Revival: The New Psychology and Religious Experience (1933)

Thomas Hywel Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781138553446
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351338912
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Explores the crossover between the newly emerging field of psychology and the established doctrine of theology.

Part I

Chapter 1
The Basal Assumptions of the New Psychology

WE have already pointed out how close are the resemblances of the two Schools in some of their main positions, and we have now to examine their basal assumptions somewhat in detail.

A. Behaviourism¹

Behaviourism has had a great vogue in America, but there are signs that it is gradually losing its power, although it still has many able advocates. In the early days, shortly after the publication of Professor J. B. Watson's book entitled Behaviour in 1914, the movement swept through the United States with something like the fervour of a popular religious movement, and young University students welcomed it as the dawn of a new era. Professor R. S. Woodworth tells of one of his students who confessed that Behaviourism meant for him and for many more "a new hope and a new orientation, when the guideposts had become hopelessly discredited. It was a religion to take the place of religion." It has spread beyond the limits of Psychology as such, and has entered into sociology and economics, as well as into other fields, so that it is difficult to trace all its influence on some aspects of modern thought. Two things may be said to have prepared for its coming. There was, in the first place, a growing revolt against the older Psychology with its insistence on limiting Psychology to the study of "states of consciousness," and making introspection its chief method of acquiring knowledge of such states, Then, secondly, an influential school of experimentalists was working on the psychology of animals, and a new psychological technique was evolved by this means, for dealing with the objective side of behaviour. In America Titchener, Pillsbury, and Thorndike had acquired valuable data by this experimental method. Probably, however, the most influential worker in this field was Pavlov, the Russian Psychologist, who had been carrying on a series of experiments in connection with the secretion of saliva in dogs. By these experiments he had reached the idea of behaviour as a matter of "conditioned reflexes," and had come to the conclusion that all "learned behaviour," even the complex behaviour of man, consists of such reflexes. It can be explained on the basis of sensori-motor activity and can be understood in terms of physiological processes. The main key to the understanding of behaviour, therefore, is the study of the physiological processes of the brain, and the task of Psychology is to examine these processes and state them with the exactness of science. These two currents met in Watson. After the publication of his first book in 1914, he became the recognized leader of the School, and his Psychology from the Standpoint of a Behaviourist has almost been regarded as the Bible of the movement. He has written a later book entitled Behaviourism (1924), in which he carries his main theories to a more advanced stage, involving the denial of such mental factors as he had allowed in his earlier works. Among those of his disciples who have kept to the main stream of the Behaviourist tradition are Max Meyer,¹ A. P. Weiss,² W, S. Hunter,³ and more on the purely physiological side of brain study, K. S. Lashley.⁴ There are some members of the School who have moved away from the original position in the direction of Psychoanalysis, the most important of these being Leuba.¹ It is not easy to place Leuba, for he is in some aspects of his thought strongly on the side of the Psychoanalysts, but he is certainly to be classed among the Behaviourists in some other important respects. More especially is this so in his dealings with religion, for he attempts to work out the thesis that religion is a type of behaviour that develops naturally out of the environmental situation, just as every other type of behaviour does. It will be convenient, therefore, to include him in this section, and as he is the most important writer of the group in relation to religion, we shall have to give considerable attention to his writings and his ideas.

Watson states his point of view in these words: "Psychology, as the Behaviourist views it, is a purely objective experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behaviour. Introspection forms no essential part of its methods . . . the time seems to have come when Psychology must discard all reference to consciousness, when it need no longer delude itself into thinking that it is making mental states the object of observation ... it is possible to write a psychology . . . and never use the terms consciousness, mental states, mind, content, will, imagery, and the like ... it can be done in terms of stimulus and response, in terms of habit formation, habit integration, and the like."² This statement makes clear the main purpose of the Behaviourist School, and we may state its basic positions thus:

(1) Its primary aim is to make Psychology an exact science, whose results can be stated in quantitative terms, and with the exactness of the natural sciences.

(2) It rules out all attempts at introspection as illegitimate, and relies on experimental methods for all its data. Beginning thus by neglecting the study of mental states, it ends by denying that such states exist, except in the sense of physiological changes in the brain and nervous system.

(3) An effort is made to link Psychology on to Biology, and to regard all behaviour from the standpoint of that which subserves life, and as arising naturally out of the basal human needs under the pressure of the environment. All behaviour is thus learned or acquired, and is of the nature of the "conditioned reflex."

We must examine these points with a little more detail.

The effort to make Psychology a purely scientific study is a worthy and commendable one as long as we do not become unscientific in seeking to achieve it. Science as such deals with relations—the action and reaction of phenomena on each other—and it moves in the realm of "the given" in a physical sense. It is concerned with physical facts, and its world is the mechanistic world of physical law and necessary causation.

The ideal of science is twofold:

(1) To be able to express its facts in exact quantitative measurements. It becomes an exact science just in proportion as it is able to do this. The progress of science is all along the way a progress in such exactness. On the basis of this it advances to the second aspect of its ideal.

(2) To become able to predict what will happen under certain given conditions. When science, on the basis of its quantitative measurements, is thus able to predict and foretell what will come to pass under stated conditions, if these conditions are known, it has established its right to be considered an exact science. Astronomy has grown just in proportion as it has become possible to give mathematically precise measurements of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and it has established its right to be considered an exact science by being able to predict when the next eclipse will take place and to tell us when the next comet is to appear. The same may be said of chemistry and of all the sciences.

Now the effort of the Behaviourist is to make Psychology an exact science in this sense. To do this all qualitative differences have to be reduced to quantitative, and the basis of life and thought has to be regarded as physiological and mechanistic. That effort is all very well as far as it goes, but as Dr. Drever, McDougall, and others of the saner School of Psychology have seen, we cannot, without distorting and changing the very essence of the facts of experience, state them in the terms of pure science, or in quantitative terms, for the essence of mental facts is that they are qualitative. Moreover, the Psychologist, when he examines the phenomena of experience—and in reality experience is the real subject of Psychology—finds there factors that have no analogue in the purely physical sphere, such factors, for example, as conscious purpose, the voluntary effort towards a goal that means the suppression of some of the instincts that are basal to human nature. As Dr, Drever says: "The results obtained by the objective method of study are only valid for Psychology when, and in so far as, they can be interpreted in terms of experience. It is impossible to study or discuss the psychology of such facts as interest, emotions, volitions, etc., without the conviction being forced on us that no physiological explanation can really explain these facts." Dr. William Brown agrees that: "The total reaction of the body with its environment shows certain characteristics that cannot be fitted into the mechanical scheme, such characteristics as spontaneity; persistence of action when the stimulus has ceased; action coming to an end after a certain purpose has been achieved; altering behaviour in the light of previous results, that is, the power of learning by experience. All these characteristics we can sum up by saying that it is purposive, and that the purposiveness of all vital activity is not to be explained in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry. . . . The vital organism has a unity not to be explained by physics, etc., for new principles have emerged, the principles of self-regulation, assimilation, and propagation. Purposive activity is a new and additional category and this is sui generis. The more we attempt to explain purpose, the more is it seen that it cannot be explained except in mental and psychological terms."¹ We may then so strain matters in the attempt to make them scientific as to become completely unscientific, and we have only to read the work of Watson and others to realize how unscientific they have become in the effort to make Psychology a pure science. Professor F. C. Bartlett of Cambridge gave utterance to a profound truth when he said, "Some modern psychologists are in danger of losing sight of the 'individual responding' in their preoccupation with the different types of his responses."² Now that is peculiarly true when Psychologists come to deal with religious experience. There is a sense in which the scientific attitude has a certain aloofness from religion. Concentration on the purely scientific aspect of things seems to blunt one aspect of consciousness. It leads to a partial atrophy of the emotional aspect and a loss of sensitiveness to the idealistic and more spiritual facts. Science deals with matter and material forces, and the constant traffic in these things does seem to incapacitate men from forming a fair estimate of religious phenomena. Certain it is, however, that the purely scientific examination of religious experience, if such a thing is possible, takes something out of that experience that makes it a different thing. This is what Dr. William Brown means when he says that "Psychology, in the very effort to describe religious experience, invalidates that experience." This does not mean that we are not to apply psychological principles to religious phenomena. As facts of consciousness they can, and must, be the subject-matter of Psychology. But it means that they have to be interpreted in different terms from those of physics, chemistry, and the material sciences, and even from biology. They are facts, as Brown says, that belong to a different order and they call for a different explanation.

We can now understand why the Behaviourist rules out such facts as consciousness, mind, will, and purpose. It will be evident at once that the introduction of any disturbing or incalculable element—such an element as the Mind, or the Will, with its power of choice and of initiating activities of its own—into the purely physical or physiological process would overthrow the completeness of the whole scheme. If any incalculable element is introduced, our hope of stating things in exact mathematical terms is gone, for the one thing which we cannot then do is to predict what such an element will do. Our hope of making Psychology a pure and exact science vanishes the moment we admit purely mental forces apart from the physiological. So the Behaviourist rules out all purely mental facts and reduces them all to terms of physiological processes.

Let us see what some of the Behaviourists say on this point. Leuba says definitely: "Thought is nothing but a highly developed bodily activity." Professor Holt¹ defends the position that what we call "mind" is merely the "integration" of the organism's motor responses to stimuli. This integration is a "synthetic novelty," and in this novelty there is the birth of awareness, and therefore of Psychology itself. Professor Watson² says, "The Behaviourist finds no evidence for mental existence or mental processes of any kind." He admits that there are such facts as emotions, but he regards them, very largely as Lange had done, as consisting of bodily changes and muscular tensions only. Thus he speaks of emotion in general, as due to "profound changes of the bodily mechanism as a whole, but particularly of the visceral and glandular systems,"³ and in his last book he says, "Notwithstanding the fact that in all enabtional responses there are overt factors, such as the movement of the eyes and the arms and the legs, visceral and glandular factors predominate."¹ In his early writings he allowed some place to instinct in the life of man, but in the later phases of his thought, as represented in his last book, he definitely rules out instinct and all hereditary mental traits, and holds that any normal child, with proper environment and careful training, can develop into anything which the parents or trainer may desire, "regardless of his talents, tendencies, abilities, vocation, and the race of his ancestors." In this way environment becomes supreme as the formative factor in the life of each individual. The logical issue of this line is reached by Lashley, who says, "The Behaviourist denies sensations, images, and all other phenomena which the subjectivist claims to find by introspection."

The Behaviourist is perfectly right in this attitude if he is to make Psychology an exact science. His mistake is to think that Psychology can be made an exact science, in just the same sense as the other sciences. Whatever the Behaviourist may say, there are mental facts, such things as ideals, for example, which refuse to be reduced to purely physiological processes. As Professor Lloyd Morgan has pointed out, the story of man's activity is all along a twofold story. On the one hand there are physiological processes, nerve disturbance, emotional discharges, organic sensations, etc. But along with these there are mental facts, closely related and running on parallel lines, but a mind that can use these physical processes, controlling and guiding them towards ends which are not on any stretch of imagination to be regarded as physical. Now what the Behaviourist does is to try and write the story of mental life in terms of the first aspect and of that only, without introducing the concept of mind, or ideal. And in doing this we may truly say that he is trying to build up a scientific Psychology by an unscientific method and on an unscientific basis. He leaves out of count in his estimation of behaviour and activity an essential element, and without that element it is impossible to give a complete account of behaviour, especially on the human plane.

This, then, is the position of the real Behaviourist. Dr. Drever defines Psychology as "the science of the behaviour of living organisms," and then he goes on to add, "interpreted in terms of mental facts and processes." The radical Behaviourist stops at the first part of the definition, and holds that all behaviour must be interpreted in terms of stimulus and response in such a way that no mental element is invoked or implied. What happens, says he, is this. A certain stimulus breaks in and disturbs the physiological equilibrium of the organism, and a certain mode of behaviour follows inevitably, as an effort to restore the equilibrium. It is all along a purely physiological process, the organism in a mechanical way seeking to regain its state of equilibrium and comparative repose. The sight of a lion, for example, breaks in on the equilibrium of a man's organic state and causes a disturbance there, and this we call "fear." The man's running away follows as the effort to restore his equilibrium. A man is hungry and the hunger is a disturbance of organic equilibrium. He eats as an effort to restore it. There may be with this process the accompaniment of what we call consciousness. The man may and does feel afraid. He does realize the sense of need which we call hunger. But these are due to the disturbance of the organism itself, and they pass away as soon as equilibrium is restored. The so-called mental element then must be ruled out from all attempts at explanation, for to interpret behaviour in mental terms is to read into it what is not really there. There may be what we call "consciousness" accompanying the behaviour, but this has no agency, nor has it any causal efficiency. It cannot be spoken of as the cause of the behaviour. The cause is to be found in the physiological state of the organism. Now science deals with causes, and we must therefore rule the mental element out from all explanations, for consciousness has been preserved only as a function and not as an agent or a cause. We are therefore quite justified in ignoring it, and proceeding with our consideration of all psychical facts from the purely objective and physiological point of view.

Professor Lloyd Morgan's criticism here is perfectly just. He points out that by common consent "what is called Psychology deals with mental processes of some kind. Clearly, then, if there be no evidence for mental processes of any kind, there is no evidence for the subject-matter of Psychology. Hence it would seem that if this be the position the simple and direct course would be to say frankly that for the radical Behaviourist there is no scientific province of Psychology. It ought to be called physiology."¹

We pass now to a few words of criticism of this general position before coming to dwell briefly on the more religious bearing of these theories.

In the first place, we may say that a theory of behaviour that leaves out mind or self-consciousness as the unifying of all experiences in a conscious self is at once suspect, especially as it is in this realm that all progress comes. It is highly probable that physical and physiological processes are the same in animals and men. A stimulus is a disturbance of equilibrium and the resultant behaviour, on its physiological side, is an effort to restore equilibrium, both in them and in man. But the animal does not progress, whereas man does. The animal's life is always a circle that ends where it began. Man's life, on the other hand, is a spiral—it comes round to the same point but at a higher level. And the secret of that progress is rooted in that which he has over and above the animal—something that is left over when we have examined and exhausted all the purely physical or physiological processes. It does seem then to be a hopeless position when we seek to explain the mind of Plato, Milton, or Einstein by saying that it and its products are merely physical reflexes!

The School lays a great deal of emphasis on biology and biological needs. One of its weaknesses is that it overworks this biological analogy. But if it examined a little more deeply into biology itself it would find that biology tends to explain living organism, not by their beginnings but by their ends, not by what things are in germ but by what they are as fully developed things. In other words, it introduces the idea of an end or goal towards which the organism is progressing, and judges of it in its completed or more perfect examples. Now the idea of an end is a purely ideal thing, and on no merely physical hypothesis can we explain it. But leaving that aspect of the matter, we may point out here that in thus using this biological analogy, as the Behaviourists do, they lay great stress on the principle of evolution. It is one of the basal principles of evolution that it is only the fittest that survives, and fitness is interpreted in terms of adaptation to the environment. That survives which adapts itself best to the conditions around it, conditions which subserve the needs of life in its struggle. Other things are driven to the wall and eliminated. It is exceedingly difficult to see how, on the Behaviourist theory, consciousness has survived. If it serves no purpose except as a function, and if it has no efficiency or causality in the struggle for existence, then how has it sur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• PART I
• PART II
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX