more cultured 
enjoyment, but it is certainly not abnormal for the 
mature philosopher to take the opposite point of 
view. 
We now come to the question of the inclusion or 
exclusion of the subnormal as a branch of the abnor- 
mal. It is not difficult to arrive at a conclusion, for 
although at first sight it might be said that in the case 
of marked defect of intelligence or of sensory experi- 
ence there may be left practically nothing of a psychical 
nature worthy of attention-nothing abnormal, in ef- 
fect, to study-yet it is certain that the absence of a 
class of psychic functions, as, for example, vision in 
the case of the blind, and hearing in the case of the 
deaf, or of a knowledge of the relations of numbers in 
the case of the idiot, does without doubt influence the 16 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
functioning of the remaining factors with which each 
works in close association in the normal mind. 
The factors left over present us, in fact, with natu- 
rally isolated data for study. In normal experience, for 
example, what we call space, and suppose to be the re- 
sult of mental reaction to visual presentation, is in 
reality a fusion of the experience of sight, touch, and 
of other senses which it is very difficult to dissociate for 
the purposes of experiment. But there are individuals 
who are abnormal in this respect when compared to 
those whose senses are biologically complete. We may 
learn much, therefore, about the nature and possibilities 
of the development of our system of touch-space from 
the blind, and much about our system of visual-space 
from the deaf; just as from other data we may learn a 
great deal about the nature of the hearing faculty and 
its effect upon general mental efficiency from a con- 
sideration of the mental difference between the deaf 
and the blind, and from the same consideration much 
about the nature of the visual faculty and its effect 
upon the general efficiency of the mind. Similarly in 
watching the defective intellect at work we may see 
something of what happens in the normal mind but at 
a more halting and hesitating rate of movement. 
It is difficult to say how far supernormal manifesta- 
tions of consciousness should claim the attention of the 
abnormal psychologist. It is certainly his business, in 
seeking to discover the true limits of the normal, to 
examine patiently the experiences of mystics, the phe- 
nomena of religious conversion, of telepathy, of hyper- THE BIOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 
aesthesia, and of the stranger types of control of bodily 
events by psychical processes, but many of these mani- 
festations may indicate the presence of qualities of 
definite survival value, and therefore in the future come 
to be accepted as thoroughly normal.8 
To conclude our short discussion. We may consider 
Abnormal Psychology to be the science which deals 
with those marked aberrations of the human mind, 
whether individual or social, and whether temporary or 
permanent, which do not make for well-being. It 
gathers and investigates all the possible cases of varia- 
tions of excess or of defect in sensory and perceptual 
experience, variations of excess or of defect in atten- 
tion and feeling, in memory and in speech; it studies 
the psychic effects of hypnosis, intoxication, and the 
use of drugs; it undertakes investigation into the ma- 
ture of hysteria, somnambulism, the neuroses, and 
dreams; it observes and inquires into the nature of 
idiocy, imbecility, and insanity, the latter including 
dementia and depression, hallucinations, delusions, and 
obsessed states of mind. 
As a working hypothesis, it is doubtful if the science 
will be able to discard the old view of the interdepend- 
ence of a body and a mind which act and react upon 
each other, but if it is faced with the inevitable and has 
to do so, then it will still be obliged to cling to some 
form of psychophysical parallelism which allows the 
concept of psychical causation to be held, for it is one 
17 
8 There is implied here the view that genius is but a heightened 
and, perhaps, specialized expression of ability. 18 
SCOPE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY 
of the results of the study of abnormal phenomena that 
the relation of cause and effect has been found to hold 
in the realm of the psychical as it has been found to 
hold in the realm of the physical. One difference be- 
tween modern abnormal psychology and the psychology 
which preceded it lies in the fact that today the wis- 
dom and advantage of assuming the possibility of psy- 
chic causation are more and more becoming a matter 
of common notice. We may say with the physiologist 
that an hallucination, for example, is due to the chronic 
irritation of a sensory tract in the brain substance, but 
in doing so we have not accounted in psychical terms 
for the form which the hallucination has assumed, nor 
have we explained why it should have assumed that 
particular form and no other; only a tactful research 
into the patient's past life and present difficulties will 
lay bare the predisposing conditions which will enable 
us to understand the form and the significance of the 
symptoms which constitute the hallucination.9 
9 The reader is referred to Prof. McDougall's Body and Mind, 
Cambridge, 1912, for a fuller treatment of the relation of the 
mental to the physical. CHAPTER II 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL: ITS CONTROL AND 
EDUCATION 
§ 1. The Mob-Mind and the Group-Mind 
The young teacher, fresh from the eager atmos- 
phere of the training college, who for the first time 
confronts alone the children for whose school educa- 
tion he has been made responsible, is apt to feel that 
he is in the strange and perplexing presence of a some- 
thing unique of human power and quality about which 
he has heard nothing or very little in the many psy- 
chology lectures prepared for him in anticipation of his 
life's career. He has, of course, learnt much about the 
individual nature of children, and may be able to form 
a tolerably good estimate of how much effort and at- 
tainment he ought to expect from each of his pupils 
under ordinary conditions of work, but once launched 
upon his full career as a teacher, he soon realizes with 
something of a shock of disappointment that, at first, 
ordinary conditions of work are very difficult to secure, 
and that the methods which he has so carefully schooled 
himself to employ for appealing to and reasoning with 
the individual child do not answer at all effectively or 
consistently when employed upon the child as one of a 
class. Consequently he is nonplussed, and in the ma- 
19 THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
20 
jority of cases loses his normal optimism, and so comes 
in time to regard his duties as those of an educational 
drill-sergeant, forced to make the best of a difficult job, 
and to adopt methods and do things which he cannot 
altogether justify to himself by the approved standards 
of the training college. 
He discovers, moreover, upon many occasions, that 
his scholars do not manifest that heterogeneity of be- 
haviour, that variety of mood and activity, which one 
would perhaps naturally expect from a number of di- 
versely gifted and differently reared children; there is 
often revealed in their behaviour, rather, an astonishing 
unanimity of will, or of ideas, or of emotion, which is 
most disquieting to him, and it is in his endeavour to 
understand the phenomena thus exhibited that he feels 
that he is "up against" something which was not ade- 
quately dealt with, if indeed mentioned at all, in the 
period of his preparatory training; he has, in fact, 
begun to experience the peculiarities of human conduct 
as it is expressed, not in the behaviour of single and 
isolated individuals, but in that of numbers of indi- 
viduals who are in active sympathy with one another. 
The explanation, then, of his initial non-success as 
a teacher often is that he is more or less ignorant of 
the elementary principles of the "psychology of 
crowds." He knows, well enough maybe, how to in- 
struct with success the individual child, but as regards 
understanding the nature of a group of children accus- 
tomed to being in one another's company, he is in the 
position of the woodland traveller, who, according to MOB-MIND AND GROUP-MIND 
21 
the paradox, "couldn't see the wood for the trees." The 
present-day teacher has, indeed, been trained to teach 
individuals, but under the conditions which are so 
widely prevalent in our schools he finds that before he 
can carry on with his task he must learn to control a 
crowd. For the indolent it is an easy passage of 
thought to the position that the sole duties of a teacher 
are concerned with the management of crowds; indeed, 
the word "discipline," to the average reader, has a 
meaning which shows how almost universal is this ten- 
dency on the part of the teacher who realizes the im- 
possibility of instructing the individual child according 
to "proper" method in the face of the distractions 
caused through the influences set going by the class 
crowd-mind; the tendency, that is, to take the course 
of interpreting his duties as those of an educational 
drill-sergeant. Nevertheless, the wrongness of extreme 
views need not prevent us from seeing wisdom in the 
mean position between them. Let us admit that a 
knowledge of crowd psychology will be of great as- 
sistance to the teacher; for class-teaching has come to 
stay. 
By the majority of writers upon the subject of the 
psychology of crowds, the characteristics displayed by 
persons who are actively occupied together have been 
assumed without question to be abnormal, and the con- 
siderations which have moved them to accept this con- 
clusion have been chiefly these, namely, that men in 
crowds display in their common behaviour an impul- 
siveness, a credulity, and an excessive suggestibility- 22 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
in fact, a decided though temporary mental inferiority 
-which is apparently foreign to their normal natures, 
and very difficult to account for (seeing that such char- 
acteristics cannot be said to subserve the higher needs 
of the individual or of the species), unless upon the 
assumption that men in crowds become abnormally- 
minded either through the loss of many of their normal 
characters or the development of others in a very much 
exaggerated form. Such writers have usually re- 
stricted their attention to that type of crowd which may 
fitly be called a mob. 
Le Bon1 has shown how crowds may be deluded by 
catchwords, and victimized by vivid verbal illustrations 
of thought; Sighele 2 has pointed out that an emotion 
may sweep through a crowd irresistibly, with a strength 
altogether disproportionate to its ordinary manifesta- 
tion in the normal life of people; Ruskin 3 has said of 
the crowd that "it thinks by infection, catching opinions 
like a cold"; Baldwin 4 regards the crowd as a tempo- 
rary, unorganized, and ineffective thing, and therefore 
of inferior survival value; Christensen 5 says that the 
mind of the crowd is determined by the lowest common 
factors of the minds that compose it; and Graham 
Wallas 6 writes, "One may see a few thousand men in 
a large hall reach a stage approaching genuine patho- 
1 The Crowd (English translation), London, 1903. 
2 La Foule Criminelle, Paris, 1901. 
8 Sesame and Lilies. 
4 The Individual and Society, Boston, 1911. 
6 Politics and Crowd Morality, London, 1915. 
6 Human Nature in Politics, London, 1908. MOB-MIND AND GROUP-MIND 
23 
logical exaltation in the hands of a practised speaker." 
We may add that in nearly every such case the speeches 
which produce these wonderful effects are seldom able 
to retain their power when reduced to expression in the 
calm medium of common print. 
It must be here remarked that, from the point of 
view of the psychologist, a crowd is not merely a 
chance assembly of persons who happen to be frequent- 
ing the same spot at the same time, just as we have 
them, for example, in the Strand at any hour of the 
day. We have more or less agreed to accept the term 
as covering such assemblies as have some common bond 
of thought or feeling or impulse among their individual 
members. Number is obviously a very important 
factor in the constitution of a crowd, but only in so far 
as it is able to inhibit individual thought. But when- 
ever conversation of a free-and-easy kind is impossible, 
and consequently action and reaction of thought non- 
existent, even if there are only two or three people 
gathered together we have a crowd. In the case of 
conversation we are able to state our own views, we 
can question and otherwise interrupt our interlocutor, 
but immerged in a crowd we are no longer able to direct 
the stream of thought or, in fact, influence its progress 
in any way; that privilege is in the possession of the 
crowd-leader, and often we feel impelled, in a manner 
which we are unable to understand, to give ourselves 
over entirely to his control. A family or a class in 
school may become crowd-minded for the single simple 
reason that the most powerful personality, the father 24 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
or the teacher, inhibits, by the wealth or the vigour of 
his own thought and general mental vitality, the free 
expression and mental activity of his subordinates, who 
accordingly find that they have no need of and are, 
moreover, prevented from, developing any initiative of 
their own. Thus is often explainable the comparative 
poverty of the attainments of the children of excep- 
tionally gifted parents, and because of the possibility 
of such a phenomenon in the classroom, some educa- 
tionists are inclined to emphasize rather the disadvan- 
tages than the advantages of the possession of a strong 
unbalanced personality.7 
In addition to the factor of number, however, there 
is present in the crowd an influence which tends posi- 
tively, as number negatively, to produce uniformity of 
mental states: the influence which creates the possibility 
of a common purpose existing among the unit members 
of the whole, so constituting them an integral crowd in 
the true psychological sense. It will be obvious, there- 
fore, that if unity of attitude, or of purpose, is the 
characteristic mark of the crowd-mind, then the term 
"crowd" must not be limited to the description of 
people who are gathered together in public meetings, 
since a common purpose may be produced by a common 
religious faith, a great national crisis, a common devo- 
tion to noble principles, or, indeed, a common interest 
in any sentiment or belief. Thus a crowd may be 
generated which consists of people who have never 
heard of one another, and who live, moreover, at great 
7 On this subject the eugenists would probably agree otherwise. MOB-MIND AND GROUP-MIND 
25 
distances from one another, yet who nevertheless may 
act in perfect unison and with the true characteristics 
of the crowd, as soon as an adequate stimulus presents 
itself. The traditions, the "Sittlichkeit," of a school 
have this effect upon the scholars within its walls, but 
many of the readers of a great newspaper are equally 
susceptible to crowd-suggestibility, though they never 
come together as do the scholars of a school; and often 
it will be found that such persons cannot bring them- 
selves to read another paper which takes for granted 
an attitude and a philosophy which are opposed to their 
their own. 
We may accordingly grade crowds by the equality 
of the bond which integrates them. A crowd in which 
crude passion is the unifying principle is a mob, but 
one which has for its basis of solidarity an intelligently 
accepted purpose is a group, while a group which owns 
allegiance to an ideal and works for its realization is a 
community. 
It is in the cause which tends to bring about this 
uniformity of passion, purpose or ideal among the unit 
members of a crowd that we must seek for the secret of 
the abnormalities indicated above, and closer investiga- 
tion will confirm the opinion of the earlier writers upon 
the subject, that in the manifestations of the crowd- 
mind there are no new characteristics brought into ex- 
istence, as Le Bon suggests, but rather, certain normal 
characteristics are on the one hand exaggerated, or, on 
the other hand, certain others are practically inhibited 
from functioning. 26 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
§ 2. Suggestibility, Sympathy and Imitation-(The 
Herd Instinct) 
Tarde,8 following Bagehot,9 who may be said to have 
originated the modern study of the behaviour of 
crowds in a systematic manner, mentions imitation as 
being "the fundamental fact of social life," and all 
modern writers agree, adding that suggestibility, too, 
is a very important factor in social conduct. A little 
thought will reveal an intimate connection between 
these two factors and the existence of a third and 
equally important factor of kindred nature with them. 
If we consider mind under the well-known threefold 
aspect of cognition, affection, and conation, we shall 
recognize that suggestibility is a predisposition on the 
cognitive side to the awareness of an adequate stimu- 
lus; it represents the receptive aspect of the mental 
process, and its expression is reflected in the crowd by 
a striking homogeneity of perceptions among the indi- 
vidual members. We shall find, too, that there is al- 
ways combined and correlated with this factor a ten- 
dency towards similarity of action, which is spoken of 
as the imitative tendency. But the affective elements 
of mental process are equally present whenever sugges- 
tibility and imitation are involved, and may become 
predominant in their turn. A similarity of feeling be- 
tween the members of a crowd goes by the name of 
sympathy, and sympathy is the third factor referred to 
above. We may, perhaps arbitrarily, introduce the idea 
8 Social Laws, New York, 1899. 
9 Physics and Politics, Int. Sci. Series (Vol. 2). THE HERD INSTINCT 
27 
of a time order, and speak of a suggestion awakening 
a response in the suggestible nature of the crowd-mind, 
and kindling there a sympathy which expresses itself 
in the adoption of the purpose or the attitude of the 
person who originated the aforesaid suggestion. But 
this manner of speaking implies a separation of the 
whole mental process into distinct part-processes and 
stages, whereas it is more helpful and truer to empha- 
size the oneness of the total mental state in order to 
grasp its essential nature. The fundamental fact is 
that a single mental disposition, viz., the gregarious in- 
stinct, simple or intellectualized, becomes dominant in 
the crowd-mind, and in that one disposition any of the 
three aspects mentioned above may, in accordance with 
the circumstances under which the crowd are gathered 
together, become more noticeably prominent than the 
others. We should, therefore, be careful to avoid that 
form of faculty psychology which would treat sugges- 
tibility, imitation, and sympathy as separate entities. 
While the classic writers upon the subject have men- 
tioned some or all of these elements as characteristic 
of the crowd, it cannot be said that they have made 
clear the ground of unity (the gregarious instinct) 
underlying the apparently separately functioning fac- 
tors. 
We have, as yet, no satisfactory theory to account 
for the way in which these contagious feelings take 
hold of the unit minds of the crowd. The successful 
theory, which is a sadly needed one, will, when it is 
formulated, explain the spread of sympathy in terms of 28 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
the mental life, and will show the relation of cause and 
effect to exist there as it does in the physical world; 
physiological concepts cannot adequately illustrate the 
psychic nature of the phenomenon. It will show how, 
and attempt to explain why, sympathy spreads like the 
ripples upon the surface of a pond into which a stone 
has been thrown, irresistibly sweeping onwards in all 
directions, except where the stubborn will of an indi- 
vidual places itself like a rock against its progress. 
The clue to the much-desired explanation would 
seem to lie in the fact that when we are with others 
wrho have the same feelings as ourselves we give them 
a fuller vent because we are more or less aware that 
no one will object to their exhibition; and they will be 
all the more pronounced when excited and re-excited 
through sympathy with our neighbours. 
McDougall uses the electrical analogy of induc- 
tion to illustrate the spread of sympathy through a 
group of people. He speaks of the "sympathetic induc- 
tion of the emotions" in this connection. The analogy 
is worth nothing as an explanatory principle, however, 
since electrical induction sets up lines of force in the 
theatre of its activity of such a nature as tend to pro- 
duce other currents, not of the same quality, but of an 
opposite quality compared to the inducing currents; 
that is, there is actually produced by induction a re- 
sistance to the change. 
McDougall points out that this "sympathetic induc- 
tion" of the emotions is displayed in the simplest but 
most unmistakable form by all gregarious animals. THE HERD INSTINCT 
29 
"Sympathy of this kind is the cement which binds ani- 
mal societies together, renders the actions of a group 
harmonious, and allows them to reap some of the prime 
advantages of social life in spite of a lack of intelli- 
gence." 10 By whatever method the spread of excite- 
ment takes place, it is beyond doubt that in the majority 
of cases it is rapid enough and powerful enough to 
break down effectually any opposing tendencies in 
the minds of the separate individuals of the group 
affected. 
Man, like the lower animals, finds it pleasant to share 
in the warm and generous emotions of companionship 
with his fellows and shudders at the chilly prospect of 
living in lasting psychic isolation from them. To 
achieve this intimacy which he so greatly desires, he is 
willing at times to sacrifice his own personal welfare 
and even his most cherished ideals, and to accept the 
burdens, anxieties, and beliefs of others. But this ten- 
dency must not be allowed to become the sole prin- 
ciple of human conduct, since the result will be fatal to 
the progress both of the individual and of the group 
of which he is a member. The evolution of the species 
shows an increasing tendency on the part of intelli- 
gence towards supremacy over the instinctive factors 
as guides to conduct. Intelligence is superior in most 
ways to mere instinct-if there is such a thing, indeed, 
as the latter-for in spite of the Bergsonian thesis that 
instinct is infallible and all-wise in its discernment and 
in its operations, we have the support of the investiga- 
10 Social Psychology, London, 1908. 30 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
tions of Dr. and Mrs. Peckham 11 and other students 
into the ways and life-purposes of insects when we say 
that instinct is but a rough-and-ready instrument which 
Nature has contrived to serve her ends until the con- 
struction of a better one should become possible.12 
This construction of a better one has been but slow and 
gradual, the instincts themselves showing gradations of 
quality and efficiency, and the task of replacing the 
more comparatively blind and blundering reactions has 
progressed but little, maybe. Up to the present the 
human reason represents nature's best effort and there 
is no doubt that slowly and surely it will supplant mere 
instinct in its claim to choose the goals of human en- 
deavour, and eventually develop into an instrument, the 
"imaginative reason," which will contrive to unite the 
qualities of both reason and instinct at their best. 
It is, therefore, clear that there are at present two 
distinct and frequently opposed tendencies to action 
present in the mind of every man by virtue of his varied 
heritage, represented by the tendency to suggestibility, 
sympathy, and imitation on the one hand, and by the 
tendency to reflection and deliberation on the other. 
Obviously, it is essential, in the present stage of evo- 
lution, that neither tendency should wholly obliterate 
the other. Too much thought hampers decision: too 
little favours impetuosity. A community in which 
11 The Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps, Wisconsin, 
1898. 
12 The reader who is interested in the nature of instinct should 
study the brilliant contributions of the late Dr. W. H. Rivers to 
this subject in Instinct and the Unconscious, Cambridge, 1920. THE HERD INSTINCT 
31 
people did not respond to social suggestion readily and 
without reflection might find itself near extinction on 
many an occasion before it could rationally grasp its 
perilous position. Now, the fundamental method of 
every child's education in its early years is by imitative 
non-rational absorption of the thoughts, feelings, and 
actions of others. Speech does not wait for the under- 
standing of the rules of grammar, or it would not de- 
velop at all. But, on the other hand, if a child depends 
always on the behaviour of others for its cues to con- 
duct, it will make very little mental progress, and prob- 
ably never display any very noticeable initiative or in- 
genuity, which are the criteria of all true intelligence. 
Some children, for example, who are encouraged to 
ask questions in early life, develop the habit of doing 
so to an alarming extent, so that they arrive at a state 
of never bothering to think out problems for them- 
selves, knowing that an inquiry addressed to a fond 
parent will invariably save themselves the trouble of 
thought. 
Baldwin is disinclined to accept the mob qualities as 
the typically social qualities, and argues strongly for 
the view that social conduct may take other and more 
normal forms-that crowds exhibit, indeed, a pattern 
of mentality that is pathological, just as individuals 
may exhibit the other extreme of abnormality in dis- 
playing anti-social tendencies of a marked type. The 
normal and healthy form of social conduct is, according 
to this view, expressed best in the intelligent co-opera- 
tion of men and women for the achievement of ration- 32 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
ally conceived ends, and in the economical organization 
of activities necessary for such tasks. One cannot but 
feel that Baldwin is right in holding this view, though 
he is by no means well supported by other writers.18 
Titchener, however, says in his Text-book of Psychol- 
ogy, "The mob-consciousness stands to healthy social 
consciousness very much as dreaming to the ordinary 
waking life." 
Whether it is necessary that school organization 
should be of such a nature that it involves the grouping 
-some would say herding-oi large numbers of chil- 
dren into separate class-crowds, each under the control 
of a despot who may or may not be fashioned by nature 
to be a crowd-leader, is a matter for discussion. As 
schools are at present constituted, the scholars are un- 
doubtedly massed into crowds of no particularly high 
type, and by the enforcement of external order and 
unnatural silence during the periods of work with the 
consequent inhibition of free discussion, the pupils be- 
come partakers more in the disadvantages, perhaps, 
than in the advantages of crowd-life.14 It is, there- 
fore, essential for the present-day teacher to master the 
principles of crowd psychology. It may well be argued, 
however, that the future development of the school 
should follow the lines of normal social development, 
13 Tliis now needs modification. Since the above was written 
we have had Dr. McDougall's book, The Group Mind, as a 
patient attempt to account for the higher types of crowd-mind. 
14 On the other hand, the well-known Dalton plan fails to take 
account of what is valuable in good class-teaching: Its constant 
provocation of thought and speech; its ever stimulating quality. THE HERD INSTINCT 
33 
as Baldwin defines it, and that the school should become 
the centre for the achievement, in so far as it is pos- 
sible, of intelligence and idealism, through self-govern- 
ment, through discussion and self-directed activities. 
But even should this devoutly-to-be-desired consumma- 
tion arrive, the crowd-leader can never be eliminated. 
Baldwin describes admirably the conflict between the 
critical and individual intelligence and the power of the 
influences set in operation by a clever crowd-leader. 
He writes : "One may sit in an auditorium, as the pres- 
ent writer has done, during an exciting political or re- 
ligious harangue, and endeavour to keep himself cool 
and unresponsive. He will then be convinced that he 
himself, even when he sets himself to be rational, is 
still a creature whose social suggestibility goes deeper 
than his power of self-control. He feels, in spite of 
himself, and in the face of his great impatience with 
himself, the tide of social excitement rising within him, 
and the swelling of his bosom is evidence to him that 
there might be an orator altogether too moving for his 
resistance. He feels that his footing is his only so long 
as he is enough alone to keep his thinking processes un- 
entangled in the social emotions that are being stirred 
up around him." 15 
Now, it is probable that suggestion, appealing to 
sympathy, and leading to imitation, is the only method 
of training among gregarious animals and uncivilized 
human beings. Experience gained through the methods 
of trial and error probably counts for very little; 
15 Social and Ethical Interpretations, New York, 1897. THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
34 
progress, in so far as there is any at all, is probably 
made almost wholly through the happy chance discov- 
eries that are made. 
The ready acceptance of suggestions need not de- 
pend, then, on any rational factors. Their appeal is 
through the associative memory to the emotions cen- 
tred about the instincts favouring group-preservation. 
Since animals and savages live in conditions of extreme 
insecurity, and the struggle for existence is a very real 
one to them, it is consequently a matter of the utmost 
vital importance that they should be able to put two and 
two together very quickly, and react to significantly 
suggestive perceptual stimuli upon the spur of the mo- 
ment, without waiting to weigh and consider the ad- 
vantages and disadvantages of so doing. One may see, 
for example, a single bird in a flock, which are feeding 
peaceably, fly up suddenly. Instantly a suggestion that 
danger may be hovering near sweeps through the 
others, and they all as one immediately seek safety in 
flight. 
We humans, too, have this tendency to take our cue 
for immediate action from others. Let one man in the 
front four of a battalion of soldiers on the march turn 
and gaze upward intently, as at a distant and interesting 
object in the heavens, and all who are behind him will 
feel impelled to do the same. In all moments of great 
emergency we revert to this primitive gregarious type 
of behaviour, but in moments of normal living we pre- 
fer to substitute, as we grow more and more intelligent, 
the power of critical reflection for the tendency to un- THE HERD INSTINCT 
35 
discriminating, unthinking imitation, looking upon the 
latter as inferior in effectiveness and value for the real- 
ization of our consciously formed purposes. It may 
be said, indeed, that we are truly human in so far only 
as we are rational; to be suggestible to the point of 
losing our reflective powers is to be unworthy of the 
treasures of our social heritage. This is partly true, 
but it is truer to say that the highest type of mind will 
always combine the ability to foresee with other valu- 
able but more emotional qualities. 
We must therefore conclude that, beyond a certain 
limit, the readiness to receive suggestions, to vibrate 
in sympathy with others, and to act in imitation of 
others, are symptoms of abnormal mentality. In hold- 
ing this view, we can at the same time agree with Trot- 
ter when he refuses to admit that there is anything in 
the behaviour of crowds which cannot be accounted for 
by reference to the factors which function in the ordi- 
nary conduct of single individuals. 
It must also be quite apparent, for the sake of social 
and individual well-being, that there needs to be some 
kind of balance struck between the tendency to stand 
aloof as a cool and critical spectator viewing life as a 
superior from an eminence of moral and intellectual 
excellence, and the tendency to act without thought as 
one of a crowd. We cannot, as the Stoics and the 
Kantians dreamed it possible to do, root out the emo- 
tions from our breasts so that Reason may be able to 
hold sway without competition, for the emotions must 
be retained to supply the driving power in conduct. 36 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
Reason, on the other hand, must not desert her throne; 
she must continue to rule, harmonizing the warring 
passions, and holding fast to her supremacy when the 
clamour of instinct is loudest and most insistent. We 
teach the actor, the orator, and the preacher to keep 
steady control of their thoughts when in the face of 
crowds, and to think while the hypnotic stare of a large 
audience confronts them; it is clearly not less important 
to teach the young child to rely upon itself to form cool 
and just judgments when angry passions possess the 
minds of those around, and to distrust the tendency to 
accept the verdicts of numbers as necessarily being the 
verdicts of reason and truth. A normal amount of 
suggestibility must not be taken, however, as being an 
impediment and a foe to the educator; it may be re- 
garded rather as an invaluable ally. In fact, just as we 
may say that the child who is not in any way inclined to 
imitate is unlikely to learn, so it may be said that the 
child who is not suggestible is not educable. Berillon, 
in his work L'Hypnotisme et Vorthopedic mentale, 
writes with respect to the suggestibility of children:- 
After making my clinical diagnosis, and questioning the 
child sympathetically, I ask him to look very attentively 
at a seat placed a certain distance off, at the back of the 
hall, and I make the following suggestion to him: "Look 
very closely at that chair; you will find that you cannot 
help being drawn toward it. You will be compelled to 
listen to my suggestion and obey, no matter what ob- 
stacle to its realization presents itself." 
I then await the result of the experiment. At the end THE HERD INSTINCT 
37 
of a short time (one or two minutes) one usually sees the 
child move towards the chair indicated, as if impelled by 
an irresistible force, whatever efforts are made to hold 
him back. That being so, I am able to declare safely 
that such a child is intelligent, tractable, easy to instruct 
and educate, and that he stands well in his class. 
If the child remains immobile, and says that he feels 
no attraction towards the seat which is shown him, I then 
conclude from this negative result that he is poorly gifted 
from the intellectual and mental point of view, and that 
it will be easy to discover in him marked signs of degen- 
eracy. The opinion of his teachers and parents always 
confirms this judgment. 
Suggestibility, as it is understood above, may be 
thought to be equivalent to ready and unquestioning 
obedience merely. It is important, however, to note 
that suggestibility, in the psychological sense, must be 
taken as equivalent to the acceptance of commands and 
ideas with a feeling of conviction, independently of 
logically grounded reasons. 
McDougall has given us in his Social Psychology a 
classification of the conditions of suggestibility, and 
those which he states are four in number: they are as 
follows: 
1. Abnormal states of the brain, of which the relative 
dissociation obtaining in hysteria, hypnosis, normal sleep, 
and fatigue is the most important. 
2. Deficiency of the knowledge or convictions relating 
to the topic in regard to which suggestion is made, and 
imperfect organisation of knowledge. THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
38 
3. The imperative character of the source from which 
the suggested proposition is communicated. 
4. Peculiarities of the character and native disposition 
of the subject. 
We should be inclined to add another condition, 
namely, 
5. The acceptance by large numbers already of the sug- 
gestion which is being propagated.16 
McDougall continues: 
Of course, the first need not engage our attention, as 
it has but little part in normal social life. The operation 
of the other three factors may be illustrated by an exam- 
ple. Suppose a man of wide scientific culture to be con- 
fronted with the proposition that the bodies of the dead 
will one day rise from their graves to live a new life. He 
does not accept it because he knows that bodies buried in 
graves undergo rapid and complete decomposition, and 
because the acceptance of the proposition would involve 
a shattering of the whole of his strongly and systematically 
organised knowledge of natural processes. But the same 
proposition may be accepted readily by a child or a sav- 
age, for lack of any system of critical belief and knowl- 
edge that would conflict with it. Such persons may ac- 
cept almost any extravagant proposition with primitive 
credulity. But for the great majority of civilised adults 
of little culture, the acceptance or rejection of the propo- 
sition will depend upon the third and fourth of the con- 
ditions enumerated above. Even a young child may re- 
16 This condition is now recognized in McDougall's later book, 
The Group Mind, Cambridge, 1920. CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
39 
ject such a proposition with scorn if it is made to him 
by one of his fellows, but if the statement is solemnly 
affirmed by a recognised and honoured teacher, supported 
by all the prestige of an ancient and powerful Church, 
not only children and savages, but most civilised adults 
will accept it, in spite of a certain opposition offered by 
other beliefs and knowledge that they may possess. Sug- 
gestion which is mainly dependent for its success upon 
this condition may be called prestige suggestion. 
It will be observed that persons who are in possession 
of the state of mind referred to in McDougall's second, 
third, and fourth categories are crowd-minded, for the 
critical sense is entirely absent, or prevented entirely 
from functioning, and the association of ideas is 
strictly limited, a "narrowing of consciousness" being 
effected which prevents ideas other than those sug- 
gested, or those which are not incompatible with the 
suggestion, occupying the mind. 
§ 3. Crowd-Management 
From one point of view it might very well be main- 
tained that the fundamental task of the educator is the 
inculcation and the fixation of useful habits, worthy 
prejudices about conduct, and sincere attitudes towards 
the problems of life by means of appropriate sugges- 
tions which appeal to group-feeling. There are forms 
of behaviour which it is imperatively necessary that the 
child should adopt early in life, both for his own wel- 
fare and for the welfare of others. If these types of 
conduct are to become permanently fixed, and so func- 40 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
tion as habits, then they must be implanted at all costs 
before rival tendencies of thought, feeling, and action 
get the chance of becoming established through repeti- 
tion. If it is impossible for the socially grounded value 
of these habits to be rationally explained and under- 
stood, on account of the immaturity of the child to 
whom they are suggested for adoption, then prestige- 
suggestion, both of personality and, as we would add, 
of numbers, must be relied upon to effect what as yet 
the reason is incapable of managing. In this way the 
child must be taught, as he usually has been taught, the 
elementary habits of decency, unselfishness, and self- 
control. As the twig is bent, so will it grow. In the 
home, for instance, if the example of numbers is un- 
available, we must rely upon the personality prestige 
of the adult members of the family and upon unweary- 
ing repetition to associate in the child's mind suitable 
ideas with the various tendencies towards action. Thus 
we must associate the idea of naughtiness with the im- 
pulses to throw food about, to cry when put to bed, to 
be spiteful, etc., and associate the idea of goodness 
with the impulses to share its sweets and its toys with 
others, to obey quickly and cheerfully, etc. "We re- 
quire," said Plato, "to be trained from our earliest 
years to feel pleasure and pain at the right things." 
Often only by the adoption of the methods of the leader 
of crowds is it possible to secure this, and to be success- 
ful we adults must ourselves be the pattern and ideal 
of perfect conduct, since the imitative tendency in the 
young normal child is so strong. There is a need for CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
41 
great tact in this direction, and for consistency, since 
the indirect suggestion of actions will often be found 
to accomplish more than the direct suggestion of words. 
It is also possible, of course, to help the child in many 
cases to take a scientific and rational interest in his own 
conduct, but often enough this cannot effect at first any 
powerful influence on his behaviour. 
Some parents frequently talk loudly in the presence 
of a child of its prettiness or cleverness, and such re- 
marks have a suggestive effect w'hich is perhaps not 
anticipated, but which is, nevertheless, powerful to an 
unsuspected degree and productive of unfortunate re- 
sults in the shape of snobbish self-conceit, self-satisfac- 
tion, and vanity. Parents who, on the other hand, wish 
to see their children develop along the lines of diligence 
and self-reliance, will dwell repeatedly but tactfully, not 
upon their children's cleverness, but upon the improve- 
ments in the acquisition of skill and knowledge which 
the latter are exhibiting, though they will not fail to 
suggest that the progress is because of, and in propor- 
tion to, the efforts which the latter are making to 
persist worthily in the tasks they have taken up. There 
is only one effective way of justifying the suggestion 
that one is persistent and not to be deterred by diffi- 
culties, namely by acting the part, and children are as 
suggestible in this direction as in other directions. 
Even when the reason has developed to that point 
where it is capable of functioning by itself effectually, 
it may, nevertheless, be an economy of time and pa- 
tience on the part both of the educator and of the child THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
42 
to fix habits of thought, feeling, and action by means 
of the prestige examples of personality and of numbers, 
rather than by the adoption of a purely rational method. 
How well do the politicians, the journalists, and the 
commercial advertisers know this fact. In order to get 
an individual to set a certain value upon a given idea, 
it is only necessary to persuade him that thousands of 
others, including personages of high rank and great in- 
telligence, hold this idea, and regard it as a worthy one. 
Children who display normally no trace of desire to 
attend lectures of an educational nature outside school- 
hours may often be led to exhibit the utmost eagerness 
to secure tickets of admission if they are persuaded that 
the majority of their school-fellows are bursting with 
enthusiasm to attend. "Nothing succeeds like success." 
Tarde, in his Social Laws, speaks of this principle as 
the principle of "reinforced tendencies," and points out 
that tendencies in the human mind which may in them- 
selves be too weak to pass off into action on their own 
account, somehow gain in vigour and decision when 
they find themselves in the theatre of activity with 
thousands of other similar tendencies. Thus we may 
have a passing impulse to go to a picture gallery to see 
certain much discussed paintings, but in all probability 
an interesting chat or a game of billiards will be quite 
sufficient to nullify the impulse, and yet, should we find 
ourselves in the company of a number of persons all of 
whom were possessed of this same impulse, then before 
we were well aware of that fact we might find our- 
selves making active preparations to carry out our in- CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
43 
tention. Our weak impulse would have gathered 
strength to itself; its tendency to action would have 
been "reinforced." 17 
A further example may be quoted. In many parts 
of a large city there may be seen, especially upon school 
holidays and upon Saturdays, long queues of children 
lined up outside the local cinema halls, hours before the 
doors are due to be open for admission. The cinema 
without a doubt appeals to the child by reason of its 
intrinsic interests, but the prestige suggestion of num- 
bers plays its part, too. The visible proof which stares 
the child in the face that two or three hundred other 
children are anxious to be admitted to the show is 
sufficient of an influence to move a child who might 
otherwise never bother his head about "the pictures" to 
want to go to see them, too. The successful teacher- 
whether viewed as instructor or inspirer-who wishes, 
therefore, to impose a new project upon the attention 
of his scholars, will understand and be able to use when 
necessary the art of crowd-suggestion; he will know 
how to persuade each scholar separately that there must 
be no delay on his part to decide to act and so escape 
exclusion, as all the other children will probably press 
to be allowed to take their part in the scheme about to 
be set afoot. Visual aids in the shape of novel charts, 
diagrams, and pictures, the popularization of phrases 
that appeal to the fancy, and other similar devices, will 
17 As we have suggested elsewhere, this reinforcement probably 
consists in the removal of inhibitions which the conscious self may 
have imposed 44 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
be used if necessary by such a teacher, and such means 
will always bring success to the teacher's endeavours. 
He will strive always to enlist the support of the irra- 
tional factors in whatever he does, whether he wishes 
to impose a new rule of conduct upon the scholars or 
whether he wishes to drive in with the quality of reten- 
tiveness certain principles and facts as a basis for 
study; and more especially if he feels that the support 
of reason will be of little use in itself, and that the 
appeal to reason alone will not effect his purpose. Ob- 
viously, the support of the reason is a very valuable 
thing to aim at securing, but unconscious inference will 
serve the teacher's purpose very well wdiile the fixation 
process is in operation, and during this period the atten- 
tion of the scholars will be deliberately narrowed down 
so that no other interests will be able to compete on 
equal terms with the thought or habit to be suggested. 
There are, however, serious dangers ahead of the 
teacher who does not fully understand the nature of 
crowd-suggestion, as we shall see. 
It is now becoming a matter of common knowledge 
that the success of the journalist depends not upon the 
quality or soundness of his ideas, but upon his ability 
to form crowds which have a consciousness narrowed 
down to the range of a few interests-crowds which 
are homogeneous with respect to their ideas upon cer- 
tain public questions and beliefs. Day after day, with 
unceasing purpose, the journalist works away at his 
task of injecting ideas into the body politic, using the CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
45 
headlines in his papers and the announcements on his 
newsbills in the furtherance of his object. It is his 
privilege to select whatsoever items of news or opinion 
he pleases for big type, and therefore more impressive 
announcement; other items of news which may be 
equally important, but which do not assist him in his 
purpose, can be relegated to the more obscure corners 
and the back pages of his :ournal, or, if necessary, 
omitted altogether. 
In the recent war when the "sink-all" submarine 
policy of the Germans was in full swing, the news- 
papers were daily calling the attention of their readers 
to it by publishing the names and numbers of vessels 
which had been sunk on their way to this country. 
Now, it is manifestly unwise and, indeed, futile for the 
crowd-leader to arrest public attention and hold it 
unless he has an outlet in view for the pent-up and 
constantly accumulating feeling to discharge itself; so 
that it is not surprising that the English Government 
decided to prohibit the daily announcement of shipping 
losses in favour of a short weekly statement, which, it 
no doubt hoped, would show a gradual but certain 
decrease as time went on, in the numbers of the ships 
that were being sunk. 
With untiring insistence, and by the daily attraction 
of the public attention through the use of smart catch- 
phrases which sum up his point of view in an effective 
manner, the journalist perseveres in his work-the cul- 
ture of fungoid ideas; he knows that his phrases will 
stick in the popular mind, and when they become fa- 46 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
miliar enough there, will in most cases function quite as 
usefully, from his point of view, as consciously formed 
thoughts. Graham Wallas in this connection writes: 
"The contents bills of our newspapers, which were 
originally short and pithy, merely from considerations 
of space, have developed in a way which threatens to 
turn our streets (like the advertisement pages of an 
American magazine) into a psychological laboratory 
for the unconscious production of permanent associa- 
tions." Probably very few persons in this country 
were able to resist the force of the suggestion, con- 
tinually put forward by some of our big newspapers, 
and shouted at them daily from a hundred street cor- 
ners, to the effect that the Prime Minister of England 
during the early part of the war was the worst conceiv- 
able type of the spirit of "wait and see," and that he 
would wait and see, no matter how tragic the conse- 
quences might be. It may or may not have been true, 
but among the thousands of people who accepted the 
suggestion, but a very small number would be able to 
say that their opinion was based upon the solid results 
of impartial inquiry and reasoning. 
We have also had an interesting example of success- 
ful social suggestion of a slightly different kind during 
the past few years in the systematic and subtle ridicule 
of a certain type of motor-car. It has been propagated 
in an ingenious manner, and has depended upon the 
human love of humour for its success. A large num- 
ber of "funny" stories mysteriously and suddenly be- 
gan to appear in the popular periodicals. They may be CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
47 
illustrated by the joke about the squirrel which was said 
to have been given away by the car makers to all their 
customers, its use being that it could be trained to run 
behind the car and pick up the falling "nuts." The 
origin of all these stories is probably now beyond our 
ken, but their effect has been to influence unthinking 
persons into the acceptance of the view that the said 
car is quite unreliable. Rational investigation may or 
may not uphold this view, but our point is that this is 
quite another matter. 
How often, too, is the greatness of a well-known 
man invoked as a reason for the acceptance of every 
kind of belief which he may happen to hold, or for the 
soundness and genuineness of any business undertaking 
which he has been persuaded to support. The company 
promoter feels that his success will be assured if he 
can get a well-known and respected man to lend him 
support in launching his new venture. The advertis- 
ing quack seizes every opportunity to announce to a 
gullible public that Sir Strenuous Strongarm has used 
his nerve tonic, or that Lady Leisure has written to 
thank him for the lip-salve which he has been good 
enough to send her. Propagandists hurl the names of 
the famous at the heads of the credulous, vegetarians 
naming John the Baptist and notable athletes as true 
believers, Socialists suggesting that all the rising young 
novelists are in sympathy with their point of view, 
temperance fanatics quoting the opinions of eminent 
doctors and scientists upon alcohol as being, naturally, 
unquestionable. Again, the fact that royalty does this 48 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
or never does that is sufficient reason for many persons 
why they should imitate so august an example. The 
crowd seems instinctively to feel after a leader, and 
preferably one who is able to display the qualities of 
initiative, foresight, and conviction which it lacks. 
From the authentic crowd-leader the crowd accepts 
ideas as the normal child accepts milk from its 
mother. 
The teacher should be the natural crowd-leader of 
every class which he has to instruct, and upon the occa- 
sions when he cannot act in this capacity he should be 
skilful enough to impregnate with his own ideas and 
wishes those scholars who have personality-prestige 
among the others. He may have little success as a 
teacher unless he is able to recommend good habits and 
ideas for the acceptance of his scholars successfully 
enough by the mere fact of his possessing them himself, 
and consequently without the need for lengthy explana- 
tion of their reasonableness; but whereas the journalist 
and the mob-orator too often produce atrophy of 
thought and conscience in their audiences, the teacher 
will imitate them only in so far as is advisable, the 
slumbering reason always being reverenced. 
It will be objected by the disciples of pure reason that 
it is a thoroughly vicious principle to exploit the sug- 
gestible nature of the young child in the manner indi- 
cated above, that the methods of the commercial adven- 
turer and the professional quack should never be 
employed in the education of school-children. They 
wish their children to be "led by the Lord," not "lured CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
49 
by the loudest throat." Alas! the life of man is short, 
and the school days of the child are often past long 
before reason has begun to spread her wings for flight, 
and something must be done while the occasion is ripe 
to fix healthy habits, prejudices, and attitudes. The 
educator who trades upon the suggestibility of the im- 
mature child is justified if his aim is to elevate and 
energize. He does not propose to work in opposition to 
the child's latent rationality. The sanction of the use 
of crowd-suggestion is in its ennobling of the indi- 
vidual, and its application does not necessarily mean 
that the reason is left antagonized, undeveloped, and 
altogether torpid. Indeed, we hope to show that it is 
only possible to raise up reason to its full stature 
by the employment of the methods of the crowd-leader. 
In appealing to the child's suggestibility, the educator 
is merely following the example of Nature, and making 
use of the instrument already to hand until a superior 
one will be able to function unaided in its place, for 
cannot the mind grasp truth very often in advance of 
the intellect? 
But it may be remarked in passing that the worship 
of pure reason may be carried to extremes. All those 
cranks among us who oppose the continuance of the 
institutions which humanity through countless ages of 
experience has established and confirmed-as, for ex- 
ample, monogamous marriage, the forms of accepted 
morality, private property, religion, etc.-do so in the 
name of Reason. Divorced from sympathy, the reason 
may become violently anarchistic and a serious menace THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
50 
to society. After all, one cannot sum up the nature of 
things in a formula, or make progress accord with the 
nature of the syllogism. 
Certainly it is the duty of the educator (and ra- 
tionalists of the most extreme type will agree) to raise 
the level of the expression of the crowd-consciousness 
of his class. It has been pointed out by many authori- 
ties that although crowds display, as a rule, a decided 
mental inferiority, their mentality need not always be, 
in the phrase quoted from Christensen, "equal to the 
lowest common factor of the individual minds that 
compose them"-they need not always be possessed 
of the spirit of the Gadarene swine-for on occasion, 
under the guidance of an orator of noble principles, 
who is able to inspire his hearers with his own en- 
thusiasm for worthy causes, they may reach without 
difficulty the topmost heights of idealism. Appeals to 
the sentiments of honour and patriotism are then 
peculiarly potent and effectual. At the beginning of 
the recent war the British nation became possessed of 
a single mind conscious of a great mission, mainly 
through the speeches and actions of her leaders, and 
this ideal attitude lasted for some considerable time. 
Plutarch tells us how Themistocles could raise the 
Athenian citizens to a pitch above themselves, and 
weld them, by the fire and the sincerity of his elo- 
quence, into an integral community with a single 
dominating ideal interest. Before the projected in- 
vasion of Attica by the Persians, Themistocles had 
scented the approaching danger, and he firmly fixed in CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
51 
the Greek mind, by the power of suggestion, the idea 
that the Greeks were the bearers of the flag of culture 
and civilization in the world, that they would be at- 
tacked by the Persian hosts, and that the gods were 
looking to Greece to keep the flag of humanity un- 
sullied, and would help them if their peril became 
too great. He was able to persuade the people that 
they ought to sacrifice the legitimate claims which they 
possessed to the revenues of the silver mines of Lau- 
rium, and with the funds thus obtained for the use 
of the State, they set to work to fit out the fleet which 
at the critical hour was the means of bringing about 
the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis. The projected in- 
vasion was thereby rendered impossible, but had it 
succeeded the whole course of history would conceiv- 
ably have been different. There can be no doubt that 
Themistocles was guided in his task by an unerring 
insight into the social nature of man, and a subtle 
understanding of how by means of appropriate sug- 
gestions he might control the ebb and flow of human 
resolution. He was justified both by the circum- 
stances and by the results. Had he chosen to work 
by the aid of the glimmer of the little torch of reason, 
slowly and laboriously, he would have achieved but 
little, and that too late, probably. Though steady and 
enduring, the light of the reason cannot compare with 
the highly inflammable material of the emotions for 
temporarily lighting up the soul of man and for giving 
him warmth of conviction and courage. 
There are still several points of interest to be noted 52 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
in the methods employed by crowd-leaders to work 
up the heterogeneous and fickle mob into a homoge- 
neous unity vibrating to the thrill of a single dominat- 
ing purpose. Music has been extensively used as an 
agent for producing unity. It is the most social of 
the arts. Just as reading in the quiet of the study, 
away from disturbing influences of social passions, 
may produce a mind which is highly immune from 
the dangers of contagious crowd-suggestion, so, on 
the other hand, is the acquisition of skill in musical 
expression and the development of appreciation apt 
to produce minds characterized by great fluidity of 
thought and feeling. The great evangelists of the 
past and present have made a wonderful use of the 
unifying power of music, and the use made of the 
military band will serve to show how music is able 
to keep the spirit intact and unitary in a body of men 
long after they are thoroughly fatigued by the ex- 
ertions of a forced march. The politician has been 
quick to take over this hitherto undisputed possession 
of the Churches and the army, and very few big po- 
litical meetings take place in our midst today with- 
out the preliminary singing of songs and choruses by 
the people who are gathered together to hear the 
orator of the occasion. These songs and choruses are 
chosen and used to produce a suitable condition of sus- 
ceptibility, and after they have performed their work, 
the meeting is sufficiently tuned up for the crowd- 
leader's manipulation. 
Music has not been employed in the schools to the CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
53 
extent to which it might be useful as an agent capable 
of evoking the superconsciousness which we call "sol- 
idarity," "fellowship," "idealism." The attention of 
the teacher and of the scholar has been focussed too 
much in the past upon the task of developing musical 
knowledge and technique, and the use of the "sub- 
ject" for better purposes has been overlooked entirely. 
It has been noticed by teachers and inspectors that 
where there is no frequent general assembly of all the 
school for music or devotional purposes there is a 
characteristic lack of something vital and purposeful 
in the school atmosphere. Whenever possible the 
schoolmaster, therefore, should gather the school to- 
gether in one place where they can join in the singing 
of songs and the recitation of passages of devotional 
literature and prayers, without any undue regard for 
the minutiae of articulation. The purpose should not 
so much be instruction at such times as the bringing 
to birth, or the keeping vigorously alive when born, 
of the unique superconsciousness of the school. On 
these occasions the school is a true but high type of 
crowd, and the schoolmaster the crowd-compeller. 
Armed with the powers of good and evil on these 
occasions, he may plant in the sensitive soul of the 
child's nature seeds of great force and vitality which 
will yield an abundant harvest in the years to come.18 
It has been noticed, too, that sights and sounds 
often affect the mind with more result than mere 
18 In this connection it may be interesting to read British Music, 
a report of the Board of Education, England, 6d. THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
54 
words. Banners, processions, and other visible sym- 
bols have ever been the magic means employed by every 
Church to impress people in all parts of the earth with 
the inexpressible wonder and magnificence of the faith 
so advertised. Many educated persons, still, are more 
powerfully influenced in favour of a cause by the voice 
of a monster demonstration than by tomes of perfectly 
irrefutable argument. Persons, for example, who 
treated the English pre-war woman suffrage movement 
as a mere passing symptom of unrest were decidedly 
impressed to the point of reconsidering their opinions 
by the spectacle of a brilliantly organized procession 
of women through the streets of London one Saturday 
afternoon in the summer of 1911. The schoolmaster 
will accordingly take this lesson to heart; he will or- 
ganize his own demonstrations, commemoration days, 
social gatherings, school honours celebrations, and 
other festivals; colour, music, and excitement, and the 
happy hum of human voices, all pressed into the service 
of one purpose, may persuade his young scholars into 
the conviction, in a way that ordinary lessons can 
never hope to do, that virtue, honour, fellowship, and 
industry have a greatness of their own, worthy of 
their deep veneration, that the petty aims of the self are 
insignificant in comparison, and that the highest ideals 
are not utterly beyond their reach. 
After all, why should the use of social suggestion 
be the monopoly of the priest, the politician, the phy- 
sician, and the professional quack ? Why may not the 
educator as well as the psychoanalyst and the hypnotist CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
55 
make therapeutic and inspirational use of suggestion? 
Indeed, the educator's aim in the management of the 
suggestible pupil is as noble as that of the physician, 
and incomparably nobler than that of the advertising 
politician or the professional quack. He does not aim 
at creating taboos, at a deepening or a perpetuating 
of the suggestibility of his scholars; he hopes, indeed, 
to be able to point out to them when the time is ripe 
the dangers of suggestibility, and it will be his privilege 
and his joy to develop in the growing mind of the child 
a rational process which will effectually scrutinize the 
claims to validity of every suggestion that enters the 
mind in normal circumstances. 
It has already been implied that the successful 
teacher should combine in his person all the qualities 
of a high-minded crowd-leader. It will perhaps be 
necessary to set them out in more detail. There are 
two types of successful crowd-leaders: they are the 
crowd-exponent and the crowd-compeller. The former 
gives the crowd what they are hungering after, they 
know not why; the latter gives them what they need. 
The former rides into power by voicing the appetites 
and moods of his followers, he tickles their vanities 
and flatters their weaknesses: the latter dominates the 
crowd and bends it to his will. The educator 19 should 
manifestly be of the crowd-compelling type, but he 
will also, in the manner of the crowd-exponent, be 
sensitive to the passage of every emotion through the 
19 The statesman's task, it has been said, is but the educator's 
task writ large. 56 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
minds of his scholars. He will endeavour, however, 
to canalize the ephemeral desires, suddenly aroused 
emotions, and passing fancies, into useful courses, and 
this, without obliterating individual thought or desire 
for self-mastery. While the crowd-leader leads his 
flock by the nose, he will lead his class by the hand. 
It may be an economy of space to sum up in a brief 
manner the attributes and virtues of the successful 
crowd-educator and apply them to classroom prac- 
tice. Some of these have already been indicated or 
implied. 
I. The teacher must possess the qualities which his 
scholars, by reason of their immaturity, have not 
had the opportunity of developing, namely, fore- 
sight and wide experience. 
He must be able to warn his scholars of the certain 
results which will follow given courses of action, and 
must be capable of making vivid public examples of 
those of his pupils who are unwise enough to pay no 
heed to his warning, and so come to grief. He will 
never punish them, however, in a manner which is 
calculated to arouse the pity of others, for culprits 
should always be made to experience the pain of isola- 
tion from the sympathy of their fellows. The greatest 
mistake which the inexperienced and young teacher 
makes is to punish a group of children simultaneously, 
since by such an act he divorces himself from the sym- 
pathy of a large number of his scholars at the same 
moment, and at the same moment, too, he creates a 
bond of sympathetic unity between the wrong-doers CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
57 
which may be firmer than his own authority; rather, 
he should seek to isolate the wrong-doers, one or two 
at a time, from the support of their fellows, and enlist 
that support on his own behalf. 
His knowledge of his subjects must, of course, be 
thorough, but his general experience must be wide. 
He must be able to see the subjects of the school cur- 
riculum in relation to the interests of human life as 
a whole. In addition, he must be able to talk fluently 
upon topics of general concern as "an authentic man," 
and so link up school interests with the practical af- 
fairs of life. Knowledge will not then be despised 
as it is despised so freely today, because it will no 
longer be mere devitalizing information; it will be 
regarded, rather as a weapon for the advancement of 
man's efforts to better himself and the condition of his 
fellow-workers in the cause of civilization, and in this 
cause it will be the teacher's aim to enlist his pupils 
as ready and willing recruits. 
2. The teacher must have an impressive personality. 
His prestige must be unquestionable. Ideas, as we 
have already seen, do not gain currency by virtue of 
their intrinsic ethical worth. Whether they are right 
or wrong, good or evil, just or unjust, matters not 
for circulation purposes. The mark of the successful 
teacher is his power of stimulating and maintaining 
the currency of vital ideas. 
Self-control and a certain amount of reserve are 
naturally important factors in the constitution of an 
impressive personality. But the main thing is to be- 58 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
lieve in the value of a subject, purpose or cause with 
such force as to persuade others that you think your- 
self of small account in comparison. 
3. The teacher must be persistent and systematic. 
Keatinge says in his book, Suggestion in Education, 
that the teacher needs "the general technique that for 
want of a better name may be called business habits 
in the classroom. The performance of routine work 
in a quiet professional manner is not showy; punctu- 
ality of appearance, regularity with lists of marks, 
rigidity in setting and demanding impositions, definite- 
ness in the demand for home-work, these things are 
but the drab-coloured background of efficiency . . . 
and it may be doubted if a teacher who neglects them 
will in the long run be suggestive, no matter what his 
gifts may be." 
The importance of systematic drill in habit forma- 
tion has been fully emphasized by all educational writers 
since the days of William James, who so succinctly 
and forcibly summed up the conditions of successful 
habit formation. Consequently, in the schools there 
have grown up various habit-forming practices, such 
as daily tooth-cleaning exercise, handkerchief drill, and 
the like, the aim of which has often been misunder- 
stood and wrongly stated. It is not so much to teach 
the reasonableness of hygiene as to fix by crowd- 
suggestion and unconscious association the tendency 
to the performance of desirable habits, on the one 
hand, with the ready recognition, on the other hand, 
of situations which provide opportunities for their CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
59 
operation. In all matters of health habits are better 
than knowledge. 
As an example of habit formation issuing in real 
thought, the following instance may serve. An ex- 
cellent teacher of electricity, whose classes the writer 
attended, used to focus the attention of his students 
upon matters of difficulty by the employment of catch 
phrases which summed up the difficulty "in a nut- 
shell." But they summed up the difficulty without 
solving it: they simply challenged the attention with 
a problem, and through constant repetition created the 
habit of uneasiness in its presence which could be got 
rid of in only one way, namely, by a satisfactory so- 
lution of the difficulty. The circulation of the catch- 
phrase in the class served, in Tarde's words, to "rein- 
force the desire" for a solution. One of the diffi- 
culties to students of the electric arc-lamp is connected 
with the inversely varying relations between the voltage 
and the amperage of the current across the arc when 
a steadying resistance is being employed. Before we 
could solve that difficulty we had to see that it really 
was a difficulty, and during this preparatory period the 
invariable daily greeting of our teacher was, "Good- 
morning, why do the volts rise?" 
"What volts?" asked the bewildered student who 
had hitherto been ignorant of the whole matter, and his 
curiosity was at once aroused. Every succeeding repe- 
tition of the phrase brought the matter once again into 
his consciousness, and after a little while, when the 
whole class saw the difficulty, the teacher explained it 60 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
to us in circumstances that ensured the permanence 
of the explanation. 
4. The teacher must respect the dignity of his scholars. 
He must be prepared to learn from the methods 
employed by the crowd-exponent, or, as we sometimes 
call him, the demagogue. He must not treat his pupils 
as unintelligent and hopeless babes, but act in their 
presence upon the assumption that they have the qual- 
ities and virtues of responsible adults. He must even 
let it appear that he regards them as rational beings. 
They will respond adequately to whatever suggestion 
is made to them. Called repeatedly by names which 
suggest that they are imbeciles, they will lose the hope 
of ever being able to justify better names; treated as 
sensible and potentially industrious grown-ups, they 
will endeavour to act the part to the best of their 
ability. 
5. The teacher must oe able to energize his scholars. 
He must seek to exalt, never to depress. He must 
ever be a fount of good-humour, not a well of cyni- 
cism and despair. He will take as his model in this 
connection the Friend of sinners, rather than that 
austere and stern prophet who went about suggesting 
that all men were thoroughly wicked, and calling upon 
them to repent because the day of doom was at hand. 
It is interesting to note that during the recent English 
investigations into the fatigue of munition workers, 
the daily output of one of the factories under obser- 
vation showed singular variations. Strange decreases 
in the amount of fatigue recorded occurred on certain CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
61 
days. These decreases remained unexplainable, until 
it was eventually noticed that they coincided with the 
absence of the managing foreman of the works. Is it 
necessary to add that he was a man of the nagging 
and depressing type, whose very presence was a source 
of irritation and mind wastage? The way of efficiency 
is indeed the way, not of strife and scourging, but 
of gentleness and joy. Let us beware of the "stimu- 
lation" which devitalizes. 
6. The teacher must thoroughly understana rhe con- 
ditions, dangers, and limits of the operation of the 
factor of suggestibility. 
It is at this stage unnecessary to state more fully 
such conditions and limits. Be it sufficient to say that 
the educator will not attempt the impossible: he will 
know when to refrain from attempting suggestion. 
He will feel instinctively when the class is not likely 
to be in sympathy with him, and if such a state of 
things does at any time arise, as probably it will, he 
must know how to wait patiently for the opportunity 
of turning the occasion to happy account. 
In spite of all that Mons. Emil Coue advocates, we 
hold it definitely certain that no man can persuade 
himself into a sane and healthy condition by methods 
that fail to commend themselves to his common sense. 
In conclusion, one would like to mention a view which 
is widely held, and practically implied by Keatinge in 
the book from which we have already quoted, to the 
effect that a certain quality of inscrutability combined 
with aloofness is a condition of personal prestige of 62 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
great value to the educator. When we see that a man 
of excellent character and attainments may fail to in- 
fluence a class favourably, merely because he is so 
alien from it in every respect, we should hesitate to 
advocate the erection of still further barriers to the 
possibility of intimacy. Teacher and child must to a 
certain extent live in close sympathy with one another 
if harmony of aims and ideas is to result. 
Enough has already been said about the employ- 
ment of the non-rational factors of sympathy, sug- 
gestibility, and imitation as substitutes for the reason. 
It should also be borne in mind that some children 
will be found to exhibit behaviour of an opposite kind, 
and defy all attempts at making them copy the examples 
that may be placed before them. The treatment of 
such children will be reserved for consideration in the 
fourth chapter. 
The time has now arrived, let us suppose, for which 
the educator has been waiting-indeed, it is his duty 
to anticipate it, if he can-when reason shall have de- 
veloped into a partially effective instrument, so that 
the child may be considered a normal human being, 
able to distinguish between right and wrong and be- 
tween good and evil, without the aid of his superiors; 
when he will no longer accept unquestioningly the judg- 
ments of those about him in place of his own; when 
numbers will no longer speak with the voice of in- 
fallible authority, or catch-phrases with the ring of 
sincerity and truth; so that he will not, for example, 
assume that if his solutions to mathematical problems CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
63 
coincide with those of others, they are therefore cor- 
rect; when he will realize that ideas may be strong, 
bright, and permanent, yet nevertheless false; dim, 
weak, and transitory, yet nevertheless true; when, in- 
deed, the age of unremitting servitude to convention 
and arbitrary rule must cease, and the age of reason 
and self-direction begin. 
It is extremely doubtful if such a time will arrive 
during the primary-school career under present con- 
ditions, but obviously, a school system which does not 
at least furnish a link between the age of credulity 
and the age of rational choice must be condemned as 
failing in one of its fundamental requirements. 
Will a knowledge of the principles of crowd psy- 
chology help the teacher in his attempt to develop the 
power of the reason? We venture to think it will, 
and should be inclined to say that it is by the application 
of the aforesaid principles alone that any substantial 
progress will be made in the attempt. The mere giving 
of formal lessons in logical method, followed by private 
exercises to be worked by the scholars, will effect very 
little in comparison. 
By his personal example, in the manner of the crowd- 
leader, the educator will set the fashion of impartiality, 
"assert the dignity of speculation," and popularize the 
habit of rigid scrutiny of the facts which are to be 
used in the classroom, and he will find several subjects 
in the curriculum of great service in this connection. 
Mathematics, for example, provides invaluable oppor- 
tunities for the development of the habit of scrutiniz- 64 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
ing data. But it must be understood that the teacher 
is to make it the dominating conviction in the minds 
of his scholars that logical inference of just so much 
as is warranted and no more, combined with steady, 
sure and orderly procedure, is the very soul of mathe- 
matics, and an ideal worthy of cultivation for its 
own sake. This conception will probably only become 
vitalized by the use on the part of the teacher of 
crowd-suggestion. It is the fashion to decry the formal 
training of the mind, and to assert that there is no 
transfer of what is gained through the application of 
ability in one subject to service in other subjects, and 
that when such a transfer apparently takes place it is 
because common elements are affected in the subjects 
concerned, and that the gain is through them. Surely, 
then, consciously formed ideals may be common ele- 
ments of this kind; indeed, the teacher who aimed, as 
some of the experimenters have done, for example, 
at the development of neatness in the setting out of 
arithmetical solutions, without making neatness an 
ideal thing in itself, would be a very poor teacher. 
Thus, the reason will not, if our view is the true one, 
develop to its full stature merely through the exer- 
cises that are provided for it, but mainly through the 
kindling of the ideal of rational method in the minds 
of the pupils; and the kindling of ideals is the special 
task of the crowd-leader. 
The natural sciences should, if taught properly, free 
the minds of their students from the incubus of fear 
and superstition, when in the presence of the inscru- CROWD-MANAGEMENT 
65 
table. Boys and girls should emerge from a scientific 
course with a profound conviction that law and order 
hold undisputed sway in every corner of the universe, 
and they should have gained that habit of expectancy 
which anticipates the presence of system in all phe- 
nomena. This result of science-teaching is, we venture 
to think, quite as important as that which the practical 
man of affairs demands, namely, a wealth of facts of 
a useful nature, and it will follow no mere study of 
first principles. It is something to be "caught" from 
an enthusiastic and capable teacher. 
History may be made to yield rational principles by 
which the student will be enabled to understand the 
present as springing naturally from the past in accord- 
ance with the laws of cause and effect. It will furnish 
him with perspectives whereby he may view correctly 
institutions and customs in the light of their origins. 
But here, again, it is mere folly to expect that this 
result will ensue from the study of given facts. The 
desire to find reason is the parent of reason, and this 
is true in the sphere of history, as it is in all other 
departments of thought, and desires are spread by 
contagion. We must assert, too, that the best fruits 
of the study of the past are the result of the influence 
of the characters of the great crowd-leaders of his- 
tory, as they appeal to the eager minds of the children 
who learn about them.20 
Literature and such biography will prove extremely 
20 An invaluable handbook in this connection is The New Calen~ 
dar of Great Men, Macmillan & Co. 66 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
useful to the teacher in his endeavour to quicken the 
desires just referred to, and will provide in a crystal- 
lized form antidotes against the possibility of such 
irrational crowd-contagion as is fatal to the sway 
of reason. Nothing is more efficacious in promoting 
immunity from this kind of contagion than a keen 
appreciation of the great men and women portrayed 
for us in the pages of books. 
Above all, the educator will provide outlets for the 
spontaneous group activities of his scholars, and will 
aim at the substitution of self-discipline and group- 
discipline for mob-discipline. A bright-eyed independ- 
ence will mark the demeanour of his scholars, and this 
will herald the coming of self-reliance more surely than 
placid obedience to authority, combined with logic and 
moral talks. Already we see schools arising where 
the realization of the ideals of fellowship and self- 
direction are the worthy goals of endeavour. This 
atmosphere of idealism created by the schoolmaster, 
in much the same way as that by which the crowd- 
leader works, will nevertheless be an atmosphere in 
which the irrational crowd cannot exist. The potential 
mob will become transformed into a co-operative guild 
which offers its allegiance to principles and ideals. 
The teacher in such schools will be content to act the 
part of guide, philosopher, and friend; he will be a 
critical adviser and inspirer, who will watch the de- 
velopment of organization and system in the children's 
activities, and only interfere when this growth is in 
peril of overthrow and disaster. He will devote his EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS 
67 
suggestive powers to the ennobling and stimulating 
of the natural class-leaders, and he will draw the at- 
tention of his scholars to all the examples they them- 
selves provide which may be worthy of remark and 
imitation. The children will be encouraged to develop 
the qualities and hobbies which best express their sev- 
eral individualities; so that there will not be one rigid 
pattern of life, but many patterns, and the accompany- 
ing attitude which is prevalent should be one of re- 
spectful criticism of them all. A comparison of 
ideals will, therefore, naturally follow and become 
habitual, and the value of reason as a basis of idealism 
will emerge, for it is only from the direct clash and 
conflict of ideas and impulses that the adequate light 
can be kindled whereby the human consciousness is 
enabled to catch glimpses of the essential nature of 
reason and truth. 
§ 4. Educational Applications 
Since the first edition of this book appeared Dr. 
Frank Hayward, Inspector of Schools under the Lon- 
don County Council, has experimented with consid- 
erable success in the application of the method of the 
Churches to the problems of the school. 
He sees clearly that school subjects should be roughly 
divided into two groups, of which the first includes 
rudimentary, fundamental, executive or technical sub- 
jects, as for example, speech, writing, spelling, com- 
position, number, simple habits and handicrafts, simple 
self-protective and civic knowledge. In those subjects 68 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
it is the task of the school to produce measurable 
results. 
There is aiso a group of subjects that may be called 
spiritual, humanistic, or cultural. Religion, civics, 
morals, music, literature, biography, history and cer- 
tain aspects of art, geography and science are not nec- 
essarily well or badly taught if measurable results are 
or are not forthcoming. But results in a sense should 
be looked for. "Tell me what you like and I will tell 
you what you are," said Ruskin. It is only the "charis 
matic" teacher (charisma, Gr. - gift) who can teach 
the cultural subjects well. 
Obviously, says Dr. Hayward, "individual" methods 
should be employed in teaching children the first group 
of subjects, and "mass" methods, the second group. 
Dr. Hayward's special "mass" method goes by the 
name of the "Celebration." 
To describe a Celebration in detail would be futile, but 
to the uninitiated we may say that it lies about halfway 
between a religious service on the one hand, and a lecture 
or concert on the other. It has a wider and less partisan 
appeal than the former, and a more unitary and intense 
appeal than the latter. 
Types of Celebration 
But Celebrations differ considerably among themselves. 
A Service Celebration, which ends with a sort of collec- 
tive vow or dedication, stands very close to a religious 
service. 
A Homage Celebration, in which some generalised type 
of human benefactor receives our homage, stands near to 
the Service Celebration. In recognition of the nations of 
the world there is the very similar Salutation Celebration. EDUCATIONAL APPLICATIONS 
69 
A Memorial Celebration, by far the most popular, and 
generally the easiest to frame, is designed to honour the 
memory and recall the deeds of one (or in special cases, 
two or three) of the specific benefactors of humanity. It 
occupies the halfway point above referred to. 
Seasonal, Occasional, and Recital Celebrations are much 
nearer to Lectures, Concerts and the like than to religious 
services. 
A list of "Celebrations" already held with success in- 
cludes among others: 
Service. 
Homage 
and 
Salutation. 
Memorial. 
Recital, 
Seasonal, 
&c. 
Home. 
The Bringer of 
Joan of Arc. 
The Psalms. 
Health and 
City. 
Healing. 
Florence 
Job. 
England. 
The Bringer of 
Joy and 
Laughter. 
Nightingale. 
Lincoln. 
Palestinian 
League of 
Purcell. 
Wars. 
Nations. 
The Scientist. 
Great 
Animals. 
The Geologist. 
Schubert. 
Conquerors. 
T emperance. 
The Martyr. 
Cromwell. 
- 
The Musician. 
Isaiah. 
Spring. 
Work and 
Thrift. 
The Artist. 
Milton. 
Summer. 
- 
Shelley. 
Winter. 
Through the courtesy of Dr. Hayward we are enabled 
to quote the direction for the "Abraham Lincoln" Cele- 
bration in full. A MEMORIAL CELEBRATION IN HONOUR 
OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
Instrumental Music: Macdowell's "1620." 
The Pilgrim Fathers went on their famous voyage in 
1620. In his music, Macdowell, the greatest of American 
musicians, has suggested the struggle of the voyagers (who 
are symbolized by the hymn-like strains in the middle of 
the piece) against the force of nature, and particularly, 
perhaps, against the Atlantic storms. 
Director-Opening passages from (1) St. Paul's Epis- 
tle to Philemon ( Onesimus is a runaway slave, liable to the 
penalty of crucifixion) ; (2) the writings of St. Paul's con- 
temporary, the Stoic philosopher and, martyr, Seneca; (3) 
W. C. Bryant; (4) J. R. Lowell: 
"Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed." 
"One of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face." 
We this day keep in memory 
Abraham Lincoln, 
Sixteenth President of the United States, 
Preserver of the Union, 
Liberator of the negro slaves, 
Father of his country. 
He, "shepherd of mankind indeed," 
Claims the honour and reverence of the Old World 
as well as the New. 
He belongs to mankind, 
He belongs to the ages. 
And therefore we, as his rugged features are unveiled 
before us, will rise in salutation. 
Portrait unveiled. Music. Audience stand. 
71 72 
THE CROWD AT SCHOOL 
D.-Introduction, with lines from William Lloyd 
Garrison. 
Speaker-Discourse: Life of Lincoln to the year of 
his visit to New Orleans (1809-1828). 
Two or more Negro songs: (1) Nobody knows, (2) I 
stood on de ribber, (3) . . . are sung. 
Though "minstrel songs" by Foster and others moved 
Thackeray to tears, they are not the genuine "sorrow 
songs" of the Negro slave. For these we have to go to 
the Fisk Jubilee Singers of 1871, or to Mr. H. T. Bur- 
leigh's Negro Spirituals. These sprang into life in camp 
meetings and revivals. In them "the cadences of sorrow 
turn to joy. . . . Deliverance will come and man will 
be free." 
S.-Discourse (contd.): 1828-1859. 
John Brown's Body lies a-mouldering in the Grave 
is sung. 
This song passed through four versions, of which this 
is the third. 
S.-Discourse (contd.): To the Battle of Gettysburg 
(1859-1863). 
High Tide at Gettysburg (W. H. Thompson) is recited. 
The story of Pickett's Charge, told by a Southerner. 
The failure of this charge meant the loss of the three days' 
battle and was the turning-point of the war. 
All sing Mine eyes have seen the Glory, the fourth ver- 
sion of John Brown's Body. 
S.-Discourse (contd.): 1863-1864. 
Marching through Georgia is sung. 
Sherman's devastating march through the heart of the 
Confederacy was almost the "last straw." 
Ethiopia saluting the Colours (Walt Whitman]) is 
recited. 
An aged negress greets Sherman's army as it marches 
through Georgia. 
S.-Final Discourse on Lincoln: Death: Character: 
Famous Words. 
O Captain! my Captain (Walt Whitman) is recited. 
Lincoln lived for five days with the knowledge that the ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
73 
Union was safe. He was murdered on April 14th, "when 
lilacs bloomed." The captain fell on the deck just after 
the ship had entered harbour. 
D and S.-The Apotheosis of Lincoln by American 
Poets. Eulogies of Lincoln. 
D.-Let us rise as the portrait of Lincoln is encircled 
with a symbolic wreath of honour. 
Wreath placed. Audience stand. Music of Lives of 
great Men all remind Us is played. 
All sing Lives of great Men all remind Us. 
D.-Passage from J. R. Lowell {see above) and the 
following: 
O ever returning Spring! trinity sure to me you bring; 
Lilac blooming eternal, and drooping star in the west, 
And thought of him I love. 
O powerful, western, fallen star I . . . 
Lustrous and drooping star, with the countenance full 
of woe; 
With the lilac tall, and its blossoms of mastering odour; 
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever 
I keep 
For the dead I loved so well ; 
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands. 
Walt Whitman. 
Were a star quenched on high, 
For ages would its light, 
Still travelling downwards from the sky, 
Shine on our mortal sight. 
So when a great man dies ! 
For years beyond our ken 
The light he leaves behind him lies 
Upon the paths of men. 
Longfellow. 
Chords of Music. 
Closing words 
The Celebration Policy is expounded in The Spiritual Founda- 
tions of Reconstruction (Hayward and Freeman), in A First 
Book of Celebration and A Second Book of Celebration (Hay- 
wood: London, P. S. King & Son). CHAPTER III 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND THE DEVELOP 
MENT OF PERSONALITY 
§ 1. The Reality of the Subconscious 
A patient study of the contributors of the psycho- 
pathologist to the science of psychology should reveal 
to the educator much that is of value concerning the 
development of personality and of the principal psychic 
functions. We have shown, we hope, that it is essen- 
tial for the young teacher, who sets out to teach a 
class, to learn first to control the class as a collective 
unit, and we have suggested that the knowledge which 
may be gained from the study of crowd psychology will 
prove of great assistance in this connection; we must 
now endeavour to show it to be no less essential to 
the teacher's understanding of the child's mind, which 
he has undertaken to develop and educate, that he 
should learn from the study of psychopathology what 
has been discovered in the past few decades concern- 
ing the growth and organization of human personality, 
since it is his primary task to stimulate that growth 
and strengthen that organization. 
In one fundamental respect the doctrines of the psy- 
chopathologists differ from those of the normal psy- 
75 76 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
chologist whom they found in possession of the do- 
main of what knowledge there was of the human 
mind: for whereas their conceptions today emphasize, 
as current philosophy also tends to emphasize, the dy- 
namic nature of consciousness, his were apt to deal 
almost exclusively with its static aspects. He was 
inclined to take the sensation as the unit factor of 
mind, whereas they find it more natural to take the 
impulse, or "wish," as the most serviceable unit. The 
difference of outlook is nowhere more apparent than 
in the treatment of what the latter call "subconscious 
processes," and the former, after a very tardy admis- 
sion that they really existed at all, called "subcon- 
scious states." Most of us assume today, probably 
without reflection, that "subconsciousness" is an ac- 
tivity of unquestionable reality. But twenty years ago 
it was very difficult to discover much about the nature 
of "subconsciousness" in the standard text-books of 
normal psychology in use in the colleges and univer- 
sities. It is due entirely to the researches and the 
doctrines of the abnormal psychologist that we now 
regard the conception of a subconscious activity of the 
mind as indispensable if we are to account satisfac- 
torily for all the phenomena which the mind is capable 
of displaying. 
Even when first the normal psychologist began to 
admit the probability of the existence of subconscious 
"states" of mind, he could not agree that they were 
significant of much. James Ward, for example, held 
that the subconscious was a mental process of very REALITY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 
77 
slight intensity-so slight, indeed, that it was incapable 
of drawing attention to itself, and therefore lacked the 
power of being able to disturb consciousness. Stout 
held much the same view, being seemingly unaware of 
any activity worthy of the name in the subconscious 
background of the mind. James took the greatest 
trouble to refute the evidence which had been brought 
forward in favour of the conception of an unconscious 
"subconsciousness," arguing that what could not be 
accounted for by physiological factors could be ex- 
plained by the immediate lapse of memory following 
upon the normal action of ordinary consciousness. 
Miinsterberg accepted James's view, but went farther 
and argued for the complete physiological explanation 
of the unconscious. Morton Prince so far agrees with 
James and Miinsterberg that there are some processes 
with the marks of mentality that may depend purely 
upon physiological functioning, but he asserts that 
there may be also sometimes operating in the mind 
what he calls "co-conscious" processes, of which the 
main personality is entirely ignorant. It is significant, 
too, of the hitherto common attitude that in so com- 
paratively recent a work as Titchener's Text-book of 
Psychology (1910) there is but a single reference in 
the subject-index to the "unconscious," and none at 
all to the "subconscious." 
One may say, therefore, on the one hand, that 
whereas the normal psychologists of the nineteenth 
century held that psychology was the science of con- 
sciousness, that the "conscious" and the "psychical" 78 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
were completely synonymous terms, that the idea of 
an unconscious activity of the mind was without foun- 
dation, since what is unconscious must be inaccessible 
and unknowable, and that what little there was of the 
subconscious (that process of slight intensity which 
exists below the threshold of the mind) had no psy- 
chological significance, the psychologists of the twen- 
tieth century, on the other hand, influenced by the 
theories of Janet, Freud, Jung, Morton Prince, and 
Rivers, regard the "conscious" as being but a small 
fragment of the "psychical," and maintain that there 
are phenomena, mostly pathological in nature, which 
cannot adequately be explained except by reference to 
subconscious or unconscious activities of the mind. 
We are beginning to realize, indeed, that behind and 
beyond the peaks of consciousness lies-not, as we 
have supposed, the valley of utter oblivion-but the 
deep, unslumbering sea of the unforgettable past. 
So convinced has the modern psychologist become 
of the importance of our hidden powers that he has 
often compared the ordinary mind to an iceberg. 
Strange simile! But not so strange when we realize 
that somewhere about nine-tenths of the iceberg lies 
beneath the surface of the sea in which it floats. Con- 
sequently, the simile is a most appropriate one, for 
in the healthy human mind, below the level of con- 
sciousness, there is a mass of unsuspected strength, 
a deep-set balance and stability. Again, the forces 
which control the movement of the iceberg (and of the REALITY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 
79 
mind) are not so much those which act upon its visible 
parts as those which are at work below the surface. 
Icebergs often move against the wind; and minds, too, 
do not always obey the dictates of reason. 
The concept of the subconscious is so helpful, even 
essential, to the study of the abnormal, that it may 
profitably be dealt with first. Generally, we become 
aware of the fact that a subconscious flight of thought 
or interest has occurred only when some stimulus 
from the external world, in the form, for example, 
of a sudden noise or movement, or of a sharp pain, 
has interrupted by its strength or novelty the unno- 
ticed process, making us feel in the consequent act of 
re-adaptation to our material environment that we had 
temporarily lost touch with our conscious selves. If 
we re-read a newspaper article or a passage from a 
magazine that has made no very serious demand upon 
our attention, we shall probably find that certain pass- 
ages will strike us with a distinct note of freshness, sug- 
gesting that so far as our ordinary consciousness was 
concerned, we missed them altogether before, although 
we may be certain that we never really skipped a word. 
Or when an opponent has got in an athletic blow at 
our vanity, we have discovered afterwards by careful 
analysis of ourselves that there occurred to us, though 
it was unrecognized at the time, an emotional rush of 
words intended as a screen to hide our discomfiture: 
stop-gap words, such as "Nonsense," "Not at all," and 
the like were first thrown out as an obstacle to stem 
the fury of the attack, so that behind it we might, 80 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
more freely, with all our wits at work, construct a 
fighting form of words to cover effectually our forced 
retreat. No one will deny having had such an expe- 
rience, or that while it was occurring the real motive 
for it was subconscious. 
Often, too, we are dimly aware of two conflicting 
trains of thought or feeling co-existing at the same 
time. For example, you may have entered a motor- 
bus or a tram-car, and after settling yourself com- 
fortably and preparing to read, you discover that you 
are seated opposite to some one whom you have every 
reason to dislike, inasmuch as you are still smarting 
under the sense of a very real and recent injury which 
he has done you. You recognize at once that it would 
be unseemly to tell him just what you think of him 
in the presence of strangers, and so you turn to your 
newspaper or book. But what happens is not so simple 
as all that. Your feeling of bitter antagonism re- 
mains subconscious for a time. Suddenly, however, 
you realize that you have been reading mechanically, 
and that your consciousness throbs with the reminis- 
cence of your injury. As soon as you are fully aware 
of your mental condition the antagonism sinks into the 
subconscious mind once again, and you take up the 
broken threads of your interrupted task; yet later on 
the antagonism irrupts into consciousness as before; 
and so the two processes of reading and resenting hold 
alternately the conscious attention, though neither falls 
at any moment utterly out of mind. 
Sometimes, too, we find that while we have been REALITY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 
81 
talking or otherwise consciously occupied, we have been 
making quite intelligible designs with pen or pencil 
upon paper, or that we have been re-arranging some 
part of our clothing, or making a mental note of an 
affair needing leisurely thought in the future, all activ- 
ities requiring some considerable amount of attention. 
The actions of others reveal to us the truth that this 
kind of subconscious activity is common. 
In many well-authenticated cases the subconscious 
impulses are so extraordinarily superior to the con- 
scious impulses, that they may be responsible for great 
thoughts, admirable deeds and sublime art. The men 
themselves who have experienced these impulses have 
not, it is true, spoken of being swayed by their own 
subconscious activities. Thus Socrates preferred to 
say in such circumstances that he was guided and in- 
spired by a daemon; while the author of the Uncle 
Remus stories declared that another being used his hand 
to write down the stories which are attributed to him. 
Joan of Arc was not moved by her own inner im- 
pulses to take up the cause of her country: "she heard 
voices." Nor did William Blake produce his wonder- 
ful art by any conscious or unconscious effort: "he 
saw visions." In his beautifully written book, The 
Candle of Vision, Mr. George Russell attempts to show 
us how we can all rise above our mundane selves, and 
by harnessing the impulses of the unconscious within 
us and running them in harmony with our conscious 
strivings live the life of the saint, the artist, or the 
philosopher. 82 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
But usually the subconscious trends of activity in 
us represent markedly primitive and egoistic desires 
and wishes of which we should be secretly ashamed 
if we were confronted with them in their naked form. 
In the neurotic individual, so marked is the divorce 
between the adult educated conventional consciousness 
and the vast amount of what has been repressed from 
memory because it was disliked or gave pain or was 
socially disapproved, that no longer is there more than 
a fraction of the energy of the whole personality avail- 
able for free use. In the more normal individual, blind 
convictions, superstitions and prejudices, unreasonable 
fears and antagonisms, queer tricks or eccentricities, 
represent the commoner forms of locked-up energy 
which are not at the complete disposal of conscious- 
ness. Slips of the tongue and of the pen, together 
with mistakes of conduct, often show neatly enough 
the trends of our subconscious thought. Those who 
wish to test the truth of this statement should compile 
a list of such personal errors. They will find that 
not all of them are due simply to natural diminution 
in the force of their memory for detail when an item 
of the past has to be recalled, but that, rather, quite 
a large number of their errors show what they would 
have preferred to say, write, or do, in place of what 
circumstances compelled them to say, write, or do. 
Thus, in a case quoted by Freud, a man who wanted 
to avoid accepting a certain invitation sat down to 
compose an apology for non-acceptance, and instead 
of writing, as he of course intended, "Owing to un- REALITY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 
83 
foreseen circumstances," etc., found actually that he 
had written, "Owing to foreseen circumstances," etc. 
But the evidence for the existence of the subcon- 
scious, which is now regarded as irrefutable, has been 
supplied largely through the facts revealed by a study 
of hypnosis. Hypnosis may be regarded as a special 
form of ordinary sleep brought on by suggestion, hyp- 
notic suggestion being an exaggeration of the influ- 
ence to which all persons, as seen in the last chapter, 
are normally subject. Hypnosis, according to Char- 
cot, is marked, in its successive stages of intensity, by 
(i) catalepsy, in which rigid fixity of the muscles 
of the body is assumed; (2) anaesthesia in certain 
areas of the skin and in certain sense departments; 
(3) lethargy, or total lapse of sensory consciousness; 
and (4) somnambulism, which is characterized by ac- 
tivities on the part of the subject of which he him- 
self is entirely unaware. In hypnosis we may have 
produced artificially, it has been found, a condition 
of consciousness very similar to that which has been 
found to exist in pathological cases of mental disorder. 
Charcot says, indeed, that "hypnosis is an artificial 
hysteria." As an example of such an artificially pro- 
duced mentality, the following illustration may be 
taken from the writings of Professor Pierre Janet, the 
pioneer of modern psychopathology, to whom, per- 
haps, more than to any other investigator, the psy- 
chologists of the present day were indebted for their 
initial knowledge of what goes on behind the curtain 
of the conscious life. He discovered that the uncon- 84 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
scions mental activity, or the "somnambulistic" con- 
sciousness, as he called it, which could be set in opera- 
tion during hypnosis, was able to reproduce intact 
memories apparently lost beyond recall, and to carry 
out thought processes of some degree of complexity 
without the assistance of the waking mind. 
In speaking of some experiments which he conducted 
with the patient whom he calls Lucie, he writes in his 
book L'Automatisme psychologique (p. 262) : 
I attempted to secure very simple unconscious judg- 
ments. . . . Suggestions were made during deep hyp- 
nosis, and the subject was completely re-awakened. Both 
the signals and the responses took place during the pre- 
ceding "sleep." 
"When I say two letters that are the same, one after 
the other, you will remain quite unmoved." 
On waking her I whisper the letters, "a . . . e . . . 
d...e...a... a." Lucie remains completely im- 
mobile. That is an unconscious judgment of similarity. 
Here are recognitions of difference. 
"You will fall asleep when I say an odd number," or 
"You will turn your hands one over the other when I men- 
tion the name of a woman." 
The result is the same; as long as I repeat even numbers 
or masculine names nothing happens; the suggestion is ex- 
ecuted only when I give the signal. Lucie has, then, lis- 
tened, compared, and appreciated these differences uncon- 
sciously. 
I tried afterwards to complicate the experiment in order 
to see how far unconscious judgment could be taken. 
"When the sum of the numbers which I shall announce is 
ten you will make a sign with your hands, a sign of af- 
fection." 
The same precautions were taken; she was awakened 
and found to have forgotten what had happened, and while REALITY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 
85 
she spoke with other persons who distracted her attention 
as far as possible, I whispered at some distance from her, 
"2 ... 3 ... i .. . 4," and the pre-determined move- 
ment was made. . . . 
I wanted to try leaving more independence still to this 
singular intelligence. "You will write a letter to some- 
one." Here is what she wrote without knowing it once 
she was re-awakened: "Madame, I am not able to come on 
Sunday as we arranged : I beg you to excuse me. I should 
have been glad to come, but I cannot manage that day. 
Your friend, Lucie. P. S.-Best wishes to the children." 
This "automatic" letter is correctly phrased and argues 
a certain amount of reflection on Lucie's part. She was 
talking to other people of another matter entirely when 
she wrote it. Besides, she did not understand anything 
in the letter when I showed it to her, and suspected me of 
having forged her hand. (Our translation.) 
We may remark, in passing, that there has been 
suggested by such examples of post-hypnotic sugges- 
tion as these a subconscious condition of mental as- 
sociation which escaped the scrutiny of the psychol- 
ogists of the long-lived "Associationist" school. Ideas, 
according to the traditional belief, sorted themselves 
out systematically in some mysterious way upon en- 
tering into the mind, and attached themselves to others 
already there by virtue of their similarity to, or con- 
trast with them, or, it might be, associated with one 
or another on entry simply by attraction through con- 
tiguity of presentation in place or time. The addi- 
tional factor just now spoken of, illustrated in the 
behaviour of Lucie, was first given a name by Ach, 
who in his book, Ueber die Willenstdtigkeit und das 
Denken (1905), called it the factor of the mind's "de- 86 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
termining tendency." These determining tendencies 
in the association of ideas are partly inherited and 
partly acquired. 
Stout, in his Manual of Psychology, fails to men- 
tion them, but it is perfectly obvious, now that their 
existence has been once pointed out, that if we form 
a purpose or develop an interest and follow it up 
systematically, we are able to a certain extent to de- 
termine beforehand how any new ideas that may come 
to us shall be associated; we can arrange that they 
shall be significant or not in so far as they are or are 
not valuable to us in the furthering of our aims and 
ideals. Briefly, then, we may say that the subconscious 
tendency or purpose directing consciousness decides 
what is worthy or not of being linked up in memory 
by the bonds of association. In the case of Lucie's 
actions, the cause of the determining tendency was 
external to her own consciousness: it lay at first in 
the mind of the experimenter, who decided that "a . . . 
a . . .," for instance, should be associated with the 
idea of muscular rigidity. 
In normal life, the associated idea called up by any 
single word will depend upon the trend of interest 
in the mind at the given moment. If a person is in- 
tent upon an investigation into the social conditions 
prevailing among the poor of a big city, the single 
word "drink" which he overhears may bring up to his 
consciousness ideas of drunkenness and scenes of de- 
bauchery and its attendant squalor; but if the same 
person is in a relaxed mood, and is feeling the need REALITY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 
87 
for recreation, the stimulus word may suggest good- 
fellowship and taste sensations of a pleasurable nature. 
John Masefield, in his poem The Everlasting Mercy, 
shows admirably the powerful effect of a strong de- 
termining tendency in influencing the association of 
ideas. Describing the morning of his sudden conver- 
sion, Saul Kane, the hero, declares- 
All earthly things that blessed morning 
Were everlasting joy and warning. 
The gate was Jesus' way made plain, 
The mole was Satan foiled again . . . 
The mist was error and damnation, 
The lane the road unto Salvation. 
The reader may also recall that the song of the 
thrush in Back to Methuselah was heard by the dis- 
satisfied clergyman, Haslam, to say, "Stick it or chuck 
it: stick it or chuck it." Such subconscious associa- 
tions as these obviously do not occur to the ordinary 
mind; there must be a powerful predisposing cause 
which sets the mind looking, as it were, for them. 
The educator, therefore, who understands the nature 
of subconscious determining tendencies will not de- 
pend upon any two or more ideas (which are presented 
to the mind together) fixing up an inseparable com- 
panionship on account of their contiguity, similarity, 
or contrast with respect to one another, or to others 
already in the mind. He will rather try to connect 
them through the cementing power of an already ex- 
isting common interest or passion. Thus, to grasp 
clearly one's aim in a study is the primary condition 88 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
of success in committing its fundamental facts to mem- 
ory : that is to say, we must decide at the outset what 
the facts are going to illustrate. This teleological 
principle in association will be like the lines of force 
set up by a magnet, and about it suitable facts will, 
like iron filings in the latter case, arrange themselves 
systematically.1 
It is generally true that children forget nine-tenths 
1 Recollection seems to involve a deliberate act on the part of 
the person who recollects. It is the result of a conscious search 
among the lumber of the past. You say quite rightly, "Ah, I 
remember well the happy days we had at school," but if you have 
forgotten the name of your schoolfellows you try not to re- 
member them but to recollect them. 
Recognition is less a conscious act. It is more of a feeling of 
familiarity among things that we have already known. Thus you 
may have forgotten your school chum, Jones. But one day you 
see some one in the street who has an odd trick of carriage that 
stirs in you the feeling of familiarity which we call recognition. 
You recognize your friend and go up to speak with him. You 
say, "I remember you quite well. You were at school with me. 
But for the life of me I cannot recollect your name." 
Reminiscence is a term which is gradually creeping into general 
use in psychology to describe the process by which the once- 
forgotten past seems spontaneously to intrude itself back upon 
our attention. 
Pure Memory and Habit Memory. 
Another distinction, due to Bergson, will be useful. 
When we set to work to memorize a list of numbers, or to 
learn a tune so that it can be repeated without conscious at- 
tention, or to perform some difficult act of skill, what we are 
attempting to do is to set up in the brain and the body a system 
of delicate co-ordinated connections through which nervous en- 
ergy set free can course without interruption. Each passage of 
the nervous energy leaves the track more open for subsequent 
use. Habits work in this way; there need be no conscious memory 
attached to them. 
Pure memory is conscious. Like reminiscence it bears with 
it the stamp of time and circumstance which makes it unique. MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
89 
of the facts taught them because they see no reason 
why they should remember them. Such facts do not 
become an organic part of the mind; and having no 
reason for existence, they fade out. 
§ 2. Mental Dissociation 
But if it is clear that ideas may be found to become 
fused together by the welding power of a common 
purpose, it is also clear that there may be ideas, and 
interests, too, in the mind which are mutually de- 
structive or find existence together completely incom- 
patible. We may, or may not, be conscious of such 
incompatibility. In fact, if we introspect our con- 
sciousness as thoroughly as it is possible to do, we 
may probably find that the fundamental fact of the 
mental life lies in its unity, that all the apparently 
incompatible elements are somehow unifiable in a single 
and indivisible process. We shall feel even that proc- 
esses which may be occurring at the same moment, 
side by side with each other, but independently, are 
yet related in some way to the main interest of the 
mind. Thus we may feel that playing the piano, or 
skating, and at the same time carrying on a conversa- 
tion with a friend, are not discordant activities. Yet 
deeper observation shows another side of the picture. 
It is extremely doubtful whether the attentive con- 
sciousness can be concentrated at the same moment 
upon two widely different processes, each demanding 
thought. Parallel processes which do not demand the 
full attention of the individual may go on successfully, 90 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
but let them both claim the sole right of entry into the 
focus of consciousness, and then no matter how long 
may be the "specious present," to use James's phrase, 
during which they are competitors for attention, there 
is no room in consciousness for them both. One of 
the processes must be let slip, must go automatically 
or fall out of consciousness altogether, while the other 
is favoured with full attention. If skating, or piano- 
playing, is more or less a matter of habit, then upon 
the appropriate signal being given and the activity set 
going, consciousness will transfer itself to the act of 
conversation, and meanwhile the automatically devel- 
oping process will run on to its natural close, or until 
an unexpected interruption occurs, when, and when 
only, we may become aware that a subconscious process 
has been progressing without conscious guidance. But 
in abnormal cases, as in the conduct of Lucie,2 there 
does not occur any situation which is able to awaken 
the mind to the reality of what is happening below 
the threshold of consciousness. There is in fact a 
"dissociation," or splitting away of one process from 
the other, which is beyond repair by ordinary thera- 
peutic agencies. Lucie did not recognize the counting 
processes, analogous to the piano-playing and the skat- 
ing activities of our illustration, as belonging to her 
personality at all. Such a phenomenon as this occurs 
frequently in pathological cases. 
Thus, while on the one hand any dissociation of 
ideas which occurs in the ordinary mind will probably 
2 See page 84. MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
91 
become known sooner or later to the subject "experi- 
encing" it, a similar dissociation in the abnormal case 
of mentality may be more or less permanent, and the 
subject all the while totally unconscious of it. 
Subconscious activities of the abnormal type may 
range in complexity from automatic writing to those 
displayed in cases of what are called multiple person- 
ality. Automatic writing has been illustrated by the 
letter which was written by Lucie. The following ex- 
ample may be compared with that of Lucie's letter. 
In the case of a subject "A B C," investigated by 
Dr. Morton Prince, "B," one of the dissociated sys- 
tems of ideas or purposes, which was capable of func- 
tioning with the marks of a personality, was told to 
perform the operation of adding two numbers to- 
gether, while "A," another "system of ideas" or "trend 
of interest," was in control of the consciousness of 
"A B C." "A" was then called up by means of hyp- 
notic suggestion and given a paper of verses to read 
aloud. In two opposite corners of the paper had been 
written numbers which were capable of being added 
in the head, but nothing was said about them to "A." 
The reading having been duly executed and the paper 
taken away, "A" was then dismissed, and "B" called 
up, the latter, according to Prince, immediately rushing 
upon the scene and shouting the answer to the sum 
involving the two numbers. Prince calls a system of 
ideas such as "A" or "B" a "co-conscious" person- 
ality, because it exhibits a certain rationality of be- 
haviour, and because neither is entitled to take prece- 92 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
dence of the other as being more representative of the 
total personality "A B C." 
We may learn, then, from the phenomena of auto- 
matic and of co-conscious activities of the types illus- 
trated above, that the mind can perform successfully 
more than one operation at the same time, and that 
some activities call for the merest minimum of atten- 
tion. If this is so, then the educational justification 
for the maintenance of a subject in the school curricu- 
lum does not lie in the fact that it provides "employ- 
ment" for the growing activity of the child, since the 
child may manage his task without conscious or profit- 
able effort. Educational method calls for full con- 
scious co-operation on the child's part. Consciousness 
should have its engagements fully booked up. Or to 
put it in the words of the engineer, the psychic throttle 
should be opened and a richer, fuller mixture admitted 
into the heart of the human engine if life is to make 
its fullest progress. Froebel's principle of allowing 
the originative impulse its widest scope is the principle 
which we need. The doctrine of interest is thus justi- 
fied, as is also the movement in favour of manual oc- 
cupations for young children. An externally imposed 
and alien "interest" which does not arise in or appeal 
to the child-mind will be treated with as little attention 
as possible, whereas in following up his own native 
interests it has been observed that a child will cheerfully 
push on through hours of drudgery, apparently en- 
joying the experience. 
"Somnambulism" is a term used by the French MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
93 
psychiatrists and psychopathologists to denote a type 
of mentality which is in dissociation from the main 
personality, but hardly independent of it enough to 
be called a form of rational personality. Professor 
Janet, in The Major Symptoms of Hysteria, describes 
the case of a young girl to whom he gave the name 
of Irene, who exemplified the phenomena of somnam- 
bulism in a remarkable manner. While engaged in 
working her sewing-machine or in conversation, Irene 
would often break off her occupation and live through 
once again, in the most moving manner possible, the 
agonizing scenes connected with her mother's death, 
an event which had caused her a severe mental shock. 
She had tried to revive the corpse and recall the breath, 
and in the crises of her somnambulism she would 
simulate these activities again with intense feeling. 
In addition, she would discuss, apparently with her 
mother, projects for her own death, and having de- 
cided how she would die, would act the scene with a 
vivid and tragic realism. While she was thus engaged 
she was completely oblivious of what was occurring 
in her physical environment, and when the crisis had 
passed she invariably resumed her interrupted employ- 
ment at the part at which it had been left off, showing 
no signs that she was aware of the fact that it had 
ever been disturbed. 
The phenomena of the somnambulistic conscious- 
ness illustrate very forcibly the need for the provision 
of healthy means of expression of the emotions that 
are sometimes pent up within the mind. Great crises 94 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
of grief, fear, anxiety, or hatred leave a lasting effect 
upon the individual who experiences them, the physical 
traces of which are often to be observed in the shape 
of apparently unexplainable habits that cause much 
trouble in later life. The habit of stuttering may, for 
example, be the resulting echo of a great fright in 
early life. The symptoms of St. Vitus's dance may 
have a similar emotional origin. The wise parent and 
the educator will never attempt to scold or laugh a 
child out of its fears, nor insist on the performance of 
deeds which may terrorize, such as, for example, the 
entering of dark rooms, the facing of big dogs, and 
the like. The nervous organization of the child is in 
a very delicate condition in its first years, and violent 
emotions will on no account be aroused by the thought- 
ful guardian. The way of normal healthy develop- 
ment is through quietness and tactful suggestion. 
Thus, personality may be regarded as the result of 
an equilibrium of psychic tendencies, which a severe 
mental shock will permanently upset or twist from its 
normally perfect balance. The mother who forcibly 
prevents her child from gaining the wholesome expe- 
rience that fire is dangerous to play with, and pulls 
him away impatiently whenever he approaches it, is do- 
ing her best, unwittingly, to arouse the emotion which 
will cause an unstable condition of equilibrium of the 
child's mind. The tendency to reach out to the flame 
will still remain latent and strong, in spite of all her 
efforts, while the natural tendency towards withdrawal 
from excessive heat will not have been allowed to de- MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
95 
velop. Thenceforward, the sight of the fire will prob- 
ably suggest two totally incompatible tendencies in the 
child, illustrated in the attitude of fear mingled with 
dislike towards the mother and the tendency to play 
with the flames. A more natural method of education 
would have resulted in the formation of a single com- 
plex tendency replacing the two separate tendencies, in 
which fear would still have been present, but it would 
have been a fear not of the mother, but of overstepping 
the limits of safety in its dealing with the fire. It is 
the worst of errors to prevent the child from learn- 
ing safely the lessons which Nature has to teach it. 
Quite sound, therefore, is Dr. Montessori's plan of re- 
fraining from the personal correction of her pupils' 
errors. She prefers to devise exercises for the de- 
velopment of their minds that will be of a self-correct- 
ing nature. A correction from the teacher at the 
wrong moment, especially if it is combined with re- 
proof, may implant a fear in the child's mind which 
will effectually prevent it from showing the teacher the 
spontaneous working of its thoughts, and may easily 
cause it to transfer its attention almost wholly from 
the task which it is learning to master, to an anxious 
consideration of the teacher's feelings, and so make 
it set up the ideal of pleasing or avoiding displeasing 
the teacher, rather than of gaining competence in its 
work. The "Children's Houses" were devised as a 
substitute for the home for similar reasons. Houses, 
as a rule, are not suitable environments for young 
children; they contain so many things which invite 96 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
their attention but which may not be touched, and many 
of the petty misdemeanours which disturb the child's 
existence are due to this fact. In addition, lifelong 
morbidities of disposition may be caused by the ill- 
tempered thwarting or correction of the "naughty" 
child on the part of the adult members of the family, 
especially if the resulting emotions which are aroused 
in the child do not find healthy expression. 
The further study of the subconscious will bring us 
face to face with the essential nature of personality, 
for there are, as we have already mentioned, some 
abnormal cases which present the phenomena of dis- 
sociated systems of thought or trends of interest which 
are capable of functioning independently of one an- 
other and of the main personality, and with all the 
signs, moreover, of rationality. We may have no hesi- 
tation in speaking of such cases as cases of "multiple 
personality." The case of the Rev. Ansel Bourne, de- 
scribed by Professor James,3 may be quoted first. 
Bourne, in January 1887, drew a sum of money from 
a bank in Providence and disappeared for two months. 
"On the morning of March 14th, however, at Norris- 
town, Pennsylvania, a man calling himself A. J. Brown, 
who had rented a small shop six weeks previously, 
stocked it with stationery, fruit, and small articles, and 
carried on his quiet trade without seeming to any one 
unnatural or eccentric, woke up in a fright and called 
on the people of the house to tell him where he was. 
He said that his name was Ansel Bourne, that he knew 
3 Varieties of Religious Experience, Cambridge, Mass., 1902. MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
97 
nothing of shopkeeping, and that the last thing he re- 
membered-it seemed only yesterday-was drawing 
the money from the bank in Providence." 
Another case of a more complex nature is the oft- 
quoted case of Miss Beauchamp, described by Dr. Mor- 
ton Prince.4 Miss Beauchamp was a hospital nurse 
who was being treated by Dr. Prince for loss of mem- 
ory and neurasthenia following upon mental shock. 
Under hypnotic treatment a characteristic conscious- 
ness was revealed with memories different from those 
of the patient. This "personality" was designated 
"B2" by Prince, the personality as first known being 
designated "Bi." After a succession of hypnotic 
trances a second characteristic state of hypnosis ap- 
peared, called afterwards "B3." "B3" was at first 
docile and amenable to reason, but upon being allowed 
to open "her" eyes she claimed for herself the dignity 
of a personality, and gave herself the name of "Sally." 
She developed into a flippant and irresponsible being, 
possessing no conventional ethical standards, and at 
once began to dispute the possession of Miss Beau- 
champ's consciousness with "Bi." Later still "B4" 
appeared, called by Sally "the idiot," a personality 
of normal tendencies and average intelligence, but with 
no marked vitality, and without any consciousness of 
the existence of Sally, who, however, claimed to know 
the thoughts of them both. The hypnotic personali- 
ties, "B2" and "B4," were ultimately synthesized by 
4 The Dissociation of a Personality, New York, 1906; The Un- 
conscious, New York, 1914. 98 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
Dr. Prince, and an attempt was made to effect a cure 
of the patient by calling up a waking personality which 
should be a combination corresponding to the hypnotic 
"B2" and "B4," that is, it was to be a fusion of "Bi" 
and an unknown other. Sally was gradually squeezed 
out of existence altogether, and the personality which 
at length appeared was the original Miss Beauchamp, 
not as she had been when first seen by Dr. Prince, 
but as she had been before the emotional shock which 
was responsible for her mental dissociation. 
It has been suggested that the methods of Dr. Prince 
were largely responsible probably for the complexity 
of the case, and one cannot help thinking that the 
picturesqueness and dramatic elements of the phe- 
nomena are more or less due, perhaps, to the imagina- 
tion of the physician. It may be noticed, too, in pass- 
ing, that Dr. Prince does not attempt to go into detail 
concerning causes for the dissociation, beyond the mere 
mention of "mental shock." Now, why should "shock" 
cause a dissociation of incompatible systems of ideas? 
§ 3. The Cause of Mental Dissociation 
As has already been stated, all theories which have 
been brought forward in explanation of the cases sim- 
ilar to those quoted above necessitate the assumption 
of a belief in the existence of what Janet calls the 
"subconscious" and Freud,5 the "unconscious." Janet, 
in the Major Symptoms of Hysteria, states that stable 
5 The Interpretation of Dreams, London, 1913. 
See A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, New York, 1920. CAUSE OF MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
99 
and normal personality is due to the successful syn- 
thesis of various mental elements. In certain cases 
there is a weakening of the synthesis, the psychical 
energy at the disposal of the personality being insuf- 
ficient to harmonize the incompatible systems of ideas 
that are present in the mind. When the synthesis is 
weakened, but not broken down, we have the symp- 
toms of what Janet calls psychasthenia, as observed in 
hallucinations, delusions, obsessions, etc.: when the 
synthesis is destroyed, hysteria appears. "Hysteria is 
a form of mental depression characterized by the re- 
striction of the field of consciousness, and a tendency 
to the dissociation and emancipation of the systems 
of ideas and functions that constitute personality" 
(Janet).6 
The causes which are responsible for the diminution 
of the energy at the disposal of the personality are not 
dealt with by Janet; indeed, it is difficult to find in his 
writings any systematic account of the forms and 
sources of psychic energy. A comparison between the 
theories of Janet and of Freud will show an interest- 
ing contrast between the intellectualistic and the vital- 
istic points of view. It is certain that the concepts of 
Freud, in spite of the controversy that has resulted 
from their statement, have focussed more light on the 
nature of mental disturbance than any other earlier 
theories about the constitution and working of the 
mind. Freud has established the science of mind upon 
6 Janet's psychasthenia and hysteria correspond to Freud's 
anxiety neurosis and conversion 100 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
a sure basis, and has rendered futile and foolish the 
attempts to account for psychic phenomena wholly in 
terms of physiological concepts. It becomes more and 
more apparent every year that the final and completely 
satisfactory theory of mental functioning will be a 
revised and refined theory based on post-Freudian con- 
cepts rather than any earlier theory. Freud has suc- 
ceeded in removing the centre of gravity in psychologi- 
cal study from the sensation, the perception, and the 
concept to the "wish," the purpose, and the ideal. No 
doubt a happy synthesis of post-Freudian and pre- 
Freudian conceptions will give us the basis for a perfect 
understanding of the whole matter. 
What, then, is the cause of mental dissociation? 
Freud's principal explanatory concepts in this field 
which are of general interest are the concepts of the 
mental "complex" (a term originated by Jung), 
"mental repression," the "censor," and "mental con- 
flict." The "mental complex" (or, as the French call 
it, the idee fixe}1 is a system of closely associated ideas 
fused and unified into an integral process by a strong 
emotion or a vivid experience, having a subconscious 
tendency to a characteristic form of expression. As 
illustrative of the normal mind we may take a hobby 
as a very good example of a strongly organized com- 
plex. If my hobby leads me to be interested in nature, 
I shall probably plan nature excursions and visits to 
museums whenever possible. My letters and my con- 
7 The prevailing tendency is to regard the complex as energized 
by unhealthy emotions. CAUSE OF MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
101 
versation will be full of illustrations from nature. I 
shall look out for nature articles in the newspapers 
which I am in the habit of reading. I shall choose 
pictures of country scenes for the adornment of the 
walls of my house, and designs based upon natural 
objects will characterize my furniture and other house- 
hold goods. A hobby is thus a strong "determining 
tendency." So is a strong prejudice. 
In the mature mind there are many such complexes, 
but they are usually harmonized and subordinated to 
the will of the full personality, those of lesser signifi- 
cance yielding to those of greater significance when 
the occasion requires it. The fanatic and the crank 
are examples of men who have sacrificed the harmony 
of an all-round development and wide culture to the 
desire for dominance on the part of one or two power- 
ful complexes. Thus we have the extreme rationalist, 
the man with a pronounced "logic" complex, who seeks 
to reduce all life to the expression of a single formula 
and pooh-poohs the ascription of any great importance 
to mere human feelings or aspiration.8 
During the evolution of the child's mind many com- 
plexes appear at one time or another, and attempt to 
claim control of the growing personality, but in normal 
cases each is in its turn found wanting as incapable of 
expressing the astonishingly wide variety of the child's 
8 We have also the moral idealist who is apt to over-emphasize 
the moral life. To assert the supremacy of the moral life, or the 
aesthetic activities, is to imply the inferiority of all the other 
functions of the mind. Surely virtue does not necessitate such 
unsatisfactory supremacies. PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
102 
interests. The culture-epoch theory of individual de- 
velopment emphasizes the existence of some of these 
complexes, as, for example, the hunting complex, the 
rivalry complex, the games complex, etc., all of which, 
however, have in face of the requirements of modern 
civilized life to surrender in turn their claims to 
supremacy. 
The strength and worth of our personality clearly 
depends upon the quality and organization of our com- 
plexes. Strong emotions, by definitely individualizing 
experiences, are apt to render such organization ex- 
tremely difficult. This explains why strong interests 
which happen to occupy the "dome" of consciousness 
at the moment of severe mental shock are rarely after- 
wards able to continue in their normal mode of associa- 
tion with the personality; the tendency, rather, is for 
dissociation to persist. Under most circumstances the 
strongly emotionalized complex may often obstinately 
block the path to harmony. 
One of the essential problems of the educator, it is 
agreed, is to build up a harmonious and stable person- 
ality out of the incompatible elements supplied by the 
egoistic impulses and often rival complexes of the 
individual mind. Left to themselves, the latter are 
apt to become undisciplined and rampant, and need to 
be "sublimated," the energy at their service being 
harnessed, as it were, to higher purposes. If we take 
the mental complex as roughly equivalent to the "sen- 
timent," as it is explained by McDougall in his Social 
Psychology, but remembering that the "complex" is the CAUSE OF MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
103 
"sentiment" when out of harmony with the main self, 
then, following McDougall, we shall see that the mas- 
ter sentiment which must dominate all the complexes if 
a stable personality is to result is the sentiment asso- 
ciated about the nuclear desire for self-control, a senti- 
ment which develops, as McDougall points out, within 
another sentiment, the self-regarding sentiment. Only 
so will the rival claims of the many lesser complexes 
which aspire to complete selfhood and to stamp the 
whole personality9 with their quality be effectually 
subordinated. 
Complexes give rise to another characteristic form 
of subconscious activity. Dr. Ernest Jones,10 the most 
distinguished of the English Freudians, speaks of it as 
the tendency to "rationalization." First we do things 
because we want to do them, and we find reasons for 
having wanted to do them afterwards. A person of 
keen shrewd insight never accepts a personal explana- 
tion merely at its face value, but always penetrates be- 
neath it and grasps the real motive should it happen 
to be concealed. It is useless, for example, for the 
lover to excuse himself to his mistress when he has 
failed to keep an appointment with her. The best 
rationalization in the world, if it is no more than a 
9 There is much confusion with regard to the meaning of the 
terms "personality," "individuality," and "character." We would 
suggest that individuality should be interpreted in a generic sense, 
to express the biological point of view, and that personality should 
stand for quantity of individuality, that is, for marked vital 
qualities, and character for quality of individuality, that is, for 
marked moral or immoral qualities. 
10 Collected Papers on Psychoanalysis, London, 1913. 104 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
rationalization, cannot conceal from her the patent 
fact that he used to surmount all difficulties in his en- 
deavours to keep his appointments, and that if he were 
still sufficiently eager to see her he would still dis- 
cover the ways and means of doing so. His compara- 
tive neglect is rightly construed as due to failing 
affection. 
We see the mechanism of rationalism at work very 
beautifully in the phenomena of post-hypnotic sugges- 
tion. If you hypnotize a person and suggest that upon 
regaining the waking state he will cross the room and 
open wide the windows, then at the time arranged he 
will carry out your suggestion without the least con- 
sciousness of the real origin of his action. And if you 
ask him afterwards why he has done so he will give 
you the soundest of reasons for his conduct: he will 
say, for example, "It was getting extremely hot and 
stuffy here, and as it is a fine day outside, I thought 
it would be a good thing to let in as much cool fresh air 
as possible." Some excellent examples of this tendency 
to rationalization are to be found in the New Testa- 
ment in the Parable of the Marriage Supper, in which 
are recounted the reasons given why one individual 
after another cannot accept the invitation held out to 
him. The same insincerity is the kernel of the French 
aphorism, "Qui s'excuse, s'accuse." 
Obviously, a strong, well-organized, and stable per- 
sonality need not necessarily be a completely moral one. 
A passage from the writings of President Vincent, of 
the University of Minnesota, may aptly be quoted CAUSE OF MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
105 
here. "Modem students of human nature have 
changed the old saying, 'Many men, many minds,' into 
the new dictum, 'One man, many selves.' There is 
much talk about multiple personality. Our complex life 
reflects itself in a composite person. A man is said to 
have as many selves as there are social groups of which 
he feels himself a member. To maintain a business 
self which can look a moral self straight in the eye, to 
have a theological self on good terms with a scientific 
self, to keep the peace between a party self and a 
patriotic self, to preserve in right relations a church 
self and a club self-such are the problems of many a 
man and woman." 
When the master complex, which has the desire for 
self-control as its nucleus, is weak in its authority, a 
conflict must inevitably arise among the turbulent com- 
plexes which make up the personality. A state of ten- 
sion develops which paralyzes activity. It is impera- 
tively essential to the maintenance of healthy mental 
life for some form of easeful equilibrium to be arrived 
at, and consequently the insubordinate complexes must 
either be modified so that their existence is no longer 
incompatible with that of the rest, or, though incom- 
patible still, they must be made to exist side by side, 
without coalescing, in the mind with their opponents, 
in "logic-tight" compartments, never coming face to 
face, so to speak, with one another. To aid in this 
reconciliation of opposing complexes, the reason is often 
employed unconsciously as the slave of the will. "If 
the will desires the end, the reason will find the means." 106 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
If we do not wish incompatible impulses or ideas to 
meet, and so inevitably clash, then the task of persuad- 
ing the personality that no real incompatibility exists 
must be resorted to. By a judicious selection of facts 
this is easily achieved. But such self-deception is 
merely a peace-at-any-price policy: it is a confession of 
weakness. Should a severe mental shock occur, then 
the armed neutrality existing among the conflicting 
mental complexes will disappear in favour of open 
warfare. It is therefore advisable to inculcate in 
children early in their life the ideal that their attitude 
towards their own impulses, ideas, and prejudices 
should be one of straightforward and frank criticism; 
they should be taught to distrust the tendency to 
rationalize all that they do; they must be brought to 
realize that the little cosmos of the mind is a pluralistic 
universe, and that the anti-social systems of interest 
that revolve therein must not be allowed to receive the 
support of the rational personality. This is not impos- 
sible. The child whom one sees to shrink from facing 
certain unpleasant facts can be brought to admire those 
who squarely face their difficulties. Stories of great 
men who did what they disliked can be tactfully intro- 
duced, and skilful association with the already existing 
ideal of himself in the child's mind effected. But art 
and example and not mere precept and initial talk are 
required.11 
11 In dealing with the idee fixe and its less powerful relatives 
the teacher should always prefer the Socratic method of attack 
to the direct frontal method. CAUSE OF MENTAL DISSOCIATION 
107 
In passing, we may note that another interesting 
aspect of the subject is revealed to us if we take up the 
standpoint of the crowd psychologist. Just as the 
normal social mind is superior in point of human value 
to the mob-mind, so its most effective instrument of 
expression, the individual consciousness, transcends the 
subconscious on which the mob-mind depends for its 
life. Thus the mob-mind and the sub-self are typically 
sub-human: we are really human only when they cease 
to initiate or direct trains of thought. We rise to our 
full stature but rarely, so rarely indeed that the pessi- 
mist in every age and clime has been able to point to 
man's general behaviour, and use it to illustrate a 
plausible tale of human nature's worthlessness. What 
is true, of course, is that the pessimist designates as 
typically human those sub-human qualities which we 
share in common with the lower animals. Had he but 
learnt to concentrate his attention upon the qualities 
which are characteristically human, upon the moral, 
intellectual, and aesthetic values which man has created 
and cherished against the pressure of an implacable 
fate, how difficult would have been his philosophy, and 
how paltry his pessimism appeared! 
It follows, then, that the sub-self must be effectually 
governed: the human individual must learn to control 
the sub-self and its system of anarchic complexes as 
the ideal statesman would rule a city. Discipline is 
essential if the human qualities are to find authentic 
voice. Thus educational method must aim at the 
strengthening of the child's conscious self-control. The 108 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
most stupid and futile educational method ever adopted 
is the not-yet-extinct taboo method of discipline, for, 
as we know now, no externally imposed bans can stamp 
out the complexes of the rebellious sub-self; indeed, 
their only deep effect upon the individual is the disas- 
trous one of permanently weakening the power of self- 
control. Only the conscious can control the subcon- 
scious, since it alone can fully understand its nature. 
What we require, therefore, is to encourage the child to 
adopt an attitude towards his own behaviour of im- 
partial examination. Around the driving impulses and 
passions a current of cool and steady criticism must be 
kept circulating continually in the engine of life if 
we wish to aim at power and progress. So, one's pur- 
pose will be clear and clean instead of muddled and 
blurred. 
§ 4. Historical Resume 
Psychotherapy has its roots in animal magnetism or 
mesmerisim, a method of suggestion and treatment 
which was introduced without much success to the 
French medical world in the eighteenth century by 
Franz Mesmer (1734-1815). lla 
James Braid of Manchester, twenty-eight years after 
the death of Mesmer, took up the study of mesmerism, 
and found it possible to induce sleep experimentally by 
persuading his patients to gaze steadily at a bright 
object of a suitable character held before them. It was 
Braid who named this process "hypnotism." Braid was 
lla The Power of the Mind over the Body, London, 1846. HISTORICAL RESUME 
109 
little more successful than Mesmer in converting his 
colleagues of the medical world to the value of his 
discovery. 
It was accordingly not till Liebault re-discovered the 
process of hypnotism and, with his disciple Bernheim 
of Nancy, spread the doctrine that hypnotism is merely 
another aspect of suggestion, that interest in the sub- 
ject was at all maintained. Bernheim successfully dem- 
onstrated the resemblance which exists between the 
phenomena of hypnotism and those of hysteria, and 
thus began the era of the psychological study of ab- 
normal mental states which has been so striking a fea- 
ture of the modern advance in the curative treatment 
of mind. 
Charcot,12 Director of the Salpetriere, who did an 
immense amount of work with hysterical subjects, dis- 
covered that in the first place their symptoms were due 
to the influence of certain painful ideas which had 
dropped out of consciousness. He never, however, 
made therapeutic use of this fact, but continued the 
older physical methods of treatment. Yet his discov- 
ery was epoch-making, for it was the seed of which the 
psychoanalytic theory and all modern psychotherapy are 
the fruit. Pierre Janet, Charcot's distinguished pupil, 
developed his master's conceptions. He discovered 
that if these disintegrating ideas could be brought back 
into the consciousness of the hysteric, then by sug- 
gesting that the occasion of their origin was a shock 
which had been misinterpreted as being far more harm- 
12 CEuvres completes, Paris, 1886-1890. PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
110 
ful than it really was, the symptoms could be made to 
disappear. Charcot and Janet discovered, too, that 
when patients w'ere hypnotized a greater range of 
memories was made accessible to them; that it even 
became quite possible, therefore, for the hypnotized 
patient to recall the forgotten experience in which the 
symptoms originated. 
Janet, as we have said, put forward the theory that 
what occurs in hysteria is a disintegration of the 
nervous conditions of mental unity or synthesis: so 
that there is a splitting of consciousness into irrecon- 
cilable part-processes, the painful ones disappearing 
altogether from the field of conscious attention. Janet 
endeavoured to produce ideas by suggestion which 
would counter-attack and obliterate the painful ideas 
which had caused the disintegration. For example, one 
of Janet's patients, named by him Marie, suffered con- 
stantly from some form of hysterical ailment, usually 
from a general loss of sensation, but very frequently 
from a complete blindness of the left eye. In the state 
of hypnosis one day Marie recollected that at the age 
of six she had been compelled to sleep much against 
her will, with another child who had the left side of her 
face covered with scrofula. This event had caused an 
extremely powerful emotional disturbance. Soon after 
this Marie had developed the same ailment, and when 
her scrofula disappeared, it left behind a loss of sen- 
sation in the left side of the face, with blindness in the 
left eye. At the stage when this memory of the scrofu- 
lous child was revived, Janet suggested that the ex- HISTORICAL RESUME 
111 
perience was, after all, not a very harmful one, and 
immediately he awakened Marie he found her to be 
normal-sighted. Janet improved upon Charcot, then, 
by making therapeutic use of suggestion; Freud, as we 
shall see, improved in turn upon Janet, by dropping 
suggestion and making fuller use of self-activity in the 
use of the revivified memories connected with painful 
experiences which had dropped out of memory. 
With his masteh, Josef Breuer, Freud investigated 
the very interesting symptoms of a hysterical girl 
patient and published the results in 1895.13 This patient 
of Breuer and Freud was a girl who suffered severely 
from paralysis and anaesthesia in the limbs on the right 
side of the body, and from squinting and coughing. 
One day while she was sitting on the edge of her fath- 
er's bed-she was in a very unbalanced condition of 
mind because of the critical condition of her father's 
health-she saw in imagination a snake which she 
thought was about to bite her, and she found to her 
horror that, when she attempted to ward it off, the 
fingers of her own hands changed into snakes, too, 
each crowned with a "death's head." Many other 
hallucinations and other abnormalities characterized her 
behaviour. After the death of her father she became 
more normal, but, nevertheless, frequently dropped 
back into an abnormal state, during which she lived 
unconsciously, once again, through the events con 
nected with the death of her father. Breuer whispered 
13 Studien uber Hysteric, 1895. 112 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
to the girl upon one occasion while she was in a hyp- 
notic state some words which she had uttered in one of 
her unconscious trances, and she was able to give quite 
a long, intelligible and emotional account of the cir- 
cumstances originally connected in her memory with 
these words. This method was found, whenever re- 
peated, to result in the disappearance of the hysterical 
symptoms, just as the symptoms had disappeared when 
Janet suggested that they were representative of a 
shock which was terrible only in appearance. But the 
difference in the methods was important. In the case 
of Marie it was the physician (Janet) who took the 
step of initiating the cure, whereas in the cases treated 
by Breuer and Freud it was the patients themselves 
who advanced through self-activity towards their own 
cures without any suggestion from the physicians that 
they were doing so. Breuer and Freud found that it 
could be stated as a general truth that if the memories 
connected with the origin of a hysterical symptom 
could be recalled by the patient under the stress of as 
much of the original excitement as possible, and re- 
viewed calmly and rationally, then the symptoms dis- 
appeared. Thus in the above case an aversion to the 
drinking of water disappeared when the patient recol- 
lected that it first showed itself when a dirty little dog 
had drunk from her glass at a moment when she was 
unable to object adequately. This method of Freud 
and Breuer was named by Breuer the "cathartic" 
method, and the corresponding emotional process in 
the patient was called "abreaction." HISTORICAL RESUME 
113 
Thousands of shell-shock cases in the late war were 
cured by the employment of the "cathartic" method. 
In calmer moments, under the influence of hypnotism, 
and supported by the sympathy of tactful and capable 
physicians, soldiers were enabled to re-live through 
their terrible mind-shattering experiences, and to 
realize that the mental and physical injuries which they 
had received were simply due to emotional shock and 
temporary rather than permanent. Usually at this point 
they recovered with startling completeness. Let us 
repeat, then, that the main point of difference between 
Janet on the one hand and Breuer and Freud on the 
other was this, that Janet stopped short at suggesting 
that the shock in which the symptoms had originated 
was harmless, while Breuer and Freud always allowed 
the patient to effect his own cure by revivifying and 
working off the pent-up emotional excitement con- 
nected with the painful experience which was the essen- 
tial cause of the shock. What the hysteric and the 
neurotic both lack is the will-to-live-efficiently, and 
since Janet's method of suggestion did not appeal to 
this factor, it was not permanently effective. 
As Freud studied his data more carefully, this self- 
activity in the process of the cure became the central 
feature of his treatment, and psychoanalysis, which up 
to this time had not existed as a definite technique, was 
developed by him to aid this self-activity. Hypnotism 
and suggestion were consequently thrown aside deliber- 
ately because of the great disadvantages which they PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
were found to possess. Freud, with his acutely pene- 
trating and analytical ability, has since developed the 
psychoanalytic method still further, and adapted it for 
application to a far wider field than is represented by 
the symptoms of markedly abnormally-minded people. 
It has been used therapeutically in connection with less 
definitely abnormal habits, such as untruth fulness, 
alcoholism, cruelty to animals and to children, to eradi- 
cate aversion to work or to foods, and to help those 
who suffer on account of unhappy marriages or because 
of religious troubles. As an explanatory hypothesis 
it has been applied to wit, to literary criticism (e.g., 
Hamlet), to the elucidation of the psychology of his- 
torical personages (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci, Nelson, 
Darwin), to questions of folk-lore and religion. In 
all these extensions of the application of the psycho- 
analytic method Freud has been the brilliant pio- 
neer. 
The details of Freud's psychoanalytic method were 
elaborated, as we have said, to make up for the short- 
comings of the cathartic method, and to help the pa- 
tient to understand for himself, more completely, his 
unconscious motives. To be more precise, it was be- 
cause he found that hypnotism increased, in a great 
many cases, the resistance of the patient to his own 
cure. Freud found that as often as not the patient 
actually resented getting well. The great fear, indeed, 
of every neurotic is that he may have to leave the com- 
paratively safe defence which he has constructed 
through his symptoms against the buffetings of an un- 
114 HISTORICAL RESUME 
115 
friendly and implacable reality. You may reason with 
him, but the quality of his instincts has already decided 
his attitude. Instinct and reason are usually at daggers 
drawn in the little cosmos of the neurotic soul. 
An interesting account of a straightforward analy- 
sis in the Freudian manner may be quoted from an 
article by Mary Alden Hopkins {Child Study, April, 
1916) 
"When a little girl was seven years old, a queer 
habit of smacking her lips grew beyond control. At 
the same time she developed a curious way of walk- 
ing. Her mother tried in vain to break her of these 
habits. 
"A doctor treated her for St. Vitus's dance. Under 
his care she grew much better, but the lip noises and 
jerkings would sometimes come back when she was 
tired or excited. After a while a psychoanalyst became 
interested in her. (A psychoanalyst is a neurologist 
who treats nervous diseases by analysing the subcon- 
scious mind of the patient.) Her analyst sought the 
reason why she smacked her lips and limped. He 
knew that to attempt to repress these outward signs 
without finding what lay behind them was like trying 
to stop a headache without knowing whether it came 
from the stomach or the eyes. The analyst picked her 
up on his knee and asked:- 
" 'Why do you smack your lips ?' 
"She considered the matter with her head tipped 
on one side. 
" 'I don't know,' she replied; 'I cannot help it.' 116 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
" 'Of course you can't,' agreed the analyst, 'but it 
would be interesting to know why you do it. You 
know, there is a reason for everything.' 
"At first she couldn't remember when the habit 
began. But the analyst had patience and tact, and 
knew a great deal about children. After a time she 
recalled the beginning. Two years before, her mother 
had told her the reason she must always have her win- 
dow open at night was because she mustn't breathe the 
same air twice. When she breathed it in it was good 
air, but when she breathed it out it was bad air. She 
drew an unexpected inference from this lesson in 
hygiene. She thought that since she was for ever mak- 
ing- good air into bad she was injuring the air. 'Per- 
haps,' she thought, 'I can kiss it well again, the way 
mother kisses my bumps well.' Then began the funny 
smacking noises-little healing kisses to the air. The 
habit became automatic. It continued long after she 
had forgotten the reason. 
"Next the analyst found out about the stooping 
motion. She was afraid she hurt the floor when she 
stepped on it. Perhaps, she thought, if she touched it 
gently now and again the floor would understand how 
sorry she was. The analyst did not laugh at the child. 
He explained in simple words the chemistry of air and 
the senselessness of wood. When the reason for the 
kisses and the touches was removed the emotions 
ceased-somewhat as the rash disappears when the 
measles are cured." 
In another respect Freud's conceptions changed. HISTORICAL RESUME 
117 
Originally, he was of the opinion that the cause of the 
appearance of hysterical and neurotic symptoms was 
to be sought in a severe disturbance of the mental 
equilibrium. Later, he threw aside the traumatic or 
"shock" theory, and came to the conclusion which has 
made so vital a difference to psychology as a science 
that all mental abnormalities are due to the mechanism 
of "repression." Repression comes into play whenever 
a conflict between incompatible wishes or feelings 
appears.14 
According to Freud, it is when the clash of conflict- 
ing systems is fierce and the emotional stress severe 
that the possibility of mental "disintegration," "dis- 
sociation," or "disaggregation" occurs. Freud holds 
that in such cases of conflict the complex which is re- 
pugnant to the main personality is thrust down out of 
consciousness, deliberately kept there, and not allowed 
to appear in the daylight of the conscious mind again. 
There is an agency which effects this "repression," 
which Freud calls the "censor" or the "censure" (die 
Zensur). It exists as a barrier between the conscious 
and the unconscious, and it prevents memories which 
are painful to the personality from rising into clear 
consciousness. The conception is more or less figura- 
tive, and we can more accurately think of it as an inhi- 
bition set up by the conventional or ethical ideals of 
the individual against those impulses and ideas which 
14 Nietzsche emphasized the fact of repression quite lucidly 
when he wrote: " 'That have I done,' says my Memory. 'That 
have I not done,' says my Pride, and remains inexorable. Finally 
Memory yields." 118 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
are antagonistic to them. Freud holds even that most 
of the forgetting which occurs in our ordinary everyday 
life is due to the deliberate action of the censor. The 
pathological cases of hysteria and psychasthenia pro- 
vide examples of the same phenomenon. For example, 
in the case of Irene quoted above, Freud would say 
that the ideas connected with her mother's death formed 
a complex which was intolerably painful to the person- 
ality. To get rid of the possibility of a repetition of 
the emotional disaster which had threatened to destroy 
her mind entirely, the mechanism of repression was 
brought into play, and the highly emotionalized and 
repugnant complex was thrust out from consciousness 
altogether. Hence, when Irene was impelled to be 
somnambulistic, she was unconscious. A compromise 
was effected which satisfied both the conscious and the 
unconscious. But, according to Freud, the complex 
does not disappear when it is thrust down into the 
depths of the mind; it merely sinks into the uncon- 
scious, where, in its ceaseless struggles to regain ex- 
pression, it works untold mischief to the mind. The 
unconscious consists in its origin of the memories of 
very early childhood, which are repressed by the child 
because they are found to be the cause of pain. All 
subsequent impulses and ideas that are repressed unite 
with them, and together the original and the later re- 
pressed tendencies make repeated attempts at irruption 
into consciousness. Wit and humour, according to 
Freud, represent sudden irruptions of this pent-up 
psychic energy into expression, and ''satisfy" tliem- HISTORICAL RESUME 
119 
selves in a form (as, for example, the jest of double 
entendre) which eludes the vigilance of the Mrs. 
Grundy-like censor.15 If the resistance to expression 
is very strong, however, there may be effected a com- 
promise, such that the desire for expression on the part 
of the repressed complex is satisfied, as well as the 
desire for peace on the part of the main personality. 
In the case of Irene, the somnambulism represented this 
kind of compromise. Freud views the symptoms of all 
hysterical and psychasthenic subjects as compromise 
formations: anaesthesias, hemianaethesias, hyperaesthe- 
sias, hallucinations, obsessions, and delusions on the 
sensory side of behaviour, and spasms, convulsions, and 
the various kinds of paralysis on the motor side. These 
may be paralleled, Freud thinks, in the case of normal 
persons, with the act of dreaming, which is a compro- 
mise between the desire on the part of the dreamer 
to sleep and the desire of the unconscious to assert 
itself. 
It must be said that Freud has given a new life to 
the old doctrine that only the good man is "free." 
Only, indeed, the man whose complexes are perfectly 
harmonized and at peace with one another can know the 
peace that "passeth all understanding." But the science 
of mental hygiene is still in its infancy. What must be 
clearly understood is that Freud's psychological theoriz- 
15 The censor is not an all-enlightened "being"; he may be 
regarded as often nothing more than the expression of "social 
prejudice" engaged in putting up a barrage of hostile fire which 
prevents new ideas from entering the mind. PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
120 
ing as described above is distinct from the crudities of 
practice illustrated in the work of many of his disciples. 
§ 5. Dreams 16 and Their Significance 
As his theory of the nature of the dream-conscious- 
ness reveals Freud's point of view very clearly, some of 
16 A passage from The Idiot, by Dostoevsky, may be here very 
aptly cited, since it suggests admirably the experiences of the 
average dreamer. "Sometimes one dreams strange, impossible, 
and incredible dreams; on awakening you remember them and 
are amazed at a strange fact. You remember first of all that your 
reason did not desert you throughout the dream; you remember 
even that you acted very cunningly and logically through all that 
long, long time, while you were surrounded by murderers who 
deceived you, hid their intentions, behaved amicably to you while 
they had a weapon in readiness, and were only waiting for some 
signal; you remember how cleverly you deceived them at last, 
hiding from them; then you guessed that they'd seen through 
your deception and were only pretending not to know where you 
were hidden; but you were sly then and deceived them again; 
all this you remember clearly. But how was it that you could 
at the same time reconcile your reason to the obvious absurdities 
and impossibilities with which your dream was overflowing? One 
of your murderers turned into a woman before your eyes, and 
the woman into a little, sly, loathsome dwarf-and you accepted 
it all at once as an accomplished fact, almost without the slightest 
surprise, at the very time when, on another side, your reason 
was at its highest tension and showed extraordinary power, cun- 
ning, sagacity, and logic. And why, too, on waking up and fully 
returning to reality, do you feel almost every time, and some- 
times with extraordinary intensity, that you have left something 
unexplained behind with the dream? You laugh at the absurdi- 
ties of your dream, and at the same time you feel that inter- 
woven with those absurdities some thought lies hidden, and a 
thought that is real, something belonging to your actual life, 
something that exists and has always existed in your heart. It's 
as though something new, prophetic, that you were awaiting has 
been told you in your dream. Your impression is vivid, it may 
be joyful or agonizing, but what it is, and what was said to you, 
you cannot understand or recall." DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
121 
its aspects are here briefly set out. In the Traumdeu- 
tung Freud gives an historical summary of the various 
theories about dreams which had been held previously 
to his own, and shows that no rigorously scientific at- 
tempt had been made to examine the psychological 
data which they provided. The nearest approaches to 
the scientific method had been made by the physiolo- 
gists, and were the expressions of a kind of medical 
materialism, such as that, for example, which traced 
dreams to an increase or a decrease in the supply of 
blood to the cerebral cortex and the consequent ab- 
normal excitability of the accompanying mental proc- 
esses. The problems, however, which attracted Freud 
were those psychic problems which could not be satis- 
factorily accounted for by any materialistic theory, 
namely, why the dream should exhibit marks of definite 
structure, why only one set of memory images rather 
than another should appear, why the memories of early 
childhood should play such an important role, and why 
obliviscence should so completely follow the act of 
dreaming, just as already, in the cases of hysteria with 
which he had been working, he had been eager to 
know why just this symptom rather than that should 
function. Freud's explanations involve a conception 
of unconscious memory which treats it as being far 
more than a register of past events. Every dream, 
according to Freud's explanation, is a deliberate psychic 
act, and is the expression and satisfaction of a "wish" 
or purpose, or interest. In the majority of cases the 
wish is one which has been disapproved of by the wak- 122 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
ing consciousness and repressed. The fulfilment of the 
wish through the agency of the dream is disguised in 
accordance with definite rules. Corresponding with 
the "manifest content" of the dream there is always 
the veiled "latent content" 17 in which lies wrapped up 
the core of the dream's meaning, and when it is dis- 
covered by the method of psychoanalysis it is invariably 
found to be the expression of some "wish." 18 Dream 
images must therefore be taken symbolically. 
The "manifest content" is made up generally of 
memories from the immediate past life of the dreamer 
mingled with those of very early childhood, and the 
association of ideas is very loose and superficial, in 
many cases reaching to the point of absurdity. Actual 
sensory disturbances which may occur are interwoven 
with the material of the dream when not of sufficient 
intensity to awaken the dreamer. The wish involved 
in the dream, like the painful complex in the case of 
hysteria, is one which is incompatible with the social 
ideals of the waking personality. It is usually found 
to be entangled with a portion of the unpleasant but 
conquered soul-life of the child. The censor is still 
active in the dream process, but less vigilant than in 
the waking life. If only the repressed wishes can dis- 
guise themselves, they will be able to slip past the cen- 
17 Maeder in The Dream Problem suggests that Freud was led 
unconsciously to over-emphasize the importance of the latent 
content because previous students had almost missed its signifi- 
cance. 
18 Freud seems to have been unfortunate here in his termi- 
nology. A "wish" is a conscious act, and to speak of an "un- 
conscious wish" is of doubtful value. DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
123 
sor and so rise into the twilight of dream-consciousness, 
where they can enjoy a brief existence, which affords 
a substitute for the life of the daylight consciousness. 
There are two characteristics of dreams which aid 
expression of this type. One is "condensation" by 
which, through a happy choice of material for the 
manifest content, the dream fulfils several wishes in 
one short experience.19 The manifest content is, we 
may say, the intersecting point from which various 
associations diverge in different ways. The second 
characteristic is "displacement," which consists in an 
alteration of the relative importance of the dream ele- 
ments, a "shifting of the psychic accent" from that sig- 
nificant part of the dream which veils the essential 
purpose of the whole thing to another and more 
insignificant element which is offered to the censor as 
the central idea of the dream. A distortion is thus pro- 
duced which readily deludes the censor into allowing the 
soul of the dream a compromise form of expression. A 
tendency to rationalize the manifest content is also 
noticeable, the tendency towards "secondary elabora- 
tion" as Freud calls it. There is also the tendency to- 
wards "dramatization," or towards vivid pictorial 
presentation. 
19 With regard to the concept of "condensation," it may be 
said that literature has room for it as well as psychology. The 
poetic art consists in the structure of images which form inter- 
secting points from which several trains of association lead off, 
conscious and unconscious. Their manifest contents may have 
little significance, but their unconscious associations will excite 
in the mind emotions of a subtle and indefinable nature: through 
them the unutterable will almost tremble into expression. 124 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
Another of Freud's contributions to the science of 
psychology is his distinction between the "preconscious" 
and the "unconscious." The former comprises the less 
significant everyday memories which fade very quickly 
and are forgotten, though if, while in the preconscious 
"region" of the mind, they can attract attention to 
themselves they will probably pass over into active ex- 
pression. The unconscious comprises the memories 
and mental processes of early childhood which have 
been repressed but still retain their power of influencing 
conduct by transferring their "energy" to analogous 
ideas repressed from the preconscious.20 Ideas, there- 
fore, may fail to reach consciousness because they are 
lacking in significance, or because they have too much 
significance, and this of a painful kind. The wishes 
of the adult consciousness, even when repressed, are 
seldom, in Freud's view, intense enough to motive the 
formation of any dream, and in most cases, if not in all, 
need the co-operation of the infantile wishes already 
mentioned. The "infantile unconscious" can do nothing 
but wish: it knows no form of inhibition; it is entirely 
non-moral. In the early period of life it was the only 
form of psychic experience. With the appearance of 
self-consciousness, however, there began an inhibition 
of tendencies which met with the disapproval of the 
conventional and ethical personality which was evolv- 
ing. The inhibiting force is the embryo censor; it 
may be compared with the "traditions of the herd" 
20 The "unconscious" is thus a psychic Circe in whose presence 
all our ideas are apt to lose their better forms. DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
125 
which Trotter speaks of as inhibiting primary wants 
and lusts. What is repressed consists, according to 
Freud's opinion, of sexual tendencies. Dr. William 
Brown21 thinks that fears, anxieties, and antipathies 
may equally well form the raw material of the uncon- 
scious. Dr. Bernard Hart22 speaks of the struggle 
between the "ego" and the "herd" tendencies as a fun- 
damental type of conflict. Jung agrees with Freud 
that neuroses, dreams, and insanities all spring from 
internal conflicts, but while Freud traces the cause of 
all neuroses back to the existence of repressed infan- 
tile sexual factors which have never ceased to operate 
unconsciously, Jung23 holds that the cause is essen- 
tially a present conflict, a defeat of the will to live, an 
inability to adapt oneself to the requirements of the 
present moment, which leads to a "regression" of the 
mental energy into a channel of service which has al- 
ready been forsaken. Jung's theory posits as an ex- 
planatory principle a "libido," a life force, a "will-to- 
live" which is egoistic and pugnacious. It first ex- 
presses itself in the instincts of nutrition and self- 
preservation, later in the sexual tendencies, and finally 
in the whole multiplicity of human interests, as notably, 
for example, literature, art, music, religion, and the 
drama, forms which are intimately connected in their 
origins with the idealization of sex. 
21 Psychology and Psychotherapy, London, 1922. 
22 The Psychology of Insanity, Cambridge, England. 
23 Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, London, 1917. 
Psychology of the Unconscious, New York, 1916. 126 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
Just as Freud was moved by the desire for consist- 
ency and completeness to explain dreams in the expe- 
rience of normal people by the same principles as he 
had used for the explanation of the symptoms of his 
hysterical patients, and introduced the sexual factor 
into the dream, because he found it in hysteria, so in 
the same way, perhaps, Jung felt compelled to explain 
the psychic activities of the race in its childhood by the 
same principles as those which explain the conduct of the 
more civilized individual. Jung speaks, therefore of 
the myth and the fable as being the dream of a peo- 
ple: it is a fragment "from the infantile soul-life of 
the race." But in order to sustain the conjecture, both 
of the sexual origin of the dream and of the myth and 
the fable, certain of the images which are embodied in 
dreams, myths, and fables must be interpreted symbol- 
ically and we must agree that there are typical symbols 
in the fixed meanings. Around the Freudian interpre- 
tation of this alleged symbolism, much violent criticism 
has centred, and this part of psychoanalytic theory 
must remain no more than a brilliant hypothesis until 
further positive and supporting evidence is forthcom- 
ing. The idea that we think in "pictures" in the dream 
because we have insufficient control of our thought- 
processes in this barely conscious state is equally prob- 
able. What is important for the consideration of the 
educator as arising out of the theories of Freud is the 
fact that the child, in some very definite way, becomes 
a double-minded creature in early life, with strongly 
formed inhibitions. He will perform actions at the age DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
127 
of two which he will view with disgust at the age of 
four, and at the age of ten he will regard with contempt 
many of those activities which he engaged in with 
zest at the age of five. 
Abnormal psychology has demonstrated, too, the 
permanence of the experience and memories of the first 
years of life, and the consequence must be that more 
and more attention will be paid in the future to the 
right training of the child during this period, so that he 
will emerge from it with as small an amount of uncon- 
scious energy' opposed to the main interests of the 
mind as possible. 
It is essential, therefore, for those engaged in the 
training of the immature mind to realize that the young 
child has ethical and practical standards very different 
from those of the adult, and that it will take delight in, 
and experience fear at, things which by the adult are 
treated with complete indifference. Hence the funda- 
mental need for imagination and sympathy in dealing 
with the weaknesses and shortcomings of the child. 
Why things are being done by the child is much more 
important for the consideration of the parent and the 
teacher than actually what things the child is doing. 
Many of their methods of correction and help will then 
appear very crude and futile, if not, indeed, positively 
cruel. The "latent content" of the activity must be 
thought about, as well as the "manifest content." We 
may quote two passages which emphasize the right and 
the wrong ways of treating the experiences of the child, 
the wrong method serving to deepen the tendency to the 128 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
formation of double-mindedness and the right method 
helping to render the psychic life of the child a har- 
monious entity. In The Research Magnificent Mr. 
H. G. Wells writes about one of the childish dreams 
of the hero as follows:- 
"In my dreams that night he (the tiger) stalked me. 
I made my frozen flight from him, I slammed the door 
on him, and he thrust his paw through a panel as 
though it had been paper and clawed for me. The paw 
got longer and longer. ... I screamed so loudly that 
my father came up from his study. I remember that 
he took me in his arms. 'It's only a big sort of Pussy, 
Poff,' he said. 'Felis tigris. Felis, as you knowr, 
means cat.' 
"But I knew better. I was in no mood then for my 
father's insatiable pedagoguery. 
" 'And my little son mustn't be a coward.' 
"After that I understood that I must keep silence and 
bear my tigers alone. 
"For years the thought of that tiger's immensity 
haunted my mind. In my dreams I cowered before it 
a thousand times; in the dusk it rarely failed me." 
This passage illustrates very well the normal adult 
attitude towards the childish fancies. The result can- 
not be other than to confirm the tendency to the forma- 
tion of a strong and secretive inner life which the child 
does not like to face, because he feels it to be out of 
harmony with the rest of his personality. This 
dilemma often ends, in the opinion of Freud, in the DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
compromise-formations which we term nasty habits, 
such as the biting of nails, the boring of noses and ears 
with the fingers, the sucking of the thumbs, fidget- 
ing, etc. 
It will be clear to most readers, however, that not 
all dreams are Freudian in meaning, though they may, 
through the interpretation of their symbolistic images, 
be made to appear so. Many are but echoes of our 
general mental unrest. Other dreams are but the re- 
vivification of old emotions aroused by recent associa- 
tions. This type of dream is common among young 
children, and we advise strongly the close study of 
their night fears. To quote an example of what may 
be done in this way. 
One of the children of the writer, a boy of nearly 
four, awoke one night and shouted for his mother, to 
tell her that he had experienced a nasty dream. His 
sister, a little older, was awakened by the noise he made, 
and on learning the cause, advised him to send for his 
father, who, she said, "would know how to make him 
better." Fear overcame the mother complex and I was 
invited to see him. The account and analysis of the 
dream which occurred are, somewhat compressed, as 
follows, the remarks of the writer being placed in 
parentheses. 
"Quite a lot of things keep falling." (Are they like 
anything you have ever seen ?) "They are all pointed." 
(What do they make you think of?) "They make me 
think of those bootscrapers at the garden door." 
(They have nasty long points, and I have seen you 
129 130 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
playing with them. Have you ever hurt yourself with 
them?) "Yes, I did today. But look at those flies on 
the ceiling: they won't go away." (I can't see any.) 
"Yes, look. I can see three. They are that daddy- 
longlegs sort." (Have you been dreaming about 
them?) "Yes, I saw them all the time. I think they 
are nasty things." (Why?) "They are so big." 
(When you look at them, what do they make you 
think about?) "Nothing." (Nothing? Do they look 
like anything you have ever seen?) "No. They look 
as big as aeroplanes sometimes." (Were they there 
when the pointed things were falling?) "Yes." 
At this point the unconnected images of the flies and 
bootscrapers can easily be seen to form a single whole. 
We have here revived in a disguised form an old 
memory of an air raid with its aeroplanes and falling 
bombs, for which the freshly gained unpleasant expe- 
rience of bootscrapers and flies is used in substitution 
for the older images which would have caused the 
"censor" to refuse expression to an experience which 
had already caused pain and been repressed. The 
reader must accept the assurance of the writer that the 
child on discovering the cause of the dream seemed 
to realize that there was no further danger of air raids 
(the war being over), and dropped off to sleep very 
happily. 
The more recent speculations of Rivers suggest that 
Jung may be right in his view of the dream and of 
mental disorder as due to regression. The extraor- DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
131 
dinarily fine physiological work of Head 24 and his suc- 
cessors has shown us that the nervous system is built up 
of sub-systems co-ordinated and controlled by the cere- 
bral cortex, graded in a discriminative sensitivity and 
in power and delicacy of response to outer stimulus. 
Under strain we are apt to lose the grip over reality 
which we have secured by dint of strenuous thought and 
exercise, so that we have our "off days" as we call them. 
We "slip a system," as it were, and use a coarser reaction. 
There is ground for believing in corresponding varie- 
ties of consciousness associated with the principal stages 
of evolution in the organization of this complex nervous 
system. Speaking generally, we may say that the ex- 
periences and emotions of childhood and infancy are 
correlated with earlier developments in the nervous sys- 
tem. This being so, it is easy to understand that when 
we sleep and the conscious faculties are in abeyance, 
there is a tendency to carry on with the older apparatus 
with which the memories of childhood are associated. 
We still retain our problems in sleep, but we attempt to 
solve them by means of more obsolete weapons. We 
think and feel in terms of caricature rather than reality. 
Rivers has found support for this view in his own 
dreams which, while different in any single night, have 
yet proved to be centred round one problem only 
which analysis has shown to be that in which he had 
been pre-occupied on the preceding day. 
This view is not essentially different from that of 
24 References and summaries are to be found in Instinct and the 
Unconscious, W. H. R. Rivers, Cambridge, England, 1921. 132 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
Jung who sees in the dream a revival of a primitive 
mode of thinking, the only one of which man was 
originally capable. This being so, the analyst does not 
so much need to get the interpretation past the "censor" 
as to explain the distorted, archaic, infantile images of 
the dream into language which the subject finds no 
difficulty in understanding. Jung finds that those whose 
conscious life is almost wholly occupied with the things 
of the moment have frequently a tendency to take the 
"longer view" in dreams. This is what he means by 
speaking of the dream as usually "prospective." It 
would be idle to deny that many dreams do definitely 
fall within this category, and are of the nature of 
parables. 
An example of this type of dream is the following: 
A man whom we will call Jones sat impassively at 
home one day while a domestic difference arose in his 
presence and developed into a bitter dispute. The 
protagonists were his wife's sister and a visitor staying 
in the house, and Jones's wife was distinctly annoyed 
that they should show her so little consideration by 
quarrelling in her presence. The quarrel need not have 
arisen at all had Jones exercised an ordinary amount 
of self-assertion in his previous conduct. That night 
he dreamed that he heard the visitor leaving her bed- 
room and going downstairs. A few seconds later he 
heard her crying out, "Quick! There's a man in the 
house!" (How ridiculous it was, he remembers think- 
ing, to risk waking up the children in such circum- 
stances by shouting.) "He's standing on his head," DREAMS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 
133 
the voice continued. Not yet disturbed in the slightest 
degree, Jones wondered why the woman couldn't come 
up and tell them about it quietly instead of remaining 
downstairs and shrieking hysterically. Then the 
words came, and they seemed quite dramatic, "And 
he's got the keys of the house in his pocket!" Just at 
that moment Jones's wife stirred in her sleep, and 
Jones interpreted the movement as marking her inten- 
tion of getting up to investigate the matter. He im- 
mediately became seized with a strange fear, and 
awoke trembling with anxiety, but hardly knowing for 
some time whether he was in the real world or not. 
Now, a careful analysis of that dream, in the course of 
which Jones allowed his thoughts to take whatever 
direction they would from the starting-point set them 
by each of the dream images, revealed to the dreamer 
the fact which he had long been unwilling to admit even 
to himself that it was his wife and not he who was the 
one to initiate action when things had to be done which 
concerned them both; his fear following upon her 
stirring reminded him sharply of this truth. Again, 
on the previous day he had imagined, to soothe his own 
vanity, that he was displaying a superior wisdom in 
not interfering in the quarrel; the others were wrong, 
he alone was right. This attitude of superiority was 
displayed, too, at the beginning of his dream. But in 
the dream it was the man-and suddenly he felt with 
a sure instinct that this man represented himself, for 
he held the keys of the house-who was impotently 
stuck upside down on his head while the others were 134 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
behaving sensibly. A satisfactory explanation of a 
dream like this, although it may not be the entire ex- 
planation, comes to the dreamer with all the emotional 
shock of a genuine revelation. Jones was thereafter 
to take himself rigorously in hand.25 I have inter- 
preted this material at what the Zurich School would 
call the objective level. Though a deeper analysis of 
the material as symbolic would probably have elicited 
Freudian associations of an infantile and sexual char- 
acter, one must be allowed to question the advisability 
of tracking these down when the dreamer is not se- 
riously abnormal. If we go further with our study 
and ask ourselves what in essence constitutes the intui- 
tion and imagination of the artist, shall we find them in 
any form which is very distinct from that here described 
as the enlightened unconscious ? 
§ 6. Psychoanalysis and "Word Association" 
The process of psychoanalysis, to which we have al- 
ready referred, depends for its success upon the fact 
that memories which are inaccessible under ordinary 
circumstances will often rise to consciousness if the 
patient adopts an attitude of mental laxity, of uncriti- 
cal reverie; that is, if he allows associations to form 
freely without any kind of attempt at inhibiting those 
that seem irrelevant, insignificant, or unworthy, so that 
the unconscious trends of interest may come to domi- 
nate the mental process and the censor consequently 
cease to function. The censor needs the full support 
25 See Brain, 1911, 1912, 1916, 1917, 1918. "WORD ASSOCIATION" 
135 
of the conscious personality to repress the ideas of the 
unconscious, and in the absence of the censor these 
ideas may irrupt into the realm of the preconscious. 
The patient may then, with the help of the psycho- 
analyst, who has formed a theory of the probable cause 
of the symptoms and knows therefore in what direc- 
tions to guide the associations, be led to face his painful 
memories-to see them in the light of reason and in 
the absence of the disturbing emotions which attended 
their birth. He will be able to re-live through the 
painful experience, but on a higher psychic level and 
with shock-absorbing counter-ideas, and so he will be 
able to control its expression. "A conflict removed to a 
higher level is a conflict partly solved." Thus he will 
be enabled to render the complex mobile and organ- 
izable, and the symptoms will become resolved. 
Psychoanalysis in dream interpretation breaks up the 
dream into its elements and follows up the associations 
until those are found which represent the hidden com- 
plexes which the mind does not like to face openly. 
Sleep may "knit up the ravelled sleave of care" for the 
time being, but it is a fully enlightened psychoanalysis 
which must be called in to re-fashion the soul's vesture 
into a new form. 
As we have already said, some people find the prob- 
lem of adaptation to their social environment so diffi- 
cult, that they give it up, and shrink back to infantilism 
and dependence. But the normal adaptable person 
passes through the various stages of mental growth and 
its accompanying new adaptation safely enough: he 136 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
learns to repress certain emotions and instincts, and to 
switch off all his mental energy into activities which 
are socially approved. The neurotic lacks the mental 
virility to deal successfully with all the varying occur- 
rences of civilized life. The strain of industrial and 
economic conditions is exceedingly severe in its effects 
upon him. We find usually, then, that, as a result, he 
retreats to a former level of satisfaction, and his emo- 
tions and energy become canalized in certain stereo- 
typed habits. It is in the serviceable recanalization of 
the neurotic's energy that the most difficult part of the 
psychoanalyst's task lies; it calls for all the skill and 
courage at his command. As the analysis progresses 
the emotions which had been morbidly centred upon 
an old way of life-no longer really profitable to the 
individual or to society-become detached, and are 
centred upon the physician as the nearest person in close 
intimacy with him. The process of detachment and re- 
attachment is called by the psychoanalyst "transfer- 
ence." It has a double-edged effect. The patient be- 
comes affectionately disposed, let us say, towards the 
physician, and this makes him more amenable to treat- 
ment, and yet does not, for he fears he may forfeit 
the good opinion of the physician by showing to him 
the internal weaknesses and morbidity connected with 
his symptoms. Thus the physician needs to exert all 
his skill in stimulating the anaemic will-to-live of the 
patient into a condition of vitality and resourcefulness. 
Success in psychoanalysis is almost wholly a matter of 
being able to deal in a selfless and masterly manner with "WORD ASSOCIATION" 
137 
transferred emotion. To be the object of affection is 
very pleasant, flatters one's self-esteem, and the psy- 
choanalyst who has to rise and does rise above preoccu- 
pation with his own personality is worthy of the great- 
est respect. 
The "word-association" method of Jung is a useful 
aid to the psychoanalyst in his endeavour to discover 
the nature of the complex which lies buried in the un- 
conscious. By careful inquiry conducted among the 
friends of his patient (when the symptoms themselves 
throw no light on the cause of the trouble), the psycho- 
analyst is enabled to form a clue to the nature of the 
troublesome complex to be sought out and brought back 
into harmony with consciousness. He uses the word- 
association method to test the truth of his hypothesis. 
He gets his patient to take up an easy position, wins his 
confidence, and leads him to relax his attention as much 
as possible. He has prepared a list of words, some of 
which refer directly to the elements of the suspected 
complex, while the others are of indifferent meaning. 
This list of words is read over to the patient, who is 
instructed to reply to the statement of each word with 
the word which first occurs to his mind. The times 
taken in reaction are measured, maybe with the aid of 
a stop-watch, and recorded. Certain characteristic fea- 
tures of reaction are manifested when the suspected 
complex is rightly located. 
In the interpretation of a given dream, too, much 
progress may often be made if the following "word- 
association" procedure is adopted. A sheet of paper 138 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
should be divided into columns. In the first the prin- 
cipal images of the dream are recorded. In the second 
column are written the various ideas suggested by each 
of the images in column one. Then in column three, 
the first column being no longer referred to, the ideas 
suggested in turn by each of those in column two are 
recorded. Similarly, the other columns are filled. It 
will be found that a skilful associationist will readily 
divine a trend of thought and feeling in the ideas; he 
will see them converging towards a point at which the 
meaning of the dream will be perfectly focussed and 
devoid of ambiguity. The danger, however, to be 
faced lies in the nature of the psychoanalyst's own 
"determining tendencies," and our experience of the 
practitioners most frequently make us ask, "Do they 
know them themselves ?" 
Here is an example of another kind. Two children 
were involved in the suspicion of having stolen an 
article from the private room of the teachers at their 
school, but the probability was that only one of them 
was guilty. The guilty one had, therefore, as a conse- 
quence of his experience, a complex of strongly emo- 
tionalized ideas connected with the theft, and it was 
rightly concluded that he would naturally seek to con- 
ceal this complex. He might be expected to act during 
a word-association test in much the same way as a 
patient troubled with a "buried complex," the only 
difference being in the motives which would prevent the 
rise of the concealed complexes into consciousness out 
of the dug-outs of the mind. Thus, it might be ex- "WORD ASSOCIATION" 
139 
pected that the words which were complex "indicators" 
would cause a confusion and inhibition of thought for 
a few seconds and so lengthen the reaction times. This 
has invariably been found in such cases to be so. Of 
course, words which are intended to act as complex 
indicators need to be chosen carefully and with skill. 
If thirty words are chosen in all, then ten of these might 
be chosen to act as complex indicators, and would be 
separated from one another by the other words. The 
whole list of words should be read through twice at 
least, and the corresponding reaction words and times 
of each reading should be compared. It has been found 
that whereas those words which are of indifferent sig- 
nificance produce in the majority of cases the same re- 
plies in the repeated series as they produced before, the 
other words, the complex indicators, often give varied 
results. Meaningless replies or no reply at all, or the 
repetition of the stimulus word, are also signs that the 
complex which is buried in the unconscious has been 
located. 
In the case referred to above, the article which had 
been taken from the room was a brown leather purse, 
and on the table where it had been left there was a 
wastepaper basket, which had been left upside down by 
a cleaner while the floor was in process of being swept. 
The culprit in his haste had upset a pot of red ink near 
where the purse had lain. The circumstantial evidence 
caused two boys, whom we will name as A and B, to 
fall under suspicion. 
The following represent a few of the results of a 140 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
word-association test conducted by the writer in order 
to try to discover the culprit. The stimulus words 
italicized were intended to indicate the presence of the 
guilt complex, if it existed. The words were read 
twice: 
Stimulus 
Reaction Words 
and Times in 
Reaction 
Words 
and Times 
in 
Word 
Secs. 
of Subject A. 
Secs, of Subject B. 
Sec. 
Sec. 
Sec. 
Sec. 
Big 
small 
1.6 
small 
1.6 
sma. 
1.4 
small 
1.2 
red 
green 
3.8 
khaki 
4.0 
blue 
1.2 
blue 
1.2 
clock 
tick 
1.4 
tick 
1.4 
time 
1.2 
time 
1.2 
run 
jump 
1.4 
jump 
1.4 
walk 
1.4 
walk 
1.4 
brown 
bag 
1.4 
leather 
3.6 
bag 
1.4 
bag 
1.4 
man 
woman 
1.4 
woman 
1.6 
woman 
1.2 
woman 
1.2 
tick 
tock 
1.2 
tock 
1.2 
tock 
1.2 
tock 
1.2 
leather 
belt 
3.2 
no reply 
bag 
1.2 
bag 
1.2 
bring 
carry 
2.2 
carry 
2.8 
fetch 
1.6 
fetch 
1.4 
tree 
field 
1.6 
field 
1.8 
branches 
1.4 
branches 
1.4 
paper \ 
basket 
down 
4.4 
yes 
1.4 
paper 
1.2 
paper 
1.2 
table 
chair 
1.4 
chair 
1.4 
chair 
1.2 
chair 
1.2 
house 
room 
2.0 
room 
1.4 
street 
1.4 
street 
1.2 
waste 
rubbish 
3.0 
stuff 
4.8 
paper 
1.2 
paper 
1.2 
sing 
play 
1.4 
play 
1.2 
dance 
1.4 
dance 
1.2 
green 
blue 
1.2 
blue 
1.4 
field 
1.6 
field 
1.6 
spilt 
dirty 
5.2 
sad 
4.2 
milk 
1.4 
milk 
1.6 
The inference which may be drawn from the above 
results is an obvious one, and in the actual case the 
boy, upon being formally charged after the experiment, 
was old enough and intelligent enough to realize that 
he had given himself away by his replies, and conse- 
quently confessed his guilt. 
§ 7. Conclusion 
Psychopathology, we may now agree, has shown that 
the cause of man's manifold mental anxieties and con- 
flicts lies not so much in the fact of the failure of the CONCLUSION 
141 
reason to act normally and usefully as in the toss of 
harmony or balance among the more strongly emotion- 
alized interests of the mind. The degeneracy of the 
reason is not the root of the trouble, but merely a symp- 
tom of it. We were able to show in our last chapter that 
it is not by the systematic exercise of his logical com- 
plex alone that we must hope to render a child normal 
and proof against crankiness or mental disaster. The 
secret of sanity, as we may now see, lies in the subor- 
dination of the anarchic instincts of the mind to the 
desire for self-control, and the secret of a rational and 
a moral personality lies in the cultivation of ideals of 
social value within the self-regarding sentiment or com- 
plex. The educator will more and more, under normal 
circumstances, be compelled by the dictates of psy- 
chology and common sense to transfer his attentions 
and interests from the task of instruction, with its 
seemingly inevitable result, the cramming of ill-nour- 
ished minds with masses of undigested facts, and away, 
too, from the mere formal exercise of the reason, to 
the strengthening of ideal tendencies with the aim of 
building up stable and sane personalities. Ideas and 
facts will be of great value in this process, but unless 
it is realized that something over and above them is 
needed, to cement them, as it were, the work of the 
teacher will always be analogous to the process of build- 
ing houses with bricks and stones in the absence of the 
binding agency of mortar. In the first mental crisis 
the structure may collapse. That it does not usually do 
so is no proof of the suitability of some of our modern PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
142 
educational methods to the needs of life, but rather of 
the wide adaptability of the human mind. It is inad- 
visable, however, to subject the mind to unnecessary 
strain, and it will be a task worthy of performance to 
deliver the growing child from the necessity of spend- 
ing a large part of his psychic energy in quelling the 
rebellions that threaten to break out within him. 
The educator, therefore, while acknowledging the 
debt which he may feel that he owes to the abnormal 
psychologist for the light which he has shed upon the 
growth of personality and the organization of the 
mind, will probably say that he does not so much wish 
to know how to deal with the cases of mental break- 
down to "minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the 
mind a rooted sorrow," as to prevent the approach of 
such a state of affairs. 
By some method or other the forces of the uncon- 
scious which menace the stability of the personality 
must be exorcized, or, as this is impossible in any way, 
must be won over to the service of the rational powers. 
We must assist the process of "sublimation." Sub- 
limation is a term borrowed from the vocabulary of the 
chemist and introduced by Freud into psychology. In 
its original meaning it stands for the process of refine- 
ment. The psychical process of sublimation is the 
process of re-directing the "libido" of the soul away 
from its native anti-social interests to substituted inter- 
ests of social value. There is thus effected an inhibition 
of the unconscious, not by a process of repression, but 
by "drainage," to use McDougall's well-known meta- CONCLUSION 
143 
phor in a new sense, of the psychic energy at its disposal 
to other channels of use. Freud says that the process of 
sublimation should take place as early in life as possible, 
that it is most effectual when it is an unconscious 
process, and that the conscious utilization of the 
psychic energy of the soul by the adult for more re- 
fined purposes than those in the service of which they 
would otherwise function has very feeble effects by 
comparison. 
The Freudian view is that the unconscious forces 
are, as has already been pointed out, sexual in their 
origin, and that the sublimation of them consists in the 
substitution of an aim which is not sexual. Whether 
Freud's presupposition is a correct one or not, it is at 
least certain that there are many spontaneous tenden- 
cies in the behaviour of the young child which are 
usually directly checked by its adult companions and an 
attempt made to root out, so that consequently a full 
and sympathetic study of these tendencies and of the 
possibilities of their sublimation for educational pur- 
poses is very desirable; it is manifestly better that 
they should be usefully employed than that they should 
be driven into the subterranean depth of the mind away 
from the hostile fire of moral criticism, there adding 
force to the unconscious repressed tendencies. 
Of the more striking specific tendencies which show 
themselves later in the better-known instincts, it should 
be possible to make the greatest educational use, since 
they have the requisite force and persistency capable of 
forming permanent bases for character-building. It PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
144 
has already been pointed out by various writers that 
an idea, of itself, has very little power of spontaneous 
and forceful self-expression: that we may know, for 
example, that it is right and proper to be honest, and 
yet we may neglect to pay any attention to the idea of 
honesty when confronted with the temptation to steal. 
If we wish to make an idea potent in the mind, we must 
harness it to one or more of the great instinctive tend- 
encies. Thus the instinct of curiosity may lead boys 
or girls towards good or towards evil, just as they are 
trained. If reproved continually for showing curiosity 
in undesirable directions, they may grow ashamed of 
the open exercise of the instinct, and by repressing it 
add so much as is represented by its power to the energy 
of the unconscious. If, however, they are led to take 
an interest in the secrets and wonders of nature, their 
curiosity will still be able to function, but in a healthy 
and refined form. The instinct of pugnacity may be 
enlisted and refined in the service of the ideal of achieve- 
ment; the hoarding instinct may be usefully employed 
in the collecting of postage stamps as an aid to geog- 
raphy, in the gathering of plants and flowers as an aid 
to the study of nature; the instinct of self-display in the 
dramatic methods of teaching literature and history. 
Driven down into the unconscious, the anti-social 
tendencies and crude selfish instincts will, as we have 
seen, seek every indirect means of emergence, and the 
various opportunities offered in civilized countries to- 
day for the vicarious satisfaction of these tendencies 
show how incomplete have been the sublimations CONCLUSION 
145 
effected by our educational agencies. The more de- 
based forms of literature, the widespread popularity of 
the jest of double entendre, the more highly sensational 
productions of the theatre and the cinema, have more 
significance for the unconscious than for the conscious 
intelligence. What our ethical standards and the cus- 
toms of society will not allow us to enjoy legitimately 
in the form of reality, we may enjoy furtively and half- 
unconsciously in imagination. Thus the sensual man 
may visit the picture galleries in search of the latest 
examples of the nude and employ his reason to delude 
himself by a camouflage into the belief that he is being 
entranced with the aesthetic outlines of the human form. 
These social opportunities for the indulgence of re- 
pressed tendencies are analogous to the dreams of the 
individual, and are proof of our inability as educators 
to employ usefully all the force of the soul in the 
training processes. 
Extending Professor William James's ideas of the 
need for a moral equivalent of war in the demoralizing 
conditions of a long peace, we may say with assurance 
today that we need a moral equivalent for all the 
anti-social forms of conduct which, springing as they 
may from natural impulses, are expressed in their 
native manner today to the hurt of society. The boy- 
scout movement provides the moral equivalent for the 
open-air love of danger and adventure which it is diffi- 
cult to arrange for in any other healthy form; the cine- 
mas and the music-halls and the penny dreadfuls pro- 
vide a form of satisfaction of a less effective kind- 146 
PSYCHOPATHOLOGY 
such satisfaction being very often a morbid kind of 
compromise-formation. Is it at all doubtful which 
form of solution should be adopted by those who have 
the responsibility for the welfare of our children? 
Little enough has been said in the way of indicating 
many of the absorbingly interesting problems which a 
study of psychopathology suggests, but quite enough 
to make clear to the educator that the nature of per- 
sonality has been revealed in a new light through its 
influence. An intelligent study of the subject will 
render untenable most of the older theories of the struc- 
ture and organization of the human mind and point to 
the utter bankruptcy of the traditional psychology of 
mental processes. 
The main conclusion which will emerge will be simi- 
lar to that which we reached by a consideration of the 
psychology of crowds, namely, that the human soul is 
a battlefield upon which the irrational impulses of the 
personality strive with the rational and ethical inter- 
ests of the personality for supremacy. The educator 
must justify his vocation by effectually assisting the 
latter forces to establish such a mastery that the con- 
quered systems of desire will function, not as rebels, 
but as willing citizens in the little kingdom of the 
mental life. CHAPTER IV 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE DEFECTIVE MIND: 
ITS INFLUENCE UPON TEACHING METHODS 
§ 1. The Psychological Treatment of Mental Defect 
The intelligent educator who has acquired a work- 
ing knowledge of the nature of human personality and 
of its most characteristic individual and social manifes- 
tations will be in the position now to appreciate at their 
proper values the various methods of education and in- 
struction and of examination and classification which 
have been popular in the schools; for obviously he will 
avoid that easy vice which is all too common with those 
who tackle the problems of instruction and discipline 
before having studied the nature of the human material 
with which they will have to deal, of theorizing about 
pedagogical ways and means without regard for the 
concrete circumstances of life. 
We have already claimed that the psychology of the 
defective and the subnormal mind must be considered 
a branch of the psychology of the abnormal; we aim 
at showing in this chapter that the study of the char- 
acteristics of such exceptional types of mind has been 
of great service in helping us to establish a body of 
sound knowledge with regard to the most effectual and 
147 148 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
economical methods of procedure in the processes of 
normal education. 
According to Binet and Simon, "it was in France that 
alienists at first began to occupy themselves with the 
children known under the names of 'abnormal,' 'back- 
ward,' 'idiot,' 'mentally deficient,' 'unstable,' etc. Es- 
quirol made the important distinction between the 
dement and the idiot; and after him many other alienists 
-notably Itard, Falret, Voisin-described the prin- 
cipal symptoms of idiocy, or attempted to show that it 
is capable of amelioration. Seguin, a teacher of defec- 
tives who left an honoured name, showed experimen- 
tally how one may, by dint of much ingenuity and 
patience, increase the intelligence and improve the char- 
acter of some of these unfortunate children. Lastly, 
Bournville, the well-known physician of the Bicetre, 
after having in our own day organized the most im- 
portant clinique for idiots which exists in France, agi- 
tated with untiring energy for the formation in the 
public schools of special classes for the instruction of 
abnormal children." 1 
But the fact that Itard, Seguin, and other great 
teachers and students of the defective mind were by 
profession physicians should not blind us to the fact 
that the structure of knowledge and theory respecting 
the best means of treatment for the abnormal child 
which they established as a result of their labours was 
essentially psychological. Though they may seem pri- 
1 Mentally Defective Children, translated by W. B. Drummond, 
London, 1914. TREATMENT OF MENTAL DEFECT 
149 
marily to have dealt with the physical and nervous as- 
pects of the abnormality of such children as they 
studied, they were in reality concerned primarily with 
their patients' mental life and growth. Just, then, as 
in the study of mental pathology (in psychasthenia, 
hysteria, etc.) we find that the most fruitful contribu- 
tions to the science of the abnormal mind were due to 
the attempts of doctors to deal satisfactorily with the 
mental phenomena with which they found themselves 
occupied in practice, so in the study of mental defi- 
ciency the most interesting and successful methods of 
treatment and amelioration may also be traced to the 
attempts of medical men to meet the urgent demands 
of practical life. Seguin may indeed, for example, 
speak of his world-famed method of educating idiots as 
the "physiological method," a description which will 
conjure up visions in the mind of the simple reader of 
elaborate and systematically devised methods of reme- 
dial physical exercise and development; yet it is obvious 
from the most superficial examination of Seguin's trea- 
tise on Idiocy,2 a book in which we find the principles 
of his pedagogical method outlined and illustrated, that 
the fundamental basis of the so-called "physiological 
method" is after all psychological. A few very brief 
extracts from the work mentioned will suffice to show 
that this is so. 
i. "Man, being a unit, is artificially analyzed for 
study into . . . activity, intelligence, and will. . . . 
The predominance of any one of these functions con- 
2 New York. 1866. THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
150 
stitutes a disease, their perversion leads to insanity, 
their notable deficiency at birth constitutes idiocy, after- 
wards imbecility, later yet dementia" (p. 58). 
This point of view is without question the psycho- 
logical point of view, and shows clearly that Seguin 
occupied himself with the whole life of his patients, 
and not merely with the physical expression of the 
separate faculties that were deficient. 
2. "Deeper than the exercises, than the lessons, than 
the incitations addressed to intelligence and activity, lies 
the foundation of our work-in moral training" 
(P- 52). 
3. "The frightened grasp must be instantly used to 
take hold of and to carry things" (p. 79). 
On this purely psychological principle, that emotional 
control precedes mere muscular control, the work of 
developing the hands and fingers proceeds. 
4. "If water be poured from one vessel into another 
near an idiot apparently deaf, at a time when he is 
thirsty, he will turn his head and go for a drink" 
(p. 104). 
5. "We search his eyes with our intense and per- 
severing look ... he tries to escape it . . . the 
main instrument in fixing the regard is the regard" 
(P- II3)- 
Seguin's objective is always the whole personality: 
his method the psychological method par excellence. If 
we attend to the development of the whole, the perfec- 
tion of the parts inevitably becomes easy. But atten- 
tion to the task of perfecting the bodily instrument of TREATMENT OF MENTAL DEFECT 
151 
personality merely, without constant respect for the 
soul itself, is a blind and futile proceeding. 
6. "When we educated the muscles, contractibility 
responded to our bidding with a spark from volition: 
we exercised severally the senses, but an impression 
could not be made on their would-be material nature 
without the impression taking its rank among the 
accumulated idealities; we were enlarging the chest, 
and new voices came out of it expressing new ideas and 
feelings; we started imitation as a passive exercise, and 
it soon gave rise to all sorts of spontaneous actions; we 
strengthened the hand, and it became the realizer of 
ideal creations and labours; we caused pleasure and 
pain to be felt through the skin and through the palate, 
and the idiot, in answer, tried to please by the exhibi- 
tion of his new moral qualities; in fact, we could not 
touch a fibre of his without receiving back the vibration 
of his all-souled instrument'' (p. 142). And, perfectly 
tuneful and harmonious vibration was Seguin's great 
objective. 
We may, therefore, with the greatest justification 
claim Seguin as a psychologist, for nothing could 
better express the psychological point of view than 
these short statements illustrative of his methods and 
aims, and it is not surprising that the results of his 
work with idiots should have given the student of peda- 
gogical science much vital matter for consideration and 
thought. We may go farther and say that all successful 
work with idiots has proceeded consciously or uncon- 
sciously along psychological rather than purely physio- THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
152 
logical lines. A more detailed consideration of Seguin's 
work occurs later. 
§ 2. The Measurement of Defect 
Graphical methods of representing the distribution of 
intelligence among children are now common. Intelli- 
gence, like height and weight, when illustrated by a 
frequency curve, shows at once a huge preponderance of 
the moderately effective type of endowment. The ex- 
ceptional or abnormal types are fewer in proportion as 
they diverge the more from the average. We shall 
quickly realize, however, that the classification of ab- 
normally gifted children is not a very simple matter. 
For example, the most obviously exceptional children 
from a psychological point of view are the blind and 
the deaf, and they could never be discovered merely 
from an investigation of the relative amount of their 
intelligence compared with that of normal children. 
From a consideration of the quality of their psychical 
endowments, however, many interesting conclusions 
may be drawn, and these will be discussed later in this 
chapter. But the first need, at present, in our inquiry 
is for definitions and criteria. 
Children who have been classed as subnormal may 
be divided into three types: (i) those subnormal in 
intelligence • (2 ) those unstable or subnormal in tem- 
perament and character; and (3) those of a mixed type, 
with resemblances to those represented in both (1) and 
(2). This classification is essentially that of Binet and 
Simon, but the probability is that the second and third MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
153 
categories coincide to a very large extent; indeed, the 
delimitation of the normal from the subnormal is in 
the present state of our knowledge, as we have agreed, a 
purely arbitrary delimitation, and will probably always 
be so because of the difficulty of satisfactory definition 
of the term "subnormal." In fact, Binet and Simon 
hold that the criteria of normality of intelligence vary 
with race and environment, and are probably quite 
different, for example, in the cases of country children 
and of town children of the same race, the circum- 
stances of their respective environments being so dis- 
similar. Binet and Simon first set out on their errand 
of investigation with the working principle that 
"Abnormal children are those who are suited for neither 
the ordinary school nor the asylum: for the school they 
are not sufficiently good; for the asylum not sufficiently 
bad." This is, as it stands, a very crude standard, but 
there resulted from its use their epoch-making concep- 
tion of every one of us possessing mental ages as well 
as physical ages, and the formulation of their intelli- 
gence tests for the discovery of the former. Thus 
they found it helpful to speak, for example, of children 
of nine with a mental age of seven. 
As a matter of convenience, they decided to take the 
view that a child under nine who is two school years 
behind the average child in intelligence, or three if he 
is over nine years of age, should be considered back- 
ward, and if more than this amount, then definitely 
defective. The present tendency of investigators is to 
test the mental performances of a large number of 154 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
children of the same age and to take the average re- 
sults as a measure for the mentality of individuals of 
the same age, as Binet and Simon did, with the addi- 
tional use, however, of a percentage for the resulting 
individual values, which thus easily show, and with 
more accuracy, the excess or the defect of those tested 
in relation to the average value. 
Binet and Simon in their tests constructed five simple 
questions suitable for each mental year, and gave a 
score for each question, if answered correctly, of 0.2 
years. A child who could answer four of the questions 
for the mental year of five correctly, and two belonging 
to the set for the mental year of six, would therefore 
be credited with a mental age equal to the sum of 4 
times 0.2 X five years, and twice times 0.2 X six 
years, which works out at 20 times 0.2 plus 12 times 0.2, 
or 32 times 0.2 = 6.4 years of mental age. 
It will at once become apparent that, according to the 
implications of this view of mental deficiency, the cause 
of the phenomena of backwardness is intellectual; in 
which case the educational inference must inevitably be 
that the ordinary curriculum is as suitable to the needs 
of the subnormal as of the normal child, but that it 
needs to be traversed at a much slower rate. Binet and 
Simon are of the opinion, however, that the causes of 
deficiency are specific rather than general-and they 
mention the fact that many children who fail to acquit 
themselves well in an intelligence test, or in the school 
examinations, may nevertheless be well up to the aver- 
age in such attainments and matters of skill as are dis- MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
155 
played outside the school. Intelligence is not, if this 
be true, to be thought entirely absent when all the 
school occupations and teaching methods have been em- 
ployed without successfully exciting it. Binet and 
Simon, indeed, concluded that the primary curriculum, 
which does not make adequate demands upon all the 
possible varieties of the manifestation of intelligence 
which are observable in children, is not suitable for 
defectives, and they argued strongly for the training 
of the latter in special classes and by special methods. 
They satisfied themselves from inquiry and experiment 
that manual employments made the most direct appeals 
to the abnormal child, and that concrete situations called 
up more activities than the usual abstract subjects of 
the school curriculum. "If we take the workshop in 
opposition to the class as the symbol of the concrete as 
opposed to the symbol of verbal work, then the shop 
ought to become in the education of defectives a more 
important place of instruction than the class." 3 They 
further decided that the amount of practical and con- 
crete work should be in proportion to the amount of 
deficiency. Their investigation was empirical; the rea- 
son why one method rather than another should appeal 
to the subnormal mind does not occupy much of their 
attention. 
But one of the greatest results of the study of the 
mentality of the subnormal child followed, and is to be 
seen, not only in the organization of special schools for 
the education of defectives, but also in the widespread 
3 Mentally Defective Children, p. 32. 156 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
desire for special curricula for other types of child. 
The traditional uniformity of curriculum and method 
for all school-children is fast disappearing in the face of 
the steady pressure of the criticism, now almost at 
drumfire intensity, which was originally inspired by 
the theories and facts about mental growth brought for- 
ward by the investigators of the subnormal mind. It 
was their work, and not so much the practical demands 
of life (that had been as urgent as they now are for 
many decades) which opened the path to variety in the 
organization of our schools. And so we have today 
the demand for schools for the supernormal as well as 
schools for the subnormal; for a curriculum that will 
meet the needs of the country child and one that will 
meet the needs of the city child; for methods adapted 
to the peculiarities of the nature of the slum child and 
methods adapted to the nature of the children of the 
prosperous; for specialization in subjects more suited 
to the needs of girls and specialization in subjects more 
suited to the needs of boys. 
The retention of children of the ages of twelve and 
thirteen years in the lowest classes of the primary 
school, a practice which may be found today existing 
in London, and in nearly all the districts which look up 
to the metropolis as the pattern and exemplar of all 
that is right in educational organization, is utterly inde- 
fensible if the results of the study of subnormal chil- 
dren are to be treated at all seriously. Such children 
call out piteously for a more suitable grading and a 
curriculum and methods which will more effectively MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
157 
meet their needs; they should have them with as much 
justice as the definitely abnormal child who is blind 
and deaf has his.4 Nothing is more calculated to im- 
press big children with a sense of their comparative 
worthlessness than to be classed at school always with 
the youngest of their fellows, whom they daily hear 
praised in words that must inevitably be interpreted 
as breathing disparagement to themselves; nothing is 
more likely to crystallize permanently any defect of in- 
telligence which they may have. If the psychology of 
defective children teaches us anything definite at all 
about general educational theory, it is that education 
must be a process aiding a sound environmental adjust- 
ment. Given a child of this ability or that disposition, 
then such training must be given him as will develop 
this particular form of ability or disposition so that it 
is productive of the best social results. If the sub- 
normal child has a fair amount of physical strength and 
an average degree of motor ability, what words of con- 
demnation will be strong enough to designate the folly 
and wickedness of keeping him year after year at the 
impossible and uncongenial task of trying to keep 
pace with others in the acquisition of such bookish 
knowledge as that for which he is not gifted by Nature, 
4 The English tendency now is to aim at the organization of four 
types of state school. There will be schools for children up to 
eleven years of age. At this age there will then be a sorting out. 
The "best," say io per cent, will go to secondary schools; the next 
"best," say 20 to 30 per cent, will go to "central" schools, where 
they will receive an education up to about the age of sixteen; while 
the remainder will be educated in senior elementary schools, where 
the curriculum has a decided "practical" bias. 158 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
thereby neglecting the talents that lie wasting within 
him? 
What is urgently needed in addition to the medical 
examination of children for the discovery of physical 
defects is the systematic psychological examination of 
children by properly qualified persons for the discovery 
of psychical defects, and following upon it a school 
classification of children, not according to their age and 
intelligence, but according to their more urgent psychic 
needs. 
The Work of Alfred Binet 
The Binet-Simon tests for the measurement of in- 
telligence have proved of great value in determining the 
intellectual classification not only of defectives but of 
normal children,5 and this in spite of the shortcomings 
detected in them by a succession of critics, some of 
whom have imagined quite wrongly that they were de- 
vised to measure intelligence with something like abso- 
lute precision, no matter what might be the social rank 
or the nationality of the children tested. It is essen- 
tial, if the tests are to be used at all, that they should be 
administered by sensible persons who have had a sound 
training in experimental psychology: their use by an 
amateur must inevitably multiply their defects and 
vitiate their value. The original aim of the tests, it 
should be remembered, was to enable teachers to pick 
out from among the children of their classes, in a rough- 
and-ready manner, those whom they suspected of 
5 See Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence, 1916. MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
159 
mental defect, so that the visiting doctor could follow 
up with a more detailed supplementary examination and 
an exacter classification. The tests were adopted only 
after an exhaustive scrutiny. Each test was tried upon 
a large number of children of the same age, and if it 
called forth a majority of satisfactory answers, it was 
retained as being suitable for testing the mentality of 
children of that age; if not, then a more suitable age 
was sought for it. The necessity for the tests lay in 
the inability of the doctor to decide questions of men- 
tal deficiency by purely physiological methods, as, for 
example, by considering physical appearance, charac- 
teristic stigmata, and matters of anthropometry. It 
is now thought essential that the opinion of the doctor 
should be supported in all cases by the opinion of the 
teacher. Thus, there must be some very definite agree- 
ment about methods of testing the ability and native 
endowment of children, and, consequently, scales of 
measurement are absolutely necessary. 
Binet certainly demonstrated the possibility of meas- 
uring mental efficiency by a system of tests, and if the 
study of abnormally gifted children has resulted in 
nothing else, it must at least be credited with having 
originated a widespread desire for the devisal of sci- 
entifically satisfactory psychological tests for measur- 
ing both specific and general intelligence. 
Enough has now been written in exposition and 
criticism of the Binet tests to enable us to see their 
merits and demerits in something like proper perspec- 
tive. Their present outstanding merit is that in actual 160 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
practice, especially in their improved forms, they work. 
In all the countries into which they have been introduced 
they have made the estimation of intelligence in children 
a simpler matter than it was. But in spite of the 
claim that they are able to give us reliable measures of 
something akin to general intelligence, the fact cannot 
be denied that they favour children to whom a superior 
social status or education has given a greater range 
of knowledge as well as a more facile understanding 
of language with increased capacity for its use. Thus 
the Binet questions which call for a knowledge of the 
date, of the order of the months of the year, of the way 
to draw a diamond, of the commonest coins, of the way 
to define certain abstract terms, and so on, are tests of 
education rather than of capacity. Moreover, Binet's 
method of scoring the results was not sufficiently refined 
to be fair to those children who without being actually 
ignorant of the response needed to a particular question 
do not give it in such a way as to earn full marks. 
The objection to the method of scoring the responses, 
an "all-or-none" method, has been met, not altogether 
unsuccessfully, by the construction of the point-scale 
of Yerkes, Bridges and Hardwick, while the language 
difficulties have been removed by the construction of 
various kinds of "performance" tests which call for a 
manual instead of a speech response. The scoring 
principle employed in the point-scale and in most of the 
performance tests is that only such tasks are given as 
are likely to produce easily graded replies: as, for ex- 
ample, the repetition of a number of digits or syllables, MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
161 
the framing of definitions, the reporting of a number 
of ideas gained through reading a given passage of 
prose or poetry. If the score for each test in such a 
series is carefully fixed, and the total score possible is 
represented by, let us say, 100, then a percentage repre- 
senting the average performance at various ages may 
be used as a standard for individual comparisons. 
The method of the point-scale tests, designed as it 
was with a great deal of the Binet material merely 
to refine the technique of scoring the results, calls for 
no particular comment, though it may be remarked 
in passing that the choice of tests is not proof against 
criticism, while the allotment of the points to the va- 
rious tests in the scale was arbitrary and based upon 
no apparent plan. But the performance tests raise the 
same problems as we have already touched upon in 
dealing with the earlier methods. Such performance 
tests 6 as, for example, the Porteus maze tests and those 
which Pintner and Paterson have collected from the 
writings of Plealy, Knox and others, and have stand- 
ardized for use as age-scales either to supplement or 
replace the Binet scale, measure nothing which can be 
taken as representative of normal intelligence in its full 
development. Now, either language (and indeed any 
other acquirement w'hich is intimately connected with 
the highest human development) must be allowed to 
play its due part in our tests, or if objection is made 
to this principle on the ground that this will make them 
tests of attainment instead of capacity, we must begin 
6 See the early volumes of the Journal of Educational Psychology. 162 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
anew the search for ways and means of investigating 
that mythical bare capacity which is wholly potential 
and as yet not rigidly canalized by a narrow experience 
or a too specialized training. 
In many tests the attempt to render unnecessary an 
instruction or a response in language is doubtless use- 
ful, as when one is dealing with the deaf, or with the 
illiterate foreigner, or with the child, from an insti- 
tution, whose intelligence is not completely at home 
with words or figures or more abstract ideas, but in 
order to be fair to these types we are forced to con- 
struct tests which are unfair to the child whose en- 
vironment has favoured the development of his intelli- 
gence almost wholly through language and the use and 
control of abstract ideas. We do not necessarily re- 
veal innate capacity by cutting off the various forms 
of human expression which are gained only by a few. 
In so far, then, as performance tests-whether they be 
laboratory tests involving the comparison of colors or 
of lifted weights, or whether they be simple manual 
tasks calling for the arrangement of geometrical shapes 
into familiar patterns-offer no opportunity for the 
expression of the intelligence which becomes perfected 
through the effort to adjust one's thinking to the prob- 
lems concerned with the more intricate social relation- 
ships and to the desire to express oneself through the 
various arts and crafts, they must to that extent be 
defective as tests of the more authentic types of in- 
telligence. 
By common consent it will now be allowed that MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
163 
Binet was right in attempting to frame his intelligence 
tests so that they would permit everyday experience 
and common knowledge as well as bare hereditary ca- 
pacity to play their part. Indeed, we now see clearly 
that only through the use of such experience and 
knowledge as one acquires during one's lifetime can 
capacity really express itself adequately. The position 
today is that we are by no means agreed, however, 
as to what part these factors should play in our tests. 
We are all well aware of the meanings which we our- 
selves attach to the terms, "common knowledge" and 
"everyday experience," but we cannot define them in 
such a way as to ensure universal agreement. To 
revert by way of illustration to the difficulty which has 
been introduced into our tests with the language factor : 
as has been rightly said, the fact "that children in bet- 
ter class schools always test higher on the Yerkes 
scale and on the Binet scale than do children in schools 
in poorer districts is doubtless due to the better men- 
tality of the former group, but some of the superiority 
shown by the former group may be due to their su- 
perior language environment." 
The alpha tests employed by the U.S.A, army au- 
thorities in the mental examination of recruits illus- 
trate this point clearly. Though, since their design 
profits from the work of Binet, they may be accepted 
as constituting the latest and best attempt to measure 
intellectual capacity apart from attainment as it is to 
be seen functioning in situations equally familiar to all 
and with knowledge which no one lacks, it is ques- 164 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
tionable whether the basis upon which they are con- 
structed is completely satisfactory. Now whenever we 
are forced to utilize a basis of common knowledge 
and everyday experience in our tests, too much care 
cannot be taken in ensuring that this basis is all that 
it claims to be. But it has been declared semi-officially 
that the American army mental examinations "were in- 
tended and are now definitely known to measure native 
intellectual ability. They are to some extent influenced 
by educational acquirement, but in the main the sol- 
dier's inborn intelligence and not the accidents of en- 
vironment determines his mental grade in the army," 
i.e., when based on test results.7 
It may be supposed, therefore, that the American 
psychologists were satisfied that the basis of their tests 
was generally sound. Was this actually the case? 
We may legitimately doubt whether one can ever get 
a completely satisfactory working basis of common 
knowledge which will be accepted as fair to all whose 
intelligence is to be tested. A careful scrutiny of the 
alpha series of tests may make clear the grounds of 
this scepticism. In the first place, because two out of 
the eight alpha tests demand arithmetical ability for 
their performance, experience has shown that they op- 
erate unfairly against women. It is argued that you 
may not get a representative measure of a woman's in- 
telligence by giving her calculations to perform. But 
it may be said that those who cannot calculate speedily 
7 Mental Tests in the American Army, by R. M. Yerkes and 
C. S. Yoakum, New York, 1921. MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
165 
ought not to be considered generally intelligent. A 
similar reply may perhaps be made to those who hold 
literary capacity to be a specific quality, and conse- 
quently maintain that not every one should be expected 
to know that much the same meaning is signified by 
each of the following pairs of words which occtv in 
some of the tests: adventitious-accidental, ambigu- 
ous-equivocal, lugubrious-maudlin, encomium- 
etdogy, abstruse-recondite, and so on. No one, that 
is to say, if the argument is sound, should be consid- 
ered generally intelligent who is ignorant of the mean- 
ings of such words as these. I agree, but such argu- 
ments imply more than the orthodox intelligence in- 
vestigator would be ready or willing to admit. 
What is implied will perhaps appear from a study of 
the eighth and last test of the alpha series. This is 
a general information test which could not be answered 
satisfactorily by any one who is not an American, since 
it presupposes a wide acquaintance with the principal 
games, advertisements, names of business firms, manu- 
factured products, the public men and women, and the 
chief events with their dates in the history of the 
western hemisphere. Careful attention to this test will 
compel every student to face the question as to what 
is to be the guiding principle in the selection of com- 
mon knowledge and everyday experience as the basis 
for the construction of intelligence tests. How are 
we to ensure that we shall not be testing attainments 
instead of genuine capacity? Why must one type of 
experience or knowledge be taken and another left? 166 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
Why should it be considered that the ability to deal with 
words and abstract ideas is more representative of 
general intelligence than anything else? Why omit 
the common knowledge which the skilled artisan gains 
in his dealing with the concrete realities of everyday 
life? If it is true that no really intelligent person is 
ignorant of the meanings of such pairs of words as 
those above, why not admit, too, that no person ought 
to be considered to be generally intelligent who is in- 
capable of doing odd repairs about the house? 
This dilemma is a serious one. On the one hand 
we must make a selection from among all possible types 
of knowledge and experience as a basis for our test 
questions, but on the other hand if a selection is made 
at all it is bound to be unfair to those whose intelli- 
gence is not allowed its most characteristic means of 
expression. If a first-rate sculptor or musician should 
score less in the American army tests than an average 
bank clerk, as is likely, shall we be wise in saying that 
the sculptor or musician will be found to be generally 
less intelligent? Obviously not. A classification of 
the occupations of nearly two million recruits in ac- 
cordance with their test-scores emphasizes much the 
same point as we have been trying to illustrate. While 
this classification tells us broadly what we might ex- 
pect about the relative degrees of intelligence which 
different classes of workmen possess, such as, for ex- 
ample, that the engineer officer grades higher than the 
casual labourer, it also suggests what we may not be 
prepared for, that bookkeepers, accountants and clerks MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
167 
are more intelligent than electricians, telegraphists, au- 
tomobile repairers, and carpenters. Indeed, these army- 
tests were usually done best by those whose education 
and training had brought them constantly into contact 
with the world of words and abstract relations. For 
such persons speedy adaptation to the test conditions 
was easy. Those, however, who lived mainly with 
things in the world of concrete reality and whose de- 
velopment had been mostly one of continuous adjust- 
ment to material objects and obstacles, usually found 
such speedy adaptation to the test conditions difficult. 
The question which rises to the mind, therefore, is 
this: is it really possible to measure adequately by the 
same set of tests what have become, on the whole, as 
a result of training, completely different types of in- 
telligence ? Other questions supplementary to this also 
suggest themselves; for example, must intelligence tests 
necessarily be speed tests? If so, ought a due amount 
of practice to be allowed to those who may be un- 
familiar with the test conditions so that the temporary 
inefficiency is not mistaken for final incapacity? 
Again, how far ought anything of a general nature 
to be inferred from the results of what after all may 
be definitely particular performances? And most im- 
portant of all, is there really anything which we can 
usefully think of as constituting general intelligence, 
or is general intelligence as mythical ja thing as bare 
native capacity uncomplicated by experience? 
To conclude that the expression "general intelli- 
gence" is at best a confusing one which corresponds 168 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
to no very definite reality, and that the only logical 
way of testing it, supposing it to be worth testing, 
would be to construct tests covering an impossibly wide 
range of various types of experiences, does not mean, 
however, that we may not usefully get successful rough 
measures of the ability to deal intellectually with new 
problems. Tests like those used in the American army 
will enable us to obtain such rough measures. Only 
do not let us suppose they will tell us all or even the 
most characteristic things about the intelligence of the 
person who submits them. Intellectual ability is but 
one form of intelligence, though it must be admitted 
that it is a highly important form, and well worth in- 
vestigating. Probably the most successful attempt to 
frame tests for the measurement of this form of ability 
is represented by the Graded Reasoning Tests of Mr. 
Cyril Burt8 and the Northumberland Tests9 by Dr. 
Godfrey Thomson. But intelligence may show itself 
in other ways unprovided for by our tests. An illus- 
tration may be here given. The writer was once en- 
gaged with others in testing the intelligence of an un- 
known subject. It was agreed among us that this 
person was a man of low mentality, and unlikely to 
display great ability in any pursuit. But though as far 
as nine-tenths of his possibilities were concerned this 
was a correct judgment, it was quite an untrue esti- 
mate of the man as a whole, for in one particular di- 
rection of which our tests took no account his abilities 
8 See Ballard, Mental Tests, Hanop & Co., London, 1921-1922. 
0 Ibid. MEASUREMENT OF DEFECT 
169 
were exceptionally marked, so much so that he had 
gained high university distinction. In this particular 
direction, intuition and sympathy were the main- 
spring of his mental activity. It will be understood, 
therefore, how unwise it is for us to hope to be able 
to form an accurate estimate of any one's intelligence 
from his performances in a series of ordinary "intellec- 
tual ability" tests. But in so far as intellectual ability 
represents the capacity to apply oneself to new inter- 
ests and new tasks, in so far as it means that one's 
mental organization has not become rigid but is still 
adaptable, then it is well worth our trouble to get even 
rough measures of so important a function. 
But we need to distinguish between general intellec- 
tual ability and the various forms of intelligence. 
To what position, then, have we of the post-Binet 
period arrived after the labours of the last twenty years ? 
It is not difficult to sum up the situation in a few 
sentences. 
1. The idea that innate capacity could be meas- 
ured apart from the influences of education and train- 
ing has proved barren. 
2. The attempt to construct a single reliable test 
capable of measuring general intelligence has been 
given up as impossible. 
3. A series of tests will give us a rough idea of 
the average level of intellectual ability in a subject if 
such tests cover a wide enough range of its most 
representative forms. But all average measures should 170 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
be distrusted in so far as they obscure significant in- 
dividual variations. 
4. In addition, therefore, to ascertaining the aver- 
age level of a subject's intellectual ability we are be- 
ginning to see that it is increasingly necessary that we 
should be able to discover where the peaks and de- 
pressions, that is, where his mental strengths and weak- 
nesses lie, so that a large number of tests for specific 
as well as general intelligence will be required before 
we can finally sum up any individual and attach to him 
an "intellectual index" which can be taken as a final 
judgment of his capacity. 
5. In short, instead of attempting to guess with 
regard to any individual merely how much intelligence 
he has generally, we shall endeavour also to construct 
tests which will tell us as accurately as possible how 
much he can show in particular directions.10 
§ 3. The Classification of Defectives 
It is only within the present century that a satis- 
factory classification of defectives has been begun. The 
first decided step towards this end was taken by the 
British Royal Commission for the Study of the Feeble- 
minded, who in their report (1908) described feeble- 
mindedness as a "state of mental defect from birth 
or from an early age, due to incomplete cerebral devel- 
opment, in consequence of which the person affected is 
10 The Board of Education, Whitehall, London, have just pub- 
lished (1924) the results of an exhaustive inquiry into the value of 
intelligence tests under the title of Psychological Tests of Educable 
Capacity (H. M. Stationery Office, London, S. W. 1). CLASSIFICATION OF DEFECTIVES 
171 
unable to perform his duties as a member of society- 
in the position of life to which he was born." The 
Commission suggested further that the general term, 
feeble-mindedness, might be used to cover three dif- 
ferent grades of defect as represented in easily dis- 
tinguishable forms in the mentality of- 
1. The idiot, that is, a person "so deeply defective 
in mind from birth, or from an early age, that he is 
unable to guard himself against common physical 
dangers"; 
2. The imbecile, "one who by reason of mental de- 
fect existing from birth, or from an early age, is un- 
able to earn his own living, but is capable of guarding 
himself against common dangers"; and 
3. The feeble-minded proper, or to use the much 
better term introduced by Goddard, the moron (Gr. 
(jcjpoc, stupid}, "one who is capable of earning a 
living under favourable circumstances, but is incapable 
from mental defect, existing from birth or from an 
early age, (a) of competing on equal terms with his 
normal fellows; or (&) of managing himself and his 
affairs with ordinary prudence." 
Through these rough-and-ready common-sense ap- 
proximations to sound definition we are enabled to 
find a starting-point from which we can proceed to 
further precision in our studies. 
Now, the trend of modern scientific opinion has taken 
us completely away from the position of our ancestors, 
who, lacking a solid ground of reasoned knowledge, 
viewed mental defect as the mark of a person endowed 172 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
with a sort of mind quite different in its quality from 
the normal type. If, then, we regard mental defect 
as denoting, when compared with normal intelligence, 
not a difference in quality of mind, but a difference 
in quantity, so that it accordingly appears as nothing 
other than arrested mental development, it should be 
possible to measure the extent of this arrest with some- 
thing like accuracy. It is by the application of such 
psychological tests as the Binet tests that we can carry 
out such measurement, and if we may trust to experi- 
ence, it can safely be said in consequence of what has 
already been done in this connection that adult de- 
fectives who cannot pass the Binet tests for normal 
twelve-year-old children ought, both for their own 
and for the community's sake, to be segregated; while 
those who can will, if left to their own resources, rarely 
drift helplessly into institutions to spend their days, 
since so many of the occupations in modern society 
call for the activity of no greater degree of intelligence 
than they will themselves possess. 
At the time when the British Royal Commission for 
the Study of the Feeble-minded reported (1908), the 
Binet tests, which constituted the first attempt at a 
scientific measurement of mental ability, had not been 
popularized in England, so that the precise stand- 
ardization of degrees of defect was hardly possible. 
It was in America that the obvious practicability of 
measurement by the psychological test was first rec- 
ognized and widely considered. Thus, two years after 
the publication of the British report, the American CLASSIFICATION OF DEFECTIVES 
173 
Association for the Study of the Feeble-minded (1910) 
laid it down that- 
1. Idiots are those persons who are unable to 
transcend the performances of normal children of two 
years of age when faced with the Binet tests, though 
they themselves may be much older; 
2. Imbeciles are those persons who range in in- 
telligence between the two and the seven year age- 
standards, though they themselves may be much older; 
while 
3. Morons are those adolescent or adult persons 
who usually rise above the seven-year-old level of in- 
telligence, but only rarely excel above the normal chil- 
dren of twelve years of age. 
Of these three classes of defective persons the 
morons constitute the most interesting type of the 
feeble-minded, particularly if we regard them all from 
the social rather than from the intellectual point 
of view; for whereas the idiot and the imbecile are 
seldom found to be actively troublesome or criminal, 
the ranks of the ne'er-do-wells and the positively 
vicious are freely recruited from among our morons. 
Thus, out of one thousand juvenile offenders person- 
ally studied by William Healy11 in America, over 50 
per cent were of poor mentality. Other investigators 
agree with this estimate as reflecting a general truth. 
Hence the national importance of sound education for 
this type of defective. 
An interesting difference will have probably been ob- 
11 The Individual Delinquent, Boston, 1915. THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
174 
served between the British and American points of 
view, viz. that the British Royal Commission attempted 
to describe feeble-mindedness in terms of social ef- 
ficiency, while the American Association constructed 
their definitions in terms of intellectual ability. God- 
dard,12 the leading American authority, already men- 
tioned, has given us in addition a third method of 
classification of those defectives found in institutions in 
terms of occupational capacity. Thus, he says, the 
defective who has a Binet mental age of six years can 
perform tasks of short duration and wash dishes; 
those with a mental age of eight years can run er- 
rands, do light work and make their beds; those with 
a Binet age of ten years are able to do most of the 
routine work of the institution; while those with the 
mentality of normal children of twelve years can learn 
to use simple machinery, look after domestic animals, 
and, provided that they are given a task sufficiently 
straightforward, work well without supervision. 
When combined, these three points of view provide 
us with a useful stereoscopic outlook on the general 
phenomena of defect, so that no one of them should 
be neglected. 
There is one important fact which should at this 
12 Goddard advocates the establishment of a bureau for the reg- 
istration of the mental ages of all of us, so that employers, for 
example, could be sure that they were employing responsible per- 
sons for the performance of difficult tasks involving great powers 
of attention and thought, and so that the police would be better 
able to form an estimate of a wrong-doer's mental balance and 
strength! CLASSIFICATION OF DEFECTIVES 
175 
stage be particularized before we pass on to our main 
subject. What often complicates and occasionally ob- 
scures the problem of diagnosing mental defect is that 
enfeebled general ability in any individual may co- 
exist side by side with a particularly marked aptitude 
in some special direction, as, for example, it is to be 
seen in the cunning of the otherwise mentally back- 
ward burglar, in the skill of an illiterate prize-fighter, 
in devoted attention to pets, or in the extremely spe- 
cialized genius of the idiot savant. We may think 
of intelligence in this connection as finding all the 
normal paths to expression with just one exception 
entirely blocked, so that along this single free path all 
the power of the personality is consequently concen- 
trated. 
Closely connected with general intellectual ability 
and the specific aptitudes which may exist apart from 
it, is the capacity for personal self-control. Mental 
defect is not simply a matter of intellectual endow- 
ment only. Thus it will be sometimes found that 
writers point to the existence of defectives who have 
become social failures not so much by reason of their 
lack of general intelligence, which, after all, is prob- 
ably quite good enough for tackling much of the 
routine work in the worlds of commerce, industry, 
domestic service and agriculture, as on account of their 
notable deficiency in the power of personal self-direc- 
tion. That is to say, we may speak of defectives as 
being subnormal either in intellectual or in moral de- 
velopment. The latter class is characterized by ex- 176 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
treme emotional oscillation and frequently by an in- 
difference to social well-being. But while it may be 
said that a large number of the individuals in our 
prisons are persons who have committed crimes at the 
dictate of anti-social passions, it is, nevertheless, to 
make a sound generalization if we venture the state- 
ment that the cold calculating self-seeking moral im- 
becile, an individual, that is, of at least average in- 
telligence, but destitute of social impulses, does not 
exist. This is not the opinion, perhaps, which a study 
of the cinema films would support, but it is the well- 
considered judgment of many who have gained by 
patient application a thorough knowledge of hundreds 
of individual delinquents. Thus Healy, who has sur- 
veyed carefully and exhaustively a field probably 
wider than had previously been covered by any 
single investigator, writes in his book The Individual 
Delinquent™ of the so-called moral imbecile as fol- 
lows : 
"Superficially the individual has seemed to be men- 
tally normal as in the cases where there was great 
development of language ability,14 but in every single 
instance a well-rounded investigation has shown dis- 
tinct abnormality in some other field than in the moral 
sense, or in a few cases of children further growth 
has carried the individual past a stage of anti-social 
conduct." 
13 Boston, 1915. 
14 A specific aptitude which may or may not co-exist with gen- 
eral intellectual ability. CLASSIFICATION OF DEFECTIVES 
177 
What this means is that crime and defective in- 
telligence are more closely related than we perhaps 
imagine; it is a rehabilitation of the view of Socrates 
that somehow virtue and knowledge are intimately 
connected, so that if a man becomes a criminal, it is 
because his intelligence is too poor, either congen- 
itally, by heredity, or by neglect, to enable him to dis- 
cern what are the enduring satisfactions of life; he 
has either not become acquainted with the real value 
of our common ideals of social conduct, or is too men- 
tally enfeebled to appreciate them. 
Since we may find persons of adult age with the 
mental powers of children, it follows that the rate 
of their learning must be extremely slow. The study 
of the subnormal mind, therefore, should be of the 
greatest significance for the educator of normal chil- 
dren, inasmuch as the stages which the latter pass 
through quickly and more or less spontaneously are, 
in the case of the former, spread out over a long 
period or to a certain extent relatively fixed, so that 
the psychologist is enabled to apply a closer and more 
rigorous examination to the processes whereby the 
acquisition of skill and knowledge takes place. Dr. 
Guthrie, in this connection, in his Functional Nervous 
Disorders in Children, speaks of the idiot as exhibiting 
the phenomenon of "crystallized infancy." If these 
stages of development observable in the various types 
of feeble-mindedness are thus crystallized, then we 
should be enabled to discover, from a consideration of 
them, what is the natural order and method of the de- 178 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
velopment of the various interests and abilities of the 
human mind.15 Life becomes, as it were, a cinemato- 
graphical show, which we may stop at will while we 
select for leisurely scrutiny any portion of the film 
which interests us. 
Dr. Montessori's success as a teacher of normal 
children was due to her happy idea, foreshadowed in 
Rousseau-who in setting out the plans for the edu- 
cation of Emile had been influenced by the work of 
Pereira with deaf-mutes-that since normal children 
pass through the same stages as the defective child, 
only more quickly, then the methods which have proved 
successful in dealing with abnormal children should 
be equally, if not more, effective when applied to nor- 
mal children. It is, therefore, with the idea of dis- 
covering what is the natural method and order of in- 
struction, if indeed there is one, that we should study 
the means by which the idiot and the imbecile have 
been successfully educated. 
It may be interesting before passing on to set out 
in greater detail the wide range of our human ca- 
15 With regard to the causes of mental deficiency, the general 
trend of scientific opinion is towards the belief that hereditary 
influences function most powerfully in its production. Goddard 
holds the view that 80 per cent of defectives are so by reason 
of inheritance, the others being accounted for by such causes 
as severe illnesses and accidents in infancy. It has been sufficiently 
well proved that parental alcoholism and syphilis have a debili- 
tating effect upon the physical basis of mind in offspring; but it 
is by no means certain whether alcoholism is a cause or merely 
a symptom of feeble-mindedness. Goddard thinks that more 
people are prone to alcoholism because of feeble-mindedness than 
vice versa. CLASSIFICATION OF DEFECTIVES 
179 
Processes of the 
Mechanical level 
Processes of the 
Organic level 
Processes of the 
Human level 
(Man as creature) 
Processes of the 
Human level 
(Man as creator) 
SENSE 
The sense reactions 
(measurable in speed and 
acuity). Taste, Touch, 
Hearing, Sight, Tem- 
perature, Kinaesthesis. 
SENSORY DISCRIMINA- 
TION or sensitiveness to dif- 
ferences in quantity and 
quality of sense impressions: 
e.g. heavy and light, smooth 
and rough, dark and bright, 
etc. 
The finer discriminations; 
colour, rhythm, pitch, etc. 
Ideal sense; of 
1. order 
2. form 
3. beauty 
+ 
INTELLIGENCE 
Intuition: Recognition of 
the practical significance of 
the above difference. 
Logical understanding. 
Imagery: e.g. visual, audi- 
tory, etc. 
WISDOM 
Habit Memory. 
ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY: 
for practical experiences. 
Memory as RECOGNITION. 
RECOLLECTION: 
a. Arbitrary Association. 
b. Controlled Association. 
+ FEELING 
PLEASURE-PAIN 
The Primary Emotions 
The Concrete Sentiments 
with the emotions: joy, 
pity, sorrow. (When not 
rational = prejudices and 
complexes.) 
The Ideal or Ab- 
stract Sentiments. 
WILL 
IMPULSE. (Appetition 
and aversion) 
HABIT as shown in 
ROUTINE SKILL 
Attention, as naturally 
fixating or fluctuating. 
The Primary Instincts 
(=Native Interests) 
ORGANIC SKILL 
Attention, as determined by 
native interest. 
ACQUIRED INTERESTS: 
The Sentiments in action. 
SCIENTIFIC SKILL 
Attention, as marked by the 
ability to concentrate or dis- 
tribute it in various ways. 
The fully enlight- 
ened WILL of the 
1. saint 
2. philosopher 
3. artist 
ARTISTIC SKILL 
Attention as "Con- 
templation." 
Hierarchy of the Human Abilities 180 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
pacities and the many possibilities of specific defect 
which may occur. 
§ 4. Historical Survey of Methods Employed in 
Educating Defectives 
i. Itard's Method 
Itard (1775-1838) prepared the way for the intro- 
duction of the modern psychological method. No one 
who reads his book on the education of the "savage 
of the Aveyron" can fail to be struck by his impersonal 
and strictly scientific point of view in dealing with the 
problem which he had set himself-the development 
of the mental powers that he thought were latent in 
his subject. It was the common opinion of his time 
that the idiot was incapable of tuition, and consequently 
beyond the hope of improvement. Itard accepted the 
current opinion, but disputed the judgment of Pinel 
and others among his contemporaries in their classify- 
ing as an idiot the "savage of the Aveyron," a boy 
of from eleven to twelve years of age apparently, who 
in 1798 had been caught by three sportsmen while 
trying to elude them in the wilds, had escaped, and been 
recaptured. He was found to exhibit but few signs of 
intelligence; he lacked the power of speech; in be- 
haviour he was fierce and impatient of restraint; in 
temper he was most capricious; while his habits were 
disgusting. "Citizen Pinel represented his senses to 
us as in such a state of inertia that this unfortunate 
youth was found inferior to some of our domestic HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
181 
animals."16 Itard resolved to undertake the boy's educa- 
tion in order to try to justify his own point of view 
with regard to the question of the boy's potentialities. 
He set himself the five-fold task of (i) socializing 
the "savage," (2) of energizing and refining his senses, 
(3) of enlarging his sphere of ideas, (4) of teaching 
him to communicate by speech, and (5) of developing 
his general intelligence. It will be noted that Itard's 
order of attack on his problems is psychologically 
sound. Itard also showed a shrewd psychological in- 
sight into human nature in the choice of his methods, 
and on the whole met with a considerable amount of 
success; but his failures should be as enlightening as 
his successes to the educator of normal children. He 
never forced the boy to follow any particular path by 
harsh treatment, but made tactful use, whenever pos- 
sible, of the lad's instinctive preferences and tendencies 
to secure the ends which he aimed at reaching. 
To a certain extent, Itard succeeded in his attempt 
to attach the boy to social life, by making it more 
pleasant than the life of the woods to which he had been 
accustomed, and by associating typical situations in 
the former with his primary needs, e.g. those of food 
and warmth. He did not attempt to root out the ex- 
isting strong tendencies of the boy to roll in the snow 
and eat it by handfuls, to laugh boisterously at the 
sound of the wind and at sudden bursts of sunshine, 
or to linger in melancholy near running water and 
in the moonshine. Itard could ultimately say, how- 
16 An Historical Account of a Savage Man, Paris, 1802. 182 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
ever, that the boy's desire for the life of the woods 
had lessened considerably, that his meals were less 
copious and animal-like, and that his periods of sleep 
were shorter and more regular. 
To awaken the boy's sensitiveness to sensory stimuli, 
Itard began with the sense of touch, and gave him warm 
baths daily, at the same time exposing him whenever 
possible to the extremes of temperature at awkward 
moments, as, for example, upon awakening in the 
morning.17 By dint of persistence with these practices 
and with suitable exercises, Itard succeeded in arous- 
ing the touch, and afterwards the senses also of taste, 
to a more refined extent, and of smell. 
Itard's greatest difficulty was experienced in his at- 
tempts to get "Victor" to comprehend the meaning 
of language, and consequently in leading him to 
communicate by speech. For the educator of the 
normal child, the lesson to be learnt from the com- 
parative failure of Itard in this direction is the im- 
portance of seizing the most favourable moment for 
the inculcation of habits which involve the setting up 
of delicate muscular and nervous mechanism, of mak- 
ing immediate educational use, before they disappear, 
of all the spontaneous tendencies which the child may 
manifest. "The total disuse of exercise," says Itard, 
"renders our organs inapt for their functions." If 
a child is not taught the speech of human beings at 
17 Our sensitiveness to slight differences of temperature be- 
tween 26° and 370 C. has been acquired during the period of 
civilization. See Rivers's Instinct and the Unconscious, Cambridge, 
England. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
183 
the natural babbling age, when the nervous material 
of the speech centres of the brain and the appropriate 
muscular reactions of the throat and lips are in a 
favourably plastic condition for the necessary organi- 
zation, he will never afterwards be able to learn to 
speak with ease or fluency. Even that universal tend- 
ency, the tendency to imitation, may drop out of 
existence altogether if not taken advantage of and 
employed in the early years of the child's life. Thus 
the upholder of the culture-epoch theory of individual 
development may maintain that he is progressing along 
natural lines when he makes use of the principal spon- 
taneous tendencies which successively appear in the 
behaviour of the child-the tendencies to indulge in 
hide-and-seek, in hunting games, in such co-operative 
games as "prisoner's base," with their captures and 
rescues and hairbreadth escapes, in the desire to barter, 
to collect, to keep pets, etc. One must be careful to 
employ this principle in an elastic manner, however, 
and not attempt to make the children fit the require- 
ments of the theory, instead of using the theory as 
an aid and a test for suitable practice. 
A good educational system will make the fullest 
use of all the spontaneous tendencies of the child, and, 
as we pointed out in the last chapter, will arrange for 
their "sublimation" when the natural forms of ex- 
pression are not socially approvable. Dr. Montessori 
based her excellent educational system upon the spon- 
taneous life of the child, with but one exception, namely, 
that she rigorously repressed all displeasing anti-social 184 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
forms of conduct. This exception will be approved or 
condemned just as the student of her method accepts 
or rejects the Freudian view of the significance of the 
less admirable habits and tendencies of children. In 
the schools which are called "Montessori schools" in 
this country, there seems to be, instead of the Montes- 
sorian repression of the ethically undesirable without 
sublimation, a spontaneity encouraged to the full with- 
out sublimation. The happy mean between these two 
forms seems to us to be the more approvable method 
of education, and the one for which the science of ab- 
normal psychology would provide support. At any 
rate, it must be said that, in so far as methods of in- 
struction go, Dr. Montessori has applied the lessons 
to be learnt from the education of defectives with 
conspicuous success. She has demonstrated, too, in 
the case of the normal child, the great part which hap- 
piness and free expression play in mental life and 
growth. 
Itard does not mention his predecessor Pereira in his 
Historical Account of the Education of a Savage Man. 
Pereira had been successful in the task of teaching 
deaf-mutes to speak, by communicating with them first 
by means of a manual alphabet and by gestures, and 
afterwards by means of the vibrations of his voice, 
which he taught them to sense through their skin. He 
thus showed that in the absence of one sense, e.g. that 
of hearing, another might function as a substitute, e.g. 
that of touch, and he put forward the theory that all 
successful intellectual training must depend upon a HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
185 
preliminary and effective sense training. The principal 
lesson to be learnt by the educator from the phe- 
nomena and treatment of psychic blindness and psychic 
deafness is very similar. The person who is psychi- 
cally blind is able to see printed words well enough, 
but only as meaningless characters; he is unable to in- 
terpret their meaning by sight, though he knows the 
words when he hears them. But he may also be 
taught to recognize them if they are presented to him 
in Braille type, thus enabling a touch perception and 
a touch memory to be substituted and function for a 
visual perception and memory. In the same way, the 
psychically deaf child hears words, but is quite at a 
loss as to their significance; yet he may be taught to 
read lip movements, thus enabling a visual percep- 
tion and memory to be substituted and function for an 
auditory perception and memory. 
Rousseau (1712-78), a personal friend of Pereira, 
took over the idea of the latter that the training of 
the senses should precede the training of the higher 
mental processes, and developed it in his celebrated book 
upon the education of Emile. "At the commencement 
of life, when the memory and the imagination are 
as yet inactive, the child limits his attention to what 
actually affects his senses. He wants to touch and 
handle everything. Do not check his restlessness. This 
is a necessary part of his training. It is by looking, 
fingering, and hearing, and above all by comparing 
sight and touch, that he learns to feel the heat and 
the cold, the hardness and softness, the heaviness and 186 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
lightness of bodies, and to judge of their size and 
form and all their physical properties." 18 
Dr. Montessori's idea that each particular sense 
should be separately cultivated, and so raised to its 
highest pitch of perfection, also comes from Pereira. 
The blind have notoriously a greater delicacy of touch 
than the normally sighted, and a much finer memory, 
too, for touch, for movement, and for shape, which 
is due to the fact that these senses have each received 
far more attentive exercise than is given to them by 
normal persons. Why not then oblige the normal 
child occasionally to depend entirely upon a single 
sense for his knowledge of the external world? Such 
is the obvious inference for the educator, and Dr. 
Montessori has demonstrated that it is a sound prin- 
ciple to work upon. Before her pupils have handled 
pen or pencil, they have acquired through blindfold 
exercises a tactual and kinaesthetic memory of the 
shapes of letters and figures. Thus they have passed 
unconsciously through the most difficult part of the 
process of learning to write, without knowing it, and 
at the same time the preliminary training has been ar- 
ranged by Montessori in a manner not at all irksome. 
Another factor in successful education which is ex- 
emplified by the work of Pereira and of Itard is the 
educational value of sympathy in the teacher. On 
a priori grounds alone we should be inclined, perhaps, 
to lay the greatest stress upon it as being a very im- 
portant quality in the personality of the teacher, but 
13 Emile (Everyman's Library Edition). HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
187 
in the case of the successful education of defectives, 
it has been found to be an absolute necessity. The 
infinite patience that is continually being called for 
can only be supplied by a teacher who is brim-full of 
it. Victor, the savage of the Aveyron, repaid with 
great affection and attention the sympathy which was 
bestowed upon him by his guardian, Madame Guerin, 
and his education progressed to a large extent through 
the presence of this factor, while Pereira was able 
to persist successfully in his self-chosen task mainly 
because of the pity which he felt for the young lady 
afflicted with deafness and muteness whom he had 
learnt to know on his coming to live in Bordeaux. 
Some natures, indeed, call out for a greenhouse type 
of culture, and develop only when, in a warm and sym- 
pathetic environment, they are secure from the rude 
winds of the unfriendly world. 
2. The Physiological Method of Seguin 
Seguin (1812-80), a pupil of Itard in medicine and 
surgery, who was encouraged by his master to take 
up the study of idiocy, was also admirably suited for 
the task by reason of the great sympathy which he 
felt for the poor and afflicted, and by his profound 
respect for individuality. The physiological training 
which he devised for idiots was an application of the 
idea that efficiency is somehow conditioned by bodily 
vigour and by capacity for successful sense discrimina- 
tion, and that consequently all attempts at developing 
the higher mental functions, before the movements of 188 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
the body can be co-ordinated and the senses report the 
phenomena of the external world satisfactorily, are 
absurd and futile. Thus, the learning of facts and 
all such mere memory exercises do not improve idiots; 
they serve rather to impede their further progress. 
He that merely increases their knowledge increases 
sorrow. The natural first step in method is, there- 
fore, to deal with the physical disabilities of the idiot 
and supply the deficiencies of the muscular apparatus. 
To secure this end, Seguin employed many ingenious 
exercises which aimed at destroying disordered mo- 
tions and promoting "immobility," for "immobility," 
says Seguin, "is the fulcrum of movement" (p. 73).19 
In the Seguinian method, immobility is taught in va- 
rious positions, in standing, in sitting, in reclining one 
way or another, with or without the aid of the bal- 
ancing pole, dumb-bells, or rifle. When the child 
has learned to assume such attitudes of his own ac- 
cord, he must learn to use his legs. If these do not 
move at his will, or as they are required to do, they 
are made to react under the elasticity of a baby- 
jumper. "Kneading the muscles, handling the articula- 
tions, moving with the floor of a treadmill, and like 
appliances, will give the pupils the strength to walk" 
(p. 74). The real process of learning to walk fol- 
lows. If the feet do not make progress, they are 
brought into contact with a springboard, which throws 
them up and forward, and then receives them again, 
with suitable regularity and frequency. When the idea 
19 Quotations from Idiocy, New York, 1866. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
189 
of walking has become familiar, the child must learn 
to walk gracefully without swaying, and for this pur- 
pose he must be able to control the balance movements 
of his arms. He learns to walk between the rounds 
of ladders placed horizontally, to walk up various 
grades of stairs, to use the dumb-bells proficiently in 
order that he may employ his arms for the mainte- 
nance of equilibrium when he is in movement, to step 
accurately upon footprints unevenly spaced out, or upon 
other marks which wind about over the floor in un- 
expected directions. "To walk among so many dif- 
ficulties is to think" (p. 76). Thus is he coached 
privately, and when some degree of proficiency has 
been reached he is introduced into the company of 
others who have become good walkers, and through 
the force of example, the appeal to the tendency to 
imitation, the incitements of music, and the encour- 
agement of the teacher, he generally completes the 
mastery of his task. 
The hand is next treated, "the organ of prehension, 
of seizing, of holding, of letting go," actions which 
need to be taught. "The frightened grasp," the fear 
of falling, and the pleasures and pains of rewards and 
punishments, are all made use of in the Seguinian 
treatment. The child learns, for example, to lower 
himself down the rounds of an inclined ladder. "We 
study him after coming down from that ladder; he is 
seated or standing . . . piteously enough looking at his 
hands slightly bruised and heated by the process they 
have gone through" (p. 80). The next time, "We THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
190 
do not leave him time to look at his hands, but ex- 
tending them horizontally, we put on each a bright 
apple. He, partly to feel the coolness on all the burn- 
ing surfaces, partly not to let the apple fall, will con- 
tract his fingers and get a circular, equable, willed 
prehension of them: quite a progress on the passive 
contraction of the hands on the ladder's rounds" (p. 
30). The child is next trained to use the wheel- 
barrow, the spade, the watering-pot, the bow, the 
wooden horse, the hammer, and the ball, all of which 
provide for a far greater and more interesting variety 
of manipulation, control, and satisfaction than any set 
of formal gymnastic exercises. 
Further muscular co-ordinations and movements are 
taught by personal imitation, and by such games as 
throwing the bean bag, the clapping of hands while 
marching in time to music, the placing of nails, pegs, 
marbles, and geometrical figures into holes and spaces 
which they fit, the taking apart of collapsible boxes, 
followed by the replacing of the parts, the threading 
and the unthreading of beads, the buttoning and the 
unbuttoning of clothes and the picking up of small 
articles, such as pins and coins, from smooth sur- 
faces. 
The systematic training of the senses follows as soon 
as the body can be controlled. "Each sense must be 
taught as a function, and taught besides as a faculty," 
is the principle underlying the training. If the want 
of impression lies in the deficiency of the will, then 
we must set to work to create desires. The sense of HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
191 
touch is first dealt with, as it is the primary sense 
from which all the others have developed by differen- 
tiation. Experiments with the sense of touch will be 
of three kinds: (i) to cultivate perception, (2) to 
transmit it, and (3) to give a knowledge of it; and 
exercises are chosen in accordance with which of the 
three aspects needs special emphasis. If the hands are 
hyperaesthetic in sensibility, then they are hardened 
by rough work, such as sawing, digging, and handling 
bricks. If they are dull and insensible, they are titil- 
lated with feathers, placed upon bodies of various de- 
grees of polish, plunged alternately into warm and 
cold liquids, into bags of substances different in point 
of resistance, such as eiderdown, peas, flour, and small 
shot, substances which the idiot will learn to recog- 
nize while he is blindfolded. Blindfolded, too, the 
child is taught to recognize things by smell and by 
taste, and led to desire that which pleases him most. 
Seguin recognized that he was unable to deal with 
any kind of deafness due to permanent organic disease, 
but in dealing with the types of deafness due to emo- 
tional or intellectual causes, he met with considerable 
success. It will be remembered that Itard's savage 
could not "hear" the firing of a gun close to him, but he 
could detect the falling of a nut from a tree in the 
immediate neighbourhood, a fact which illustrates how 
desire is able to prompt discrimination. 
To develop the sense of hearing, music is employed. 
"Music, if it has no meaning for idiots, is competent, 
by the arrangement of its vibrations, to excite in them 192 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
many unknown impulses. . . . Music pleases the 
child without hurting him, a few exceptions reserved 
. . . it gives rest from harder labour, it causes in the 
immovable a tremulousness of all the fibres, which is 
easily turned into incipiency of action; it prepares the 
nervous apparatus in a similar manner, awakens, 
quickens, and supports the thoughts wonderfully; it 
dispels anger, weariness, melancholy, and disposes to 
gentle feelings; it is a moral sedative par excellence" 
(p. 104). The child who is insensible to music is 
placed near a piano, and if necessary rests his chest 
against the instrument while it is being played and the 
other children are singing. Alternating with the other 
lessons, the child is isolated and placed where the only 
possible sense stimuli are provided by distant music. 
Before long it is found that the ear becomes sensitive 
and the auditory attention fixed. 
The child is now ready for speech training. He 
usually can do no more at first than cry instinctively, 
sigh, or scream, but the physical basis is hereby dem- 
onstrated to be present. Mimicry of the teacher's 
facial and especially oral movements leads to the de- 
velopment, from the instinctive sounds, of the vowels, 
and while this mimicry is in progress, the children are 
led to explore with their hands the characteristic 
features involved in the production of the vowels, and 
later, of the consonants when they are being learnt. 
Music aids in rendering the exercises pleasant. The 
next step is to facilitate the utterance of syllables. 
Seguin is very emphatic on the danger of interfering HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
193 
with spontaneous babblings indicating pleasure and 
pain, and of forcing adult speech upon the child pre- 
maturely. His principal task as a teacher is to develop 
the mechanism of speech, and afterwards to create 
the desire for the use of it. Its use will inevitably 
follow the desire for it. 
Last of all in the process of sense training comes 
the training of the sight. The idiot finds it difficult 
at first to concentrate his gaze upon anything for any 
length of time. 
We have already indicated in a quotation how 
Seguin proceeded to gain and to keep fixity of regard 
on the part of the child, and upon this being secured, 
the child was introduced to various objects and their 
properties. The kaleidoscope, the exhibition in a dark- 
ened room of brightly colored articles and geometri- 
cal shapes through the agency of lighted glass aper- 
tures, and of fireworks in the open, proved very in- 
teresting means of effectually stimulating the visual 
attention. The balancing pole, again, not only teaches 
grasp, but will warn the child of impending encounter 
with obstacles. Coloured glass, marbles, ribbons, balls, 
etc., are all used in the teaching of colour, and in ex- 
ercises for the matching and grading of colours. 
Colours are taught through the well-known method of 
the three stages popularized by Montessori: (i) the 
naming of the colour after the teacher, (2) the choosing 
of the colour when it is named from among two or three 
others, and (3) the recognition by name of the colour 
shown, and the ability to discover it among a larger 194 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
variety of other colours. Shapes are similarly taught, 
and later, letters. The child, in imitation of the 
teacher, will pick out blocks of a given shape from a 
miscellaneous assortment, a task which calls for con- 
siderable thought on his part. The teacher puts the 
blocks in various positions and the child again imi- 
tates. Then follow building exercises of towers and 
walls and castles, "whose sudden downfall will cause 
a happy excitement." 
The size of bodies is appreciated by actual measure- 
ment, and for this purpose the sight, the hand, and 
special instruments are used. ' The child learns to 
choose in order of size, by the use of his sight alone, 
sticks of progressively increasing length which are laid 
before him in mixed order, and he arranges them in 
grades from longest to shortest. The sense of distance 
also needs to be taught. Objects are placed at equal 
distances apart by the teacher, and the child imitates 
him. The first exercises are taken in an enclosed 
space, but afterwards the child is exercised in the open 
country and with greater distances. 
The representation of objects in a solid form by 
means of soft sealing-wax, putty, or clay, or soft wood 
which can be shaped by the aid of a knife, prepares 
the way for drawing. The cutting out of paper copies 
of given patterns with the scissors comes next. Such 
exercises prepare the fingers for the control of pencil 
and pen and for the notion of a plane surface. They 
are performed by the children in groups, so that com- 
petition may play a part in stimulating each child to HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
195 
do his best. Next, the child copies on a blackboard 
the lines which the teacher makes, and learns to ar- 
range them in the same way as the teacher does; 
straight lines are learnt first, then curves, then com- 
binations of curves and straight lines. It is then pos- 
sible to teach the letters of the alphabet. It will be 
observed that this is the process which Dr. Montessori 
employs, and for which she has been given sole credit 
by undiscriminating admirers. "The child thus writes," 
says Seguin, "already by imitation without suspecting 
it" (P- 123). 
In teaching the recognition of the letters of the al- 
phabet, the process is very similar to that of teaching 
colours and shapes. The child is placed before an 
alphabet board, upon which are set some printed let- 
ters. The child has a similar set placed at his desk, 
and a letter being chosen by the teacher and given to 
the child, the latter matches it from his own set and 
places one on the other. Attention is drawn to nearly 
similar shapes and to distinctly different shapes, and 
the child usually learns two or three letters at a time 
by comparison and contrast. The stage is almost 
passive, and only involves the recognition of the simi- 
larity between his own letter and the one from the 
board. As in the case of colours and shapes, the child 
finally learns to pick out any letter that may be named. 
All that has been done by the child so far is to asso- 
ciate names with objects and with the primary quali- 
ties of objects. There is a need of more than that, 
for the child is not content merely to know things by 196 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
name; he wishes to bite them, to lick them, to explore 
the contours with his hands in every possible manner. 
But the teacher will not, if true to his vocation, keep 
the mind centred about the subjective and material 
aspects of objects; he will seek to elevate the child 
by introducing concepts of value with regard to them, 
and will try to teach the child to labour to produce the 
objects for the pleasure of others. 
The discipline and the ceremonies of the school will 
give the child a standard of morality and also of 
hygiene. 
One may perhaps draw attention here, in passing, 
to the popular modem educational idea of self-reali- 
zation as the ultimate good. Seguin occupied himself, 
like Froebel and Rousseau before him, wholly with 
the problem of the development of human personality, 
but a sane study of abnormal psychology should pre- 
vent us adopting the unfortunate heresy that person- 
ality is the most sacred of all the good things with 
which the universe teems. The student of the abnor- 
mal constantly discovers cases of children who are 
fitted by nature to become nothing better than weeds 
in the garden of life, and he cannot therefore regard 
self-realization as an ultimate value, since it is unable 
to secure always the supremacy of the good, the beau- 
tiful, and the true; for can we gather grapes from 
thorns or figs from thistles? Yet one finds frequently in 
the books of our time the sentimental Rousselian idea 
that the best one can do for a child is to allow it to de- HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
197 
velop naturally along its own lines. The truth is that 
personality at its best is nothing better than an instru- 
mental good valuable for its power of achieving greater 
good, to which it must always be subservient. The 
educator will therefore attend not merely to the culture 
of the soil in which the human plant is to flourish, 
supplying it with good and draining off from it evil, but 
will also not pause, when the occasion demands, in ap- 
plying the pruning knife with decision. It is a mat- 
ter, however, for the sociologist and not for the edu- 
cator to decide whether it will ever be legitimate to 
lay the axe finally to the roots. 
Summing up the results of Seguin's work from the 
point of view of the educator of normal children, we 
may say briefly that- 
1. He has proved that no child is too dull or too 
deficient mentally to learn; 
2. The old ideal, mens sana in corpore sano, is a 
sound one, and that the natural progress of the child 
is from the physical to the intellectual life through the 
life of the senses; 
3. Objects are known to children before their prop- 
erties and values; 
4. The first properties are learnt through taste and 
smell, next through temperature and touch; 
5. Colours are learnt before form, and spatial rela- 
tions before temporal relations; 
6. No artificial separation should be made between 
the stages of progress, physical, sensory, and intel- 
lectual. 198 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
3. Montessori Applies Seguin's Methods 
Dr. Montessori-taking her cue from Rousseau's 
application of the methods of Pereira in his teaching of 
deaf-mutes to the circumstances of the average child's 
life and development-applied the principles of Seguin 
to the education of normal children, but applied them 
in a thoroughly practical manner, and did not merely 
theorize amiably, as Rousseau did with regard to the 
education of Emile. She had been struck by the fact 
that the defectives in her Orthophrenic School in Rome 
could equal the ordinary school-children in their attain- 
ments, and had therefore come to the conclusion that 
the methods usually employed in the schools must be 
somehow vitally depressing and consequently inef- 
fective. 
One principle which must have been noticed in our 
brief account of Seguin's method is the dependence of 
good procedure upon the appeal to desire as the motive 
for activity on the part of the pupil. Hundreds of 
schemes which have been floated in the schools have 
foundered because of their neglect of this very funda- 
mental principle. 
Dr. Montessori,20 after a study of Seguin, begins in 
an entirely different and better way. She realizes that 
the first thing to do is to create a desire in the child to 
read and to write, and before this is possible the child 
must be led to see the advantages and benefits which 
will result from knowing how to read and write. Con- 
sequently she has devised games in which reading and 
20 The Montessori Method, New York, 1912. HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
writing play an essential part. Reading and writ- 
ing thus come to be a way of expressing very real 
needs. First of all, very simple directions for the per- 
formance of interesting tasks intended for the children 
to follow are written on slips of paper, and the children 
are told off, as part of a game, to choose each a paper 
and to perform the task indicated; clapping greets the 
successful. It is found after a few games that the 
children are eager to be allowed to write down mes- 
sages and directions themselves. The idea is capable 
of great extension. In every subject of the curriculum 
there is a need to harness the chariot of progress to the 
steeds of desire. The child who is taught to play the 
piano, for example, before he has the slightest desire 
to do so, and who is kept daily at the task of practising 
scales which his soul abhors, cannot be expected to 
make any startling musical progress. Similarly, the 
children who see no reason for the study of history and 
geography will make but half-hearted attempts to fulfil 
the requirements expected of them. An acquaintance 
with schools where, in addition to the usual subjects, 
there are also commercial or technical subjects taught to 
the upper classes will often reveal the fact that the 
pupils become readily absorbed in their new subjects 
and treat the English, the history and the geography 
lessons as a matter of quite secondary importance. 
This is not altogether because they are embarking on 
subjects which are more or less novel, since there is 
hardly anything which, after it has become familiar, is 
more uninteresting than shorthand and bookkeeping 
199 200 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
exercises: it is because the new subjects seem to the 
children to be worth the attention that they have to pay 
to them-they have a prospective money value in them. 
One cannot but feel, then, that the method of the 
logician in the matter of bad English teaching is at the 
bottom of all our difficulties. English has been taught 
in a way that makes little appeal to the child; indeed, 
the expression of the thoughts, instead of being a vital 
matter for him, has become no more than a hateful 
daily or weekly "exercise," like "stating a fact"-a 
process to be put up with in order to help the teacher 
with his unfortunately necessary work. At the most it 
will be a subject to gain marks in, something which 
gives the child an opportunity of getting ahead of his 
rivals in the lists of school results. Seguin's practice 
and the unsuccessful practice of his predecessors show 
that it is mere folly to begin with the teaching of any 
school subject before the child is able to feel the need 
of the acquisition of proficiency in it. Sturt, in the 
Principles of Understanding, has very well shown how 
fundamental a part desire plays in the development of 
the mental life. Step by step in the evolution of life, 
desire develops in complexity and particularity with the 
idea of the objective world. The smallest organism 
searching for food, or striving to elude the pursuit of 
a larger organism, has at least, though probably no 
more than, the two fundamental desires which these 
activities indicate, and its idea of the objective world 
is confined to the recognition of situations appropriate 
to the functioning of these two desires. Indeed, there HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
201 
is no need for any other form of cognition at this stage. 
Desire, as it evolves and becomes more particularized, 
defines itself by reference to the objects of desire. 
Individual offspring, for example, are not cognizable 
as individuals by the parent animal who has successive 
large broods of young; it is personal affection which 
prompts the cognition of individuals. Thus all passion 
is "prior to understanding," and the work of Dr. Mon- 
tessori has happily emphasized the need which Seguin 
made thoroughly clear, of basing all instruction upon the 
spontaneous impulses and the purposive desires of 
the pupil. 
Dr. Montessori is able to employ the first principle of 
Seguin respecting the need for teaching muscular 
co-ordination and movement before proceeding to the 
development of the sensory life in furthering the or- 
ganization of her school. The "Children's Houses" 
are managed in a sense by the children themselves, who 
set out their own chairs and tables, which are light 
enough for them to carry about from one place to an- 
other, while they are taught to help to take the domestic 
utensils in use from the rooms where they are kept to 
the rooms where they are required, or vice versa; the 
children, indeed, will manage to carry such articles as 
tureens of soup without spilling any of the contents. 
They are thus ready for the sense training which is a 
characteristic feature of the Montessori method. 
Dr. Montessori endeavours, as she says, and it is 
in the Seguinian manner, "to lead the child, as it were 
by the hand, from the education of the muscular sys- 202 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
tem to that of the nervous system and of the senses." 
It is very apparent, however, to the close observer that 
Dr. Montessori does not in this connection wholly grasp 
the psychological point of view of her master. To him 
every bodily movement and every form of sense activity 
is the expression of a psychical process, and the idea of 
independent exercise of the former never occurred to 
his mind. Dr. Montessori is inclined, however, to exer- 
cise the bodily muscles, and later the senses, merely for 
the sake of their own independent perfection. She 
thinks that songs, for example, are good when sung 
during marching, because of their effect upon the lungs, 
but she discourages too much singing because the aim 
of the marching is not the cultivation of the sense of 
rhythm and regularity, but merely of poise. By such 
a statement Dr. Montessori shows herself to be worlds 
apart from the spirit and psychological outlook of 
Seguin, to whom all that was material for the develop- 
ment of the all-important inner life was gladly accepted. 
Then, again, with respect to the matter of sense activity, 
whereas to Dr. Montessori the process is taken in prac- 
tice to be one of perceptual discrimination only, to 
Seguin the factors of judgment and reasoning should 
play a far more important part than mere discrimina- 
tion, and in addition the imagination and appreciation 
should be awakened and employed It is now suffi- 
ciently well established that sensory acuity and sensory 
discrimination among people are relatively insignificant 
in comparison with the greater variations in the higher 
psychical functions. Thus in cases like those of Laura HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
203 
Bridgman and Helen Keller, serious deficiency in sen- 
sory powers does not to any great extent affect the 
higher endowments. Montessori seems to regard sense 
activity as of all-embracing interest in the life of the 
tiny child; hence her unfortunate exclusion of the 
humanities from her curriculum, as well as the imagina- 
tive and the aesthetic aspects of the other subjects 
taught. 
The results of the training of the deaf-mute and the 
blind are very enlightening in the way of showing up 
in clearness and definiteness what should be the true 
view of sense training. It has been often remarked 
that the blind usually develop a literary and musical 
culture utterly beyond the reach of the deaf. The deaf 
are in every way inferior to the blind where scholar- 
ship is concerned, but superior to them in pursuits 
which have a direct bread-and-butter value. A com- 
parison of the blind and the deaf will show the deaf to 
be more selfish, more suspicious, more clannish, more 
untruthful, less emotional, and less sympathetic than 
the blind-in short, less susceptible to the social ideals 
which are current among men. The reason must be 
that such ideals are more difficult of cultivation in the 
deaf child, and this because spoken language is the 
principal medium for the transmission of human emo- 
tion, without which ideals will never function as ideal 
forces in the mind, no matter how thoroughly they may 
be understood intellectually. The human voice is able 
to express, as nothing else can, the deepest feelings of 
our nature and the inexhaustible variety of our passion- THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
204 
ate life. The lyric song of the birds in spring, the 
soft and crooning lullaby of the mother, the sob of 
grief from the heart that is near to breaking, the in- 
dignant outburst from the generous soul of a champion 
of the oppressed, the fond entreaty of the lover-how 
shall the deaf be made to feel the essential reality of 
these experiences if the latter must be robbed of the 
divinity of their form? The deaf get far more sense 
impressions than the blind-the teeming universe of 
visual phenomena is an open book to them, but they can 
do no more than decipher in it a few meanings of direct 
utilitarian value: knowledge of a kind they have, but 
not wisdom. The deaf spend more time with the things 
of the senses and the blind more time with the things 
of the spirit. The reason for the great disparity of 
intelligence between the deaf and the blind must partly 
be, then, that the blind are less disturbed than the deaf 
by the insistency of the impressions that come from 
the outer world, and that consequently they are thrown 
back upon reflection as the principal means of satisfac- 
tion. Again, they get fewer cues to the meaning of 
impressions than the deaf, and are obliged to rely for 
the comprehension of what they hear and touch upon 
their reflective judgment. Indeed, it may almost be 
said that thought varies inversely as the power of sen- 
sory discrimination. Democritus, the ancient sage and 
philosopher, is reputed to have inflicted blindness upon 
himself in order that he might be able to reflect the 
more. 
Thus, while sense training will serve as an admirable HISTORICAL SURVEY OF METHODS 
205 
basis for later education, it is a wrong principle to 
concentrate the attention wholly upon it, as Dr. Mon- 
tessori is apt to do. To neglect the culture of the 
humanities, as Dr. Montessori does, until sensory dis- 
crimination can be pronounced perfect is to miss the 
most valuable lesson which can be learnt from the edu- 
cation of defectives. 
In normal education what is obviously needed is a 
balanced proportion between the education of the senses 
and of the intelligence, and a parallel and interrelated 
development. Too much time devoted to the education 
of the senses will tend to make a child too like the deaf, 
quick to see, but slow to think and appreciate. Too 
little time devoted to sense perception will make him too 
like the blind, incapable of grasping quickly the signifi- 
cance of a situation and of acting quickly in accord- 
ance with its needs. 
It is said that the blind child at the age of eight is 
the equal of the congenitally deaf adult in point of 
general mental development. If this be so, then the 
lesson for the educator must be that the ear is a better 
medium for the culture of the intelligence, at any rate 
in young people, than the eye. Language teaching, 
therefore, should certainly be oral in the early stages; 
indeed, we are apt to rely too much upon the eye in all 
our modern methods of teaching. Things may be made 
much more striking and impressive through appeals to 
the eye, but a realization of their true significance is a 
matter solely for discussion and the reflection. If we 
look at the matter from the point of view adopted in 206 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
the second chapter, above, we shall see that the eye is 
the principal medium for the transmission of crowd in- 
fluences, and for the suggestion of irrational inference, 
whereas in the absence of appeals to the eye, and there- 
fore as in the case of the blind, there is more likelihood 
of the presence of real thought and of a strongly marked 
mental individuality. 
Because of the neglect of spoken language it may be 
here remarked that the development of the Montessori 
method familiar to all teachers as the "Dalton Plan" 
of independent study, for older children, is not proving 
so successful with some types of English child as was 
anticipated. It is working well with children who find 
full opportunities at home and elsewhere for intelligent 
conversation, but with the slum child it is likely to fail 
unless used cautiously. A fundamental aim of the 
primary school in a poor quarter must be to develop the 
faculty of ready and intelligent speech. This can be 
done only by constant discussion and oral instruction 
stimulating interest, directing observation, arousing 
thought, compelling reasoning and encouraging fluent 
talk. Seguin would have foreseen the problem, and 
said without hesitation, "speech precedes writing: there- 
fore, proceed to writing as a means of self-expression 
only when speech is well established." Already, then, 
the signs are evident in England of a movement back 
towards class teaching, though this will never be quite 
what it was in the dull days when the voice of the 
teacher foghorned away undisturbed in the clouded and 
sleepy atmosphere of his classroom. THE EMOTIONAL DEFECTIVE 
207 
§ 5. The Emotional Defective 
There remain to be considered among the subnormal 
types of mentality those persons who are defective in 
character. Although mental retardation may not be 
very apparent in their case, yet, nevertheless, marked 
mental defects may be present. That is to say, other 
factors besides intelligence, as we saw from a consid- 
eration of psychopathology, are concerned in mental 
defect. Just as the French school of psychopathologists 
were apt to treat dissociation of the mind as funda- 
mentally a dissociation of ideas rather than of desires 
and impulses, so the tests of the French professor, 
Binet, are apt to suggest that defect is purely a failing 
of the intellect. Thus the subnormal are said to suffer 
merely from instability of thought. 
Whereas the intellectually defective child is docile 
and suggestible, the subnormal and unstable child is 
turbulent, boastful, mischievous, talkative, and usually 
a great nuisance to his teachers. His reactions to per- 
ceptual stimuli are intensely violent upon occasion, and 
he suffers badly from "nerves." His behaviour is 
characterized by a plethora of random movements, and 
his attention is of a very flighty kind. In Binet's opin- 
ion, the mental retardation amounts in the majority of 
such cases to no more than a year as measured in school 
achievements. 
It is probable that this type of defective will be better 
understood through a study of psychopathology. H(j 
is frequently the victim of conflicting impulses and pur- 
poses. Now, the great conflict which every defective 208 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
who is emotionally unstable finds it almost impossible 
to resolve is the primary conflict already mentioned be- 
tween the instincts of self-preservation and those which 
would draw him completely into social life, between 
individual values and "herd" values, between egoism 
and altruism. A similar conflict also faces and confuses 
the neurotic of unusually matured intelligence, but the 
advice which one should offer the latter will be very 
different from that which the defective needs, although 
in one respect the net result of both is the same in that 
they will help the troubled individual to rise to a higher 
plane of living. The high-grade neurotic must be 
weaned from excessive attachment to or regard for 
the herd traditions, since frequently he has the germs 
of creative originality within him which the herd may 
consider inimical to its own well-being. He must, 
therefore, be led, in the interests of culture, to trust in 
his own well-pondered judgment and follow his deep- 
est inner promptings. But the emotional defective has 
not usually reached that level where the herd traditions 
will operate to civilize him, even though they after- 
wards bind him fast in the fetters of custom. He must 
become conventional before he can become free. He 
must be won over to the support of ready-made morality 
before we can hope to educate him sufficiently in self- 
direction and self-control. 
Let us re-emphasize in another way what normal 
emotional development involves. We progress by 
identifying ourselves with the aims and interests of 
groups of ever-widening range complexity and culture; THE EMOTIONAL DEFECTIVE 
209 
from an identification of our purposes with those of the 
family, through sympathy with those of the neighbour- 
hood or the club, the political party or the Church, to 
devotion to those of the nation and humanity. But in 
this progress it is, as the French say, the first step which 
counts for most; and the first step consists in securing 
healthy adaptation to the life of the family into which 
we are bom. It is in the home that we should first learn 
to resolve the conflict between the interests of self and 
others; it is there that the child usually learns to attach 
its affections to objects and purposes which are able to 
provide it with greater and more enduring satisfactions 
than can be secured by following out the blind prompt- 
ings of racial instinct. Few homes supply completely 
the ideal conditions for the effective socialization of 
the child.21 And if adaptation to the home-life is not 
perfectly satisfactory, either because the fault lies in the 
native endowment of the child or in the deficiency of 
the home, how can the more complex adjustments to 
the environment of wider groups be effected later? Or 
to put it in the words of the New Testament, "if a man 
love not his brother whom he hath seen, how shall he 
love his brother whom he hath not seen?" 
It is a mistake to suppose that the conduct of the 
unstable child is always of an anti-social variety; he is 
21 The importance of the home as an educational factor is to 
be gathered from the figures of Healy, which make it appear 
that defective home conditions as manifested in quarrelling, al- 
coholism, immorality, ignorance and neglect, were the principal 
causative factor in 162 out of 823 cases of juvenile delinquency, 
and a contributing factor in 394 of the remainder. 210 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
capable of showing the greatest of affection as well as 
of rebelliousness; he is extraordinarily suggestible if 
rightly managed, especially during the "age of loyalty," 
and very easily flattered. He needs a quiet environ- 
ment, it is found, and a life in which he will experience 
simple, strong, and beneficent rule. Severance from the 
family of which he is a member would often be a good 
thing, for it is probable that emotional feeling runs 
high there, as in him. He needs above all to be trained 
to self-government and to a sense of responsibility. If 
given, under supervision, suitable tasks to carry out on 
his own in the presence of others, he will usually come 
up to high expectations. In the case of the mentally 
unbalanced girl, the mothering instinct is usually strong, 
and provides a lever for effectual training. It will also 
be noticeable that manual work seems to have a steady- 
ing effect upon the attention and character of children 
of this flighty type, and also that they are susceptible to 
the charms of music, as indeed of most of the arts, and 
develop histrionic and aesthetic tastes very readily. 
Eurhythmies, which combines with appreciation of 
beauty a concomitant means of expression, has been 
found to be a useful means of harmonizing the warring 
impulses and calming down the explosive emotions of 
their minds. 
A minimum of repression is desirable. The unstable 
in character find rigorous discipline hostile and the 
school environment irksome; consequently they leave 
school at the earliest possible moment, generally to be- 
come a menace to society. But it should be remembered THE EMOTIONAL DEFECTIVE 
211 
that this so-called "criminal" type is merely a type of 
feeble-mindedness which is misunderstood and mis- 
trusted, driven into a criminality for which it is not 
unadapted by nature; and in this sense only is every 
feeble-minded child, if he is unfortunate enough to 
suffer from instability of character, a potential criminal. 
The idiot and the imbecile do not become criminals in 
the same way; they drift into wrong-doing, it is true, 
but usually as the dupes of others. 
It is probable that the ne'er-do-wells, the able-bodied 
paupers, the prostitutes, and the habitual drunkards are 
largely recruited from the ranks of the feeble-minded 
unstable "moron" class, through their characteristics of 
lack of responsibility and self-control. Dr. Goddard 
is of the opinion that the application of the Binet and 
other tests to these types would show at least 50 per 
cent to be defective, either intellectually or tempera- 
mentally. It is probable then that physiological factors 
are responsible for much of this, instability of tempera- 
ment which leads to anti-social conduct. 
For the study of this question a juvenile laboratory 
is a new addition to the machinery of the courts of 
Denver, through which wayward boys and girls pass 
before Judge Ben R. Lindsay. 
Judge Lindsay asserts that a wayward girl has three 
ages. He explains it in this manner. A girl may be 
thirteen years old, have the physical development of a 
girl of eighteen and the mental development of a child 
of ten years. The judge says that whenever a girl 212 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
comes before his court, the first procedure is to obtain 
her three ages, through methods developed by medical 
men and psychologists. He declares he intends to 
make the juvenile laboratory available to the mothers 
of Denver, so that they can obtain the three ages of 
their children, and use this information in providing 
against indiscretions and possible criminality. The 
judge describes in this fashion how the department 
already has aided one mother. 
"A mother came to me the other day and complained 
that she had a daughter of nineteen who gave her no 
trouble, and a daughter of fifteen who desired social 
privileges that no mother could give a girl of her age. 
I told her that her fifteen-year-old daughter was nine- 
teen biologically, and had all the impulses and emotions 
of the older girl without any of the good judgment that 
comes with later years. The younger girl is the one 
who, obeying mature impulses of nature without 
mature judgment, gets into trouble on automobile 
parties and at dances. 
"We have been used to classifying girls as good and 
bad. Sometimes the difference is merely that one who 
came into mature life when she was possessed of good 
judgment is the good girl, and the other who came into 
mature physical development when she was young and 
foolish is the bad girl." 
It is a well-founded belief of many experimenters 
today that we can only make up for a bad home influ- 
ence by allowing the sufferer opportunities for partner- 
ship with his peers in the organized healthy social life THE EMOTIONAL DEFECTIVE 
213 
of a simple group which has considerable powers of 
self-government. If this is a sound belief, then the 
question of the composition and the occupations of the 
ideal group in which the defective and mentally unstable 
child should be educated calls for our careful attention. 
As regards what the occupations should be there is little 
dispute. We are generally agreed that the method of 
education should comprise for the most part outdoor 
occupations of an active kind, for if abnormal psy- 
chology teaches us anything clearly, it is that even in 
normal persons knowledge that does not issue in actions 
is either totally worthless or apt to poison the mind. 
Frequently, too, of course, agricultural farming and 
other manual occupations draw the mental energy into 
paths to self-expression, which are in the case of the 
moron the least obstructed. 
The conclusion of the whole matter from the point 
of view of the educator is that the secret of discipline 
is not a matter for the teacher to keep locked up in his 
own breast, but that by some suitable method the re- 
sponsibility for the mental development of the scholar 
must be transferred from the teacher and implanted in 
the child himself. A child may be, in the atmosphere of 
the school, perfectly well-behaved and yet a veritable 
hooligan outside; a school may exhibit perfect discipline 
-if order and precision and obedience are the true 
criteria of good discipline-and yet the pupils who 
leave the school to take a place in the outer world may 
never have been given a chance of planning or directing 
their own activities; they may have been "spoon-fed" 214 
THE DEFECTIVE MIND 
both morally and intellectually, and with ideas of little 
nutritive value. What wonder, then, if their tastes in 
later youth find satisfaction in the less admirable types 
of mental nourishment? The experience of men who 
have experimented in training to a sense of responsi- 
bility and self-government young persons of criminal 
tendencies shows very conclusively that the aptitude for 
these admirable abilities is not a matter which is beyond 
inculcation in the case of the unfortunately defective 
youth of highly emotional endowment. These abilities 
need to be and can be developed and exercised by a sys- 
tem of practical training. We await the appearance 
of the Seguin of the reformatory who will show us the 
principles best suited for the training of the mentally 
unstable, and the Montessori who will show us how to 
apply these methods to the problems of the normal 
school. The results of the work of such men as Mr. 
William George, the founder of the George Junior 
Republic,22 and Mr. Homer Lane, of the "Little 
Commonwealth," have served to point out the path 
22 "The George Junior Republic is a remarkable institution es- 
tablished in 1895 at Freeville, near the centre of New York 
State, by Mr. William George. The original features of the insti- 
tution are that the motto 'Nothing without Labour' is rigidly en- 
forced, and that self-government is carried to a point that, with 
mere children, would appear whimsical were it not a proved 
success. The place is, as the name implies, a miniature repub- 
lic, with laws, legislature, courts, and administrations of its own, 
all made and carried on by the 'citizens' themselves. The tone 
and spirit of the place appeared to be excellent, and there is much 
evidence that in many cases strong and independent character 
is developed in children whose antecedents have been almost hope- 
less" (Encyclo. Brit., XV, 617, c.). THE EMOTIONAL DEFECTIVE 
215 
which will in time come to be one which all educators 
will find it expedient and wise to follow. 
It seems to us the merest platitude to say that a child 
will only learn to adopt such habits and ideals as he finds 
consistent with his deep-seated and fundamental im- 
pulses and desires, and that all acquired desires, no 
matter what pains may have been taken by the educa- 
tor to inculcate them, will disappear like the rain upon 
the face of the desert if no opportunities are given for 
their expression. 
Herein lies the principal task of the educator, greater 
than the task of effective instruction-to create powers 
of self-direction, of self-control, and self-realization, 
and to provide opportunities for their healthy expression. INDEX 
Abnormal psychology, scope 
of, 1 
"Abreaction," 112 
Ach, 85 
Alpha tests, the, 163 
Anaesthesia, 83 
"Associationist" school, 85 
Bagehot, 26 
Baldwin, 31 
Banners, 54 
Beauchamp, Miss, case of, 97 
Berillon, 36 
Bernheim, 109 
Binet, Alfred, 148 
the work of, 158-170 
Biology, and the new science, 
7 
Blake, William, 81 
Bourne, Rev. Ansel, case of, 
96 
Braid, James, 108 
Breuer, Josef, 9, in 
Bridgeman, Laura, 203 
British Royal Commission for 
the study of the feeble- 
minded, 172 
Brown, Dr. William, 125 
Burdett, 6 
Burt, Cyril, 168 
Catalepsy, 83 
"Cathartic" method, 112 
"Censor," the, 117 
Character, 103 
Charcot, 9, 83, 109 
Christensen, 22 
Classification of defectives, 
170 
Community, the, 25 
Complexes, the various, 102 
Connelly, 6 
Consciousness, mob and 
healthy social, 32 
Coue, Emil, 61 
Crowd-leader, teacher should 
be, 48 
Crowd-management, 39 
Crowds, behaviour and con- 
trol of, 21-24 
Defect, measurement of, 152 
Defective mind, the psychol- 
ogy of the, 147 
Defectives, 
classification of, 170 
emotional, 207 
historical survey of method 
for educating, 180 
"Determining" tendencies, 138 
Discipline, 21 
217 218 
INDEX 
Dissociation, mental, 89 
cause of, 98 
Dreams, and their signifi- 
cance, 120 
Drummond, W. B., 148 
Educational applications, 67 
Emotional defective, 207 
England, persecution of 
witches, 5 
Esquiral, 6, 7 
Falret, 148 
Feeble-minded, the, 121 
Ferrier, 8 
Flanders, persecution of 
witches in, 5 
France, persecution of 
witches in, 5 
Freud, 9, 78, 82, 98, m, 114 
Froebel, 92 
George Junior Republic, the, 
214 
George, William, 214 
Goddard, 174 
Goltz, 8 
Greeks, the, 
and mental disturbances, 3 
and power of suggestion, 
50-51 
Group-mind, the, 19 
Guthrie, Dr., 177 
Habit memory, 88 
Hart, Dr. Bernard, 125 
Hayward, Dr. Frank, 67 
Head, 131 
Healy, William, 161, 173 
Herd instinct, the, 26 
Hierarchy of the human 
abilities, 179 
Historical resume of psycho- 
therapy, 108 
Historical survey of methods 
in educating defectives, 
180 
History, 65 
Hopkins, Mary Alden, 115 
Hypnosis, 83 
Hysteria, 99 
Idiot, the, 171 
Imbecile, the, 171 
Imitation, 26 
Individuality, 103 
Intelligence tests, 168 
Itard, 148, 180-185 
James, William, 58, 77, 145 
Janet, Pierre, 9, 78, 83, 98, 
109 
Jews, the, and mental disturb- 
ances, 3 
Joan of Arc, 81 
Jones, Dr. Ernest, 103 
Journalist, success of, due to, 
44-45 
Jung, 9, 78, 126 
Keatinge, 61 INDEX 
219 
Keller, Helen, 203 
Knox, 161 
Lane, Homer, 214 
"Latent content," 127 
Le Bon, 22 
Lethargy, 83 
"Libido," the, 142 
Liebault, 109 
Lincoln, a memorial celebra- 
tion in honour of, 71 
Lindsay, Judge Ben R., 211 
Literature, 65 
McDougall, 15, 28, 37, 102 
Maeder, 122 
Management, crowd, 39 
"Manifest content," 127 
Masefield, John, 87 
Master complex, the, 105 
Mathematics, 63 
Measurement of defect, 152 
Memory, pure and habit, 88 
Mental abnormality, 
the biological standpoint, 7 
pre-scientific view of, 1 
Mental dissociation, 89 
cause of, 98 
Mesmer, Franz, 108 
Mob-mind, the, 19 
Mobs, 25 
Montessori, Dr., 95, 178, 198- 
206 
Moron, the, 171 
Motion pictures, 43 
Munk, 8 
Miinsterberg, 77 
Music, 52 
Newspapers, 44-45 
Nietzsche, 117 
Number, an important ele- 
ment of "crowd," 23 
Paterson, 161 
Peckham, Dr. and Mrs., 30 
Pereira, 184 
Personality, 103 
development of, 75 
Pinel, 6 
Pintner, 161 
Plutarch, 50 
"Point-scale" tests, 161 
Prince, Morton, 9, 77, 78, 91 
Processions, 54 
Psychasthenia, 99 
Psychoanalysis, 134 
Psychopathology, 75 
Pure memory, 88 
Reason, 35 
worship of pure, 49 
Recognition, 88 
Recollection, 88 
Reminiscence, 88 
Repression, 117 
Rivers, W. H. R., 9, 78, 131 
Romans, the, 
and mental disturbances, 4 
Rousseau, 185 
Ruskin, 22 
Russell, George, 82 
Self-control, strengthening 
child's, 107 INDEX 
220 
Seguin, 148, 187-197 
Shell-shock cases, 113 
Sighele, 22 
Simon, 148 
"Sittlichkeit," the, 25 
Socrates, 51 
Somnambulism, 83, 92 
Stout, 86 
Subconscious, reality of the, 
75 
"Sublimation," 142 
Suggestibility, 26 
Sympathy, 26 
Tarde, 26, 42 
Teacher, the, 
must be able to energize his 
scholars, 60 
must be persistent and sys- 
tematic, 58 
must have impressive per- 
sonality, 57 
must possess foresight and 
wide experience, 56 
must respect dignity of his 
scholars, 60 
must thoroughly under- 
stand the power of sug- 
gestibility, 61 
should be the natural 
crowd-leader of every 
class, 48 
Teaching method and the de- 
fective mind, 147 
Tests, 163, 168 
Thomson, Godfrey, 168 
Titchener, 32, 77 
Trotter, 13 
United States, and intelli- 
gence tests, 163 
Vincent, President, of Uni- 
versity of Minnesota, 
104 
Visual aids, 43 
Voisin, 148 
Wallas, Graham, 22, 46 
War, and rumors, 14 
Ward, James, 76 
Wells, H. G., 128 
Witches, persecutions of, 4-5 
"Word association," 134 
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