University Courses in Psychology
- Author:
Lightner Witmek.
What tlie department of psychology in a modern university teaches is quite as important as what it contributes to science in the way of original research. The exclusive pursuit of either teaching or original research will result in something less than the largest measure of effectiveness. The laboratory of psychology performs its appointed task of contributing new facts and principles to the world’s stock of knowledge primarily in its character as a department of the graduate school of a university. But it must teach these facts and principles in the college as well as in the graduate school. The student comes to the laboratory of psychology because he desires information in a special branch of knowledge, or seeks training that will form mental habits, and give him a special attitude of mind, that of the psychologist, toward problems of a social, educational or individual nature. The adequate teaching of college and graduate students requires resources that can usually be found only in laboratories equipped for investigation. The most effective teaching of psychology will be done by those who gain their inspiration and knowledge from contact with the phenomena of mind, as these are studied by the experimental method. Thus psychology is primarily a graduate subject, a department of research, but it is one that has taken its place in the college department of most of our institutions of learning in response to an impulse that has been everywhere felt to enrich the restricted courses of the so-called humanities by a wider range of subjects in closer touch with modern life.
While college instruction in psychology is thus dependent upon a well-equipped graduate department, the laboratory of psychology, on the other hand, needs the college in order that it may gain the ear and attention of students especially interested in or adapted for psychological work, l^or must it neglect a wider appeal to the enlightened members of several professions. Psychology is at least implicitly a part of the professional training of the teacher, the physician, and the social worker, besides touching very closely the practical every-day needs of many non-professional persons. In its breadth of direct human appeal, psychology differs from many other sciences, as for instance physics and astronomy. For this reason it is important that the laboratory of psychology should seek to instruct and educate the community, because it is from the community at large tliat it will draw those students, whom adequate training will prepare to take up the burden of investigation. Because certain institutions,?notably Clark and Columbia,? have understood the vital importance of an appeal to those who felt a practical need of psychology, these institutions have stood forth as examples of what an efficient and well-rounded department of psychology could offer to the public, to its students, and to science. Clark University, through the efforts of President Hall, who was the first to develop the field of experimental psychology in this country, occupies a distinctive position, not only throughout the United States, but in Germany as well, where its work in child psychology has caused a very decided modification in the scope of laboratories that are offshoots of the parent laboratory at Leipzig. Of equal importance is the contribution of Professor Cattell to the development of this department of comparative psychology through the organization of mental and physical tests and measurements. The laboratory of psychology in the University of Pennsylvania has been animated by the same impulse to seek to establish a comparative psychology, more particularly a child psychology, upon a secure foundation. While many institutions share in a common principle of action, it is natural that each institution should develop, through a greater emphasis upon some one method, a distinctive type of work; thus Clark University is characterized through the development and application of the syllabus method, Columbia through the statistical method, and the University of Pennsylvania through the clinical method.
I must not minimize the fact that there are psychologists who do not share the belief in the importance of comparative work in child psychology for the science of psychology and for the teacher. Thus the Harvard department of psychology maintains that experimental psychology is not only of no use to the teacher, but, in the words of the director of the Harvard laboratory, a positive “danger.” That experimental psychology may be useless,?even dangerous,?to the teacher is doubtless true, but it is true only of that type of psychology represented by the Harvard laboratory, i. e., a psychology dominated by philosophical ideas. And the Cornell laboratory, which has not been excelled in this country in the scientific quality of its experimental work, stands out frankly as a laboratory for experimental introspection within the field of the psycho-physics of the individual consciousness. I do not wish to appear to discredit or even to criticise the attitude of these departments of psychology. Whether it is justifiable for a department of psychology to devote its Lest efforts to the development of a comparative cliild psychology is a question that is hardly susceptible of settlement through academic discussion. It may safely be left for the future to determine through the beneficent operation of the law of the survival of the fittest.
To estimate what a department of psychology at any institution of learning represents, it is of as much importance to know the scope of its organization for teaching as to know the character of its output in the field of original investigation. In the administration of the department of psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, I have from the first considered it of prime importance to organize our courses in psychology so as to give the kind of training that can be utilized by students either in practical pursuits or in the service of original investigation. At the present stage of the development of psychology (for it is still in its infancy), I regard a well-considered plan of instruction to be in the nature of a contribution to the science. The courses in psychology that are offered at the University of Pennsylvania in the Summer School of 1907 are practically co-extensive with the regular courses offered in the college and graduate school. Tor this reason I desire to incorporate in the first number of The Psychological Clinic a statement of the purpose and scope of these courses, which will serve to indicate the trend of psychological investigation and teaching at this University. The value of these courses must be judged with reference to the classes of students to whom they are offered. They are intended to meet the requirements of? 1. Graduate and undergraduate students of psychology, and instructors of psychology who have not had opportunity to follow courses in modern experimental and physiological psychology. 2. Superintendents of public schools, institute lecturers, and teachers desiring a broader education in the science whose principles underlie pedagogical methods. 3. Physicians and medical students who seek an acquaintance with modern psychological theory and method.
4. Those who are or desire to become teachers of backward and other special classes of defective children; and 5. Social workers, especially those whose efforts are directed toward the amelioration of the condition of children through factory legislation, truancy laws, the juvenile court and general philanthropy. The essential prerequisite for intelligent work in any department of modern psychology is a training in introspective analysis and experimental methods. Without this training, it is immaterial whether the student be an instructor of psychology, a graduate or undergraduate student, a grade teacher or a superintendent of schools, a physician or a social worker,?he must pass through this introductory course, not merely because its actual content will serve as a foundation for future work, but also because it is only through work of this kind that he will learn how to observe and accurately record the phenomena of the human mind and of human nature.
The new psychology differs from the old in method rather than in fundamental principles. Method can only be acquired through individual laboratory work. The student must have presented to him, in an experimental course, the mental phenomena which he can subject to personal observation and introspection. He must be taught to observe closely and to record with accuracy, and especially to distinguish between what is actually before him and what, owing to preconceptions and theories, he thinks ought to be there. In other words, he must be trained to become in some measure a psychologist. To the degree that he acquires the psychologist’s point of view, to that degree will he be able to employ what he has learned of psychology, in teaching, in medicine, or in social work. Tie will avoid the mistake of applying to his professional work either speculative opinions or the results of laboratory investigations that may not have any necessary bearing on the problems that confront him.
The first fundamental course is that given in the outline of courses below as Course 5, Analytical Psychology. It is based upon laboratory experiments dealing chiefly with perception, but involving also to some extent an analysis of more complex mental processes, such as apperception, attention, association, and memory. Complicated laboratory apparatus is not necessary; very simple and inexpensive apparatus will do for this first course. In fact, the simpler the apparatus the less likely is the student to have his attention diverted from the principles illustrated by the experiments. In developing this course to meet my conception of what it should be, I found it necessary to provide my own manual of experiments, which, after a number of years, grew into a book published under the title of Analytical Psychology.
The second course, which in a sense is quite as fundamental as the first, is given in the outline below as Course G, Physiological Psychology. It involves laboratory work in the examination of the brain and other portions of the nervous system, and of their connection with the muscles and sense organs. The student studies experimentally reflex action, instinctive and voluntary activities, and the physiological processes underlying the emotions. The experiments are more complicated than in the previous course, and require more elaborate apparatus. To permit the students of a class to carry out the same experiments simultaneously, the laboratory has been equipped with several sets of chronographic and other recording instruments.
These two courses constitute the first year’s work in psychology. In each course one hour a week is devoted to lectures and demonstrations and two hours to laboratory work for the half year. In the Summer School, Course 1, Modern Psychology, will cover the lecture portion of the year’s work, while Courses 5 and 6, each in two hour periods, cover the laboratory portion. The work of the second year is devoted to synthetic and genetic psychology. The first subject taken up is the combination of simple elements to form complex mental states. The student is made acquainted with the phenomena of after-images, memory images, and the organization of memory, imagination, association, the emotions, and the will. This study of the mind as a structure built up of simpler elements is combined with or followed by a study of the development of simple and complex mental functions in the individual and the race. In this course one hour is devoted to lectures and two hours to laboratory work throughout the year. The lecture portion is represented in the Summer School as Course 3, Genetic Psychology, which will be limited to the evolutionary and other processes resulting in the development of the individual consciousness.
These courses constitute an introductory outline of psychology. The student has obtained some training in introspective analysis,?the dominant note of the first course; he has been made familiar with psycho-physiological conceptions; and he has received a consistent account of the genesis of mental functions. Throughout, he has been acquiring practice in the methods of experimentation, and has learned how to form conclusions from the results of his experiments, and to eliminate from his legitimate conclusions preconceptions and theories of speculative and other origin. He is now supposed to have a general survey of the field of psychology, and to have made a sufficient acquaintance with psychological method to undertake for himself the solution of definite problems. He is ready for special work.
The most important single field of work comprehended within the general field of psychology is that of child psychology. Child psychology is represented, as a department of comparative and genetic psychology, among the courses offered in the University of Pennsylvania, and comprises three divisions:
1. A lecture course presenting the special methods and results of child psychology. 2. A seminar presenting the results of original work on problems connected with the psychology of education; and 3. The psychological clinic. In the regular courses of the college and graduate school, this work is combined into a single course, and no student is permitted to undertake it until he has completed the two years of introductory courses. It is a mistake to encourage teachers to believe that they can tumble into an understanding of child psychology without a thorough foundation in the general facts and principles and methods of psychology. For the Summer School, however, it was felt that a compromise was necessary; and this work is accordingly offered to students of the Summer School as three separate courses, and will be presented in such a manner that students without previous preparation in psychology may pursue them with profit. These courses are outlined in detail below as Course 2, Child Psychology; Course 4, Educational Psychology; and Course 8, The Psychological Clinic.
The seminar course in educational psychology has some features that are quite new in work offered along this line. It is a composite course given by a number of different lecturers: these lecturers have been conducting original research in child psychology, for the most part in connection with the laboratory of psychology; they will present the results of their investigations in a form that will make the significance of their contributions to education rightly understood by teachers and others entered for the course. The object of the seminar is not only to report results that have a value for the science of psychology and education, but also to demonstrate the methods by which psychological and educational research may be conducted by those who are actively engaged in the profession of teaching. It would lead us too far afield to describe the various linea of experimental work that are represented in the regular courses in experimental psychology. In the Summer School this work is represented by Course 7, Advanced Experimental Psychology. This is intended only for students who have had preliminary training in laboratory methods of experimentation. Students! taking this course will be divided into small sections, and will be assigned problems which they will carry out under supervision. A better understanding of the scope of these courses may bo obtained from the following outline.
Psychology 1. Modern Psychology.?A course of lectures presenting an outline of the problems and theories of modern psychology. Mental Analysis.?An analysis of perception based upon the results of experimentation and introspection; the role of apperception, memory, attention and association; perceptions of space; the sense organs; the physical stimuli or objects of perception. Mind and Body.?The nature of the will; automatic and reflex movements; inherited instincts and acquired habits; impulse and emotion; the structure and functions of the human nervous system.
Mental Synthesis.?The permanent effects of sensation and movement upon the brain; sensory after-images; memory images; cerebration and association; organization of imagination and memory; the development of ideas, the intellect and reason; the growth of attention and will.
By Dr E. B. Twitmyer, Instructor in Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania.
Psychology 2. Child Psychology.?A course of lectures on methods and results. Greater attention will be given the methods which, like the clinical and statistical methods, are capable of giving results when employed by investigators who are actively engaged in educational work. The Experimental Method.?The development of clironometry; the personal equation; invention of the chronograph and the chronoscope; measurement of the time it takes to perceive, to associate ideas, to add or multiply, to apperceive complex stimuli as, for example, words, sentences, etc.; the determination of threshold values; the quality of association; spelling errors; the extension of the experimental method to child psychology as a branch of comparative psychology.
The Statistical Method.?The history of its origin; Quetelet, Chadwick, Fechner, Darwin, Galton; the development of anthropometric tests; the psycho-physical tests of Cattell; statistics of association and other mental processes; statistics of defects of school children.
The Interrogatory Methods.?Under this head will be discussed (a) introspection; (b) the syllabus of general interrogations; (c) the questionaire or syllabus of specific questions; (d) the analytic study of compositions, drawings and examination papers. The Genetic Methods.?Under this head will be discussed (a) the ontogenetic method as developed by Darwin, Preyer, Perez, Moore, Shinn and others, which attempts a scientific biography of an individual child, or which may be directed to the examina*See also Courses in Psychology for Normal Schools, The Educational Review, 1897, xiii, 45-57, 146-162.
tion of special periods, as, for example, adolescence; (b) the pliylogenetic method, which is directed to the study of the development. of civilized races from primitive races and of the human consciousness and character from lower forms; (c) the method of comparative anatomy, which is based upon the correspondence of mental development and the structure of the nervous system; (d) the methods employed in the study of hereditary and acquired degeneracy, for example, mentally and morally deficient children, criminals, mental disorders, including insanity, disorders of speech, the mental dissolution of senescence. The Clinical Method.?The history of its origin; Pereire’s proof that a deaf child may be taught to talk; Itard’s training of the wild boy of Aveyron; Seguin’s first class of feeble-minded children; the development of training schools for feeble-minded children, and for the blind, the deaf and the morally delinquent; the present status of the problem of backward children; the work in Germany, England and the United States; the necessity of familiarity with the clinical method for the grade teacher and especially for educators in positions requiring supervision; an outline of the requirements of a clinical examination and record; illustrative cases.
The Systematic Record of Unrestricted Observations.?Children in the Home, at School, on the Street, at Play, etc. The Examination of the Literature of Child Life.?Under this head will be mentioned (a) biographies; (b) autobiographies; (c) artistic interpretations of childhood; (d) naive conceptions of child life, for example, in general literature, tales of parents, comic stories, folk-lore, tradition and history. By Dr Ligiitner Wither, Professor of Psychology in the University of Pennsylvania.
Psychology 3. Genetic Psychology.?A course of lectures on the evolution of the individual consciousness. Biological evolution and the hereditary factor; natural selection through variations; the inheritance of acquired characters. The congenital factors (not hereditary) ; the prenatal effect of disease and acquired paternal and maternal degeneracy; the effect of accident, shock and other influences during intrauterine life; birth injuries. The dawn of consciousness through the awakening of the senses in the first month. The development of the infant consciousness to the end of the eighteenth month. The growth of intellect through the co-ordination of sense and movement, and especially through the acquisition of language. The first appearance of inherited but previously latent instincts at puberty; the factor of sex in the genesis of character; the relation of precocity to delinquency; hysteria and allied mental disorders. The mental phenomena of adolcsUNIVERSITY COURSES IN PSYCHOLOGY. 33 cence. The culmination of adolescence in adult consciousness? the completed evolution of personality and will. Senescence and the decline of individual consciousness. By Dr Herbert Stotesbury, Professor of Psychology in the Temple College.
Psychology 4. Educalio7ial Psychology.?A seminar course for the report and discussion of the results of the original investigation of special problems that are of practical importance to education as well as of scientific value to psychology. These lectures will be given by investigators who, for the most part in affiliation with the Laboratory of Psychology, have conducted original research while actively engaged in educational work. The results of these investigations, many of which will be announced for the first time in this course, are important contributions to experimental psychology and pedagogy, as well as practical demonstration of methods by which those engaged in the profession of teaching may at the same time successfully conduct original rescarcli. The several lecturers will give from one to five lectures each on the topics presented below.
Statistics of retardation in school work, and the method by which the superintendent of a school system may, with the assistance of his principals and grade teachers, determine the extent, character and causes of retardation in the children of his schools. The adaptability of the method to any school system and the possibility and necessity of training the’ grade teachers to assist in this work will be demonstrated. Statistics from the schools of the city of Camden, N. J., will be reported and analyzed to show the educational and psychological significance of the results.
By Mr. J. E. Bryan, Superintendent of Schools, Camden, N. J. The language problem. Oral and written language. The psychology of the spelling process and spelling errors. Tests of spelling accuracy for the ascertainment of the efficiency of the spelling drill and the place it should occupy in the school curriculum. Ivice’s results and those of the North West School, Philadelphia. By Dr Oliver P. Cornman, District Superintendent of Schools, Philadelphia, Pa.
Truancy and delinquency. The significance of truancy in relation to juvenile delinquency and adult criminality. The organization of truant and parental schools, made necessary by the enforcement of compulsory education. The status of compulsory education enactments in the United States and the enforcement of the compulsory education act of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The relation of the Juvenile Court to truant and parental schools and to reform schools. Clinical reports of truants, moral defectives and other disciplinary cases. By Mr. Edward A. Huntington, Principal of Special School No. 3, Philadelphia, Pa.
Examination of the eyesight and hearing of school children. A demonstration of the practical methods by which the grade teacher or principal may conduct tests, keep the record of their results and interpret them. The betterment of the condition of pupils who are defective in sight and hearing. The relation of mental retardation to defects of sight and hearing.. Results of the tests of children in the Trenton schools.
By Mr. J. M. McCallie, Supervising Principal of the Centennial Grammar School, Trenton, N. J. Backward and feeble-minded children from the standpoint of the grade teacher and supervising principal. By Miss Margaret T. Maguire, Supervising Principal of the Wharton Combined School, Philadelphia, Pa. The best conditions for the training of mentally deficient children? the home, the special school and the institution. By Miss Mary E. Marvin, Teacher of Articulation, Head of a Home School for Nervous and Defective Children, Philadelphia, Pa. Farm Schools for children requiring discipline and special training. By Dr H. C. Porter, “The Farm School,” Media, Pa. Special schools and classes for backward children under the direction and control of the city school system. Their origin and development in Germany, England and the United States. The condition of classes for backward children in Philadelphia. Experimental study of the emotions: the circulatory and respiratory processes accompanying melancholia. By Miss Clara H. Town, Resident Psychologist at Friends’ Asylum for the Insane, Frankford, Pa. Formerly Teacher in Special School No. 9, Philadelphia, Pa. The diagnosis and treatment of backward children in public schools. The application and personal working out of the clinical method in the solution of the problem by the superintendent of a school system. Results of the method in the Wilmington schools. By Dr George W. Twitmyer, Superintendent of Schools, Wilmington, Del. Psychology 5. Analytical Psychology.?Laboratory course. The object of this course is to demonstrate, by the use of simple experiments, the fundamental facts and principles of psychology. Under the direction of the instructor, a series of illustrative experiments will be performed by each student and described and commented upon in the laboratory note-book. In addition to the hours of class work, students will UNIVERSITY COURSES IN PSYCHOLOGY. 35 be directed in the prosecution of as mucli individual work as each has time and inclination to do. Laboratory Manual: Witmer’s Analytical Psychology.
By Professor Stotesbury. Psychology 6. Physiological Psychology.?Laboratory course. The anatomy and physiology of the nervous system, the sense organs and the organs of movement. Each student will be supplied with models and photographs for study and with prepared specimens of the human and ox brain for dissection. A course of experiments will be conducted on the excitation of muscle and nerve, and on reflexive, instinctive and volitional actions. By Dr E. B. Twitmyer. Psychology 7. Advanced Experimental Psychology.?Seminar and laboratory course. The purpose of this course is to acquaint more advanced students with the general methods of experimentation. Selected topics are studied experimentally and original authorities and the results of recent research consulted. Text-book: Titchener’s Manual of Experimental Psychology. (Qualitative and Quantitative.) One hour seminar and two or four hours laboratory work. Hours will be arranged to meet the convenience of the students taking the course. Research Rooms of the Laboratory.
By Dr E. B. Twitmyer. Psychology 8. The Psychological Clinic.?Children will be examined in the presence of the students taking this course. The object of the course is to illustrate various mental and physical defects found in school children, to discuss the causes, to point out the nature of the consequent retardation and to propose the appropriate treatment. The course will also serve to make the student acquainted with the methods of examination. A daily clinic will be conducted by Professor Wither and his assistants or by medical specialists for the eye, the ear, the nose and throat, the nervous system, orthopedics and internal medicine. A training school for backward and defective children will also be in daily session. One or more classes will be taught by competent instructors. Clinical study will also be carried on through visits to neighboring institutions for the training of special classes of children?the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-minded Children at Elwyn, the House of Refuge, and the Pennsylvania Institutions for the Instruction of the Blind and Deaf.
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