An Outline of Abnormal Psychology
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Psychology Revivals An Outline of Abnormal Psychology Originally published in 1926, a complement to the author's Outline of Psychology, this book surveys the field of neurotic and mental disorders in so far as they are not due to gross organic lesions. It discusses this principal types of mental process that are abnormal or disorderly in the sense that they are departures from the fully waking processes of the normal mind, seeking to understand them in terms of the general principles laid down in the earlier volume. Sleep, the influence of drugs and suggestion, conflict and repression, automatisms and somnambu lisms, morbid fears, obsessions and impulsions, perversions, delusions, exaltation and depression, multiple personalities, psycho-therapy, and the schools of abnormal psychology - these and many others are the topics discussed from the point of view, not of medical practice, but of psychological theory. A book, not for the medical expert only, but for every man or woman interested in the riddle of human personality. This page intentionally left blank An Outline of Abnormal Psychology William McDougall ROUTLEDGE ~ ~~o~:~~n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1926 by Methuen & Co. Ltd This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge 27 Church Road, Hove BN3 2FA and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1926 William McDougall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic! mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. ISBN: 978-1-138-94144-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-67366-0 (ebk) AN OUTLINE OF ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY DY WILLIAM McDOUGALL. F.R.S. SIXTH EDiTlOII' METHUEN & CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W.O. LONDON Copyrighted and Published in the United States of America I926 First Published in Great Britain July 8th I926 Second Edition December I933 Third Edition Alarch I940 Fourth Edition December I944 Fifth Edition June I947 Si:fth Edition I948 CATALOGUE NO. 3634/U PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN PREFACE "At this time," writes Prof. Eugene Bleuler, "one of the most important, if not the most important, of all paths to a knowledge of the human soul is by way of psychopathology." This dictum of a great psychiatrist seems to me indisputable. In writing my "Outline of Psychology," I omitted all consideration of the facts and theories of mental disorder, in the hope of discussing them in a later volume. That hope is realised by the appear ance of the present work. The two volumes, though published separately, are essentially two parts of one book, and in this volume I have found frequent occasion to refer to the earlier one as Part I. I wish to emphasise the complementary nature of the two volumes. I hope that their conjunction may do some thing to bridge the gap between academic psychology and the study of the neuroses and psychoses, a gap which remains re grettably wide. Its width is due to the fact that the two lines of work, the study of normal mental life on the one hand, and of the disorders of mental life on the other, have been pursued by groups of workers who have but little contact with one another. While the academic psychologists have concentrated their efforts for more than a generation upon the development and applica tion of the experimental methods of the laboratory, the study of the disorders of our mental life has remained in the hands of medical men, who, with few exceptions, have had little sympathy with the endeavours of, and little knowledge of the results achieved by, the academic psychologists. I t has been the fashion among psychiatrists to introduce their text-books with a chapter or two on normal psychology; but such chapters have been for the most part very perfunctory and inadequate. And the most fruitful of all the medical movements in the field of psychopathology, that of Prof. Sigmund Freud and his school, has proceeded with an almost ostentatious neglect of academic psychology, and a vii Vlll PREFACE consequent widening of the breach. Within the field of psycho pathology also there is a regrettable lack of harmony and con sensus of opinion. The field is cultivated by a number of warring schools whose teachings are so widely different that to a layman they might hardly seem to be concerned with the same topics and the same problems. In view of this situation, I have held before me, as a principal object to be attained, the bringing together in one consistent scheme what seems to be soundest and most fruitful in contem porary academic psychology and in the teachings of the various schools of abnormal psychology. And especially I have made it a principal object to incorporate in academic psychology what ever seems of most value in the teachings of the various schools of psychoanalysts. Unlike many of my academic colleagues, I do not regard the psychoanalytic movement with indifference, still less with hostility. I believe that Prof. Freud has done more for the advancement of psychology than any student since Aristotle. At the same time, I by no means accept all of his teachings; I regard much of the current psychoanalytic doctrines as ill-founded and somewhat fantastic. But it would, I hold, be a great service to single out what is sound and true in these doc trines and to bring it into harmony with the main body of psycho logical science. I have striven to contribute towards the accom plishment of this task by including in this volume a critical exposition of the views of Freud, and, in less detail, of those of Drs. C. G. jung, Eugene Bleuler, Alfred Adler, and other leaders of the psychoanalytic schools. If some of my criticisms seem severe, I would beg the reader to believe that they are written in no spirit of hostility, but rather in one of sincere appreciation of the great work that is being done by medical students of the human mind. I have not attempted to conceal my opinion that the Freudian school retains something of the nature of a closed coterie or an esoteric sect, most of the members of which are too much domi nated by their great leader. They show too strong a tendency to accept, somewhat uncritically, as an indivisible whole, the complicated system of Freudian psychology, and to demand on the part of others a similar acceptance. I find in a recent publi- PREFACE ix cationl a statement of this attitude towards Freud, attributed to one of his "most brilliant younger disciples in Vienna, a teacher and analyst." Mrs. Parker, the reporter of the statement, had remarked of one of the published works of a compatriot " It's hard to find any book where every word is beyond question. No man is God." She goes on as follows: "'No,' the Austrian mused, 'of course no man is God.' Then he sat up suddenly. • Yes, yes, one man is God-Freud.' He pointed to his newly bought complete writings of Freud in ten volumes. 'Every word in these ten volumes is absolutely correct. Freud is 100 per cent right. No-200 per cent. Every word Freud has written is absolutely correct. Every word he will write is absolutely correct.''' Now this incident, if it is authentically reported, remains no doubt a whimsical caricature of the attitude of the good Freudian. But, like all good caricatures, it expresses, while overstating, a truth. The prevalence of the attitude thus caricatured among mem bers of the Freudian school renders difficult all profitable discus sion of the Freudian doctrines; and the difficulty is greatly in creased by the opposite attitude, one of derisive scepticism, which has been prevalent among those physicians and psychologists who have not fallen under Freud's influence. This attitude of complete negation has been given numerous expressions, one of the most temperate of which is the following passage from Prof. Pierre Janet's latest book, "The Principles of Psychotherapy": "It is interesting to note that we are again concerned with a psychotherapeutic method whose roots extend into the French animal magnetism. Psychoanalysis is to-day the last incarnation of those practices, at once magical and psychological, that characterised magnetism. It maintains the same characteristics, the use of imagination and the lack of criticism, the vaulting ambition, the contagious fascination, the struggle against ortho dox science. It is probable that it also will meet with undeserved appreciation and decline." Prof. Janet here speaks as the repre sentative of both orthodox medicine and orthodox psychology, 1 "The Capital of Psychology," by C. S. Parker, Surf}~y Graphic, September, 192 5. x PREFACE in implying that the psychoanalytic movement, including not only that of the Freudian school but also that of the various derivative schools, is destined soon to fade away and to figure in the history of medical science as merely one more of the many strange occultisms that from dme to time have obsessed some considerable fraction of the medical world. I cannot accept either of these extreme estimates of the value and significance of the movement initiated by Freud.