Performance and Success
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1919, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. XII, Nos. 5-9 May 15, 1919 An Outline of Psychology for Diagnostic Testing and Teaching. :Author: Lightner Witmer, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania.
This outline of a new psychology is published primarily for the use of students of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. It covers a part of what is taught students both at the Summer School Session and in the College and Graduate Departments. The student who has understood and assimilated it, is ready to apply his acquired knowledge to the interpretation of the results of a psychological test, and to employ psychological diagnosis in the practice of teaching.
The psychology here outlined is a clinical psychology, that is to say it is the psychology of an individual child or adult. This outline is the skeleton of a body of knowledge which must be held in mind in order that behavior may be accurately described, justly valued, and so conformed to the standards of society that the individual may make his life a success. To be successful, every performance or undertaking must be motivated and controlled by intelligence, directed by intellect, and adequately conformed to the prevailing social standards. The value which I claim for this psychological outline is that it works in practice, whether for individual or social diagnosis, whether for teaching or vocational guidance, whether to ameliorate or offset a defect.
OBSERVATION
Psychology, like every other science, is based upon observation. The psychologist observes performers and their performances, infers their purpose or intention, and then records the results of a performance in terms of success, the zero point of which is failure. Psychology, therefore, observes the performances of individual men and women, children and animals, for the purpose of determining their relative competency to achieve results of standard value. Observation is a scientific method. It is also a congenital ability which every normal child displays from early infancy. By means of observation the child acquires knowledge which he then employs to guide and control his future performance. At the developmental level of the college student and at the various intellectual levels of everyday life, observation operates as an important capability. Success or failure rewards the individual’s congenital and acquired ability to observe.
To observe is to attend to something and to make note of it for a purpose.
If an individual discerns the purpose of his observation, his purpose is called an intention. He may make an observation without intending it. For example: he may spit out of his mouth an article of food which he has observed to have a bad odor. He may be saving his life by this act of instantaneous rejection. At the moment of performance, however, he may have discerned neither the purpose of his act nor of his observation. Every normal individual is equipped with an ability to observe without intention and to act without reflection, just as he is equipped with a congenital ability to breathe, to swallow, to walk, to talk, to hear sounds, and to see shades and colors of objects. The purpose of a performer’s observation may be revealed to him only after he has made it. For much casual observation, we may be unable to give a reason and it may, indeed, have little or no intention, but it is nevertheless motivated by congenital ability having purpose, which, when particularized, is called the instinct of curiosity, the source of all observation and of every science.
DESCRIPTION
A scientific observation is not completed unless the observer notes what he has observed. The flitting attention of the child or adult doubtless determines behavior and increases efficiency, but it will not add much to the performer’s knowledge. It is necessary for him to note what he observes, even though it be only a mental note. This mental note is the result of the operation of another ability, i. e., memory. To fix in memory what has been observed usually requires some expression in the form of an oral or written record. The student of psychology cannot learn much from his observations unless he has been trained to keep written records of what he observes, or, in other words, to give precise descriptions. From the written records he can then select what has significance or value in relation to his intention at the time he made the observation. A summary of his recorded observation, he must then embody in a report which may lead to and comprise explanations, diagnoses, conclusions and general principles.
Observation, then, is not a simple but a complex ability. The two abilities which compose it are attention and memory. ATTENTION To attend to something is to particularize one thing out of an aggregate of things. The child comes into a room full of people, gasps as he observes the strange faces, and flies to his mother’s lap. His performance shows that he has particularized his mother out of all the objects of his environment. We observe some one with a toothache. He holds his hand to his cheek, groans from time to time and cannot attend to his work. He is particularizing out of all the things that he might particularize, one thing only, i. e., pain. INDIVIDUALIZATION AND UNITIZATION The observer pays attention to performers: a child, an adult, an animal; or he observes performances: something done by a performer, either a single or discrete performance or a continuous series of performances occupying minutes or even hours. He also observes occurrences: the setting of the sun, or the passing of a train. He observes objects: the stars, the trees, a house. Among the objects which a psychologist observes are the performer’s hands and feet, his head and body.
Attention unitizes many occurrences into a single event, as when we speak of the Civil War, many objects into a single object, as a pile of bricks. It unitizes all the objects of the world, and calls this single thing a universe. To particularize a performer is called individualization.
Attention is particularization. The degree of particularization is measured on the scale of definiteness.
Attention to a severe pain, to a band of music, to a bright object is very definite in particularization. When one is half overcome with sleep or stands looking into the dusk at some fading landscape, particularization is indefinite: no one object in particular holds attention. The performances of children and adults differ greatly in definiteness of particularization. It is more important, however, to ascertain what a performer is particularizing at the moment and to discover what he particularizes habitually, than it is to measure the definiteness of his particularization.
Psychology, therefore, observes individuals and even groups of individuals, which may be either unitized or individualized and called the family, the army, the nation or the race. Psychology observes relatively simple performances like walking, and complex performances like the cross-examination of a witness which is the unitized particularization of many component performances. Performances may be unitized, even though not in a continuous series, as when we speak of a boy’s behavior at home or at school, or an individual’s behavior through life, or the behavior of an army or nation during the war.
Psychology is, then, correctly defined as a science of behavior.
GROWTH AND CULTURE
To understand the performances of an individual it is necessary to know something of the performer’s ancestral and individual development and relate this to the evolution of the race from lower forms and of the adult from the newborn babe. What comes first in the history of the race or individual?for example, desire, hope and fear?may be operative in every performance under observation and essential to the interpretation of behavior. The life of an individual may be plotted as a line of development beginning at birth and ending with death. As we pass from the initial to the terminal points on this line of ontogeny, we pass over a series of increasingly complex performances, until we reach the point where development ceases and the degeneration of senility sets in. It is necessary to distinguish two lines or scales of individual development: the growth scale, on which we plot his development in body and mind, and the culture scale, representing his growth in knowledge through education and experience.
The line of organic development from the lowest forms of living organisms to the highest type of human being is the line of phylogeny. This line also is divided into two lines: the scale of organic evolution, or more simply the species scale, and the scale of racial culture, the civilization scale.
Every performer under observation can be assigned with more or less certainty to a position on: first, the species scale; second, the civilization scale; third, the age scale; and fourth, the culture scale.
These scales are used for the purpose of estimating relative position, or rank, when one performer is compared with another. On any one of these scales a lower position than the average for chronological age is called retardation. On the species scale retardaPERFORMANCE AND SUCCESS. 149 tion is atavism; on the civilization scale, primitivism; on the growth scale, infantilism; and on the culture scale, ignorantism.
TELEOLOGY AND ETIOLOGY
Continuous observation shows that every particularized performance is preceded and followed by other performances, by occurrences, and by the appearance and disappearance of objects, as when a child builds his blocks into what he calls a house, and then knocks them down again, or children on the street dance to the music of an organ-grinder and resume their play when he departs. Among the performances, occurrences and objects which are observed to precede a particular performance, one stands out, either because it is always to be found among the antecedents of the performance, or because the performance does not take place unless this antecedent appears. This constant or necessary antecedent to a performance is called the cause, and the performance is then regarded as an effect. Etiology is the science of cause and effect. Every performance is followed by consequences, one of which acquires unusual significance because of its greater constancy and apparent inevitability. This is called the purpose of the performance, and the performance is then considered to be the result or end of this purpose. Teleology is the science of purpose and end. It is impossible to understand the performance of a human being, or for that matter of any other organism, without interpreting these performances in terms of purpose as well as explaining them in terms of cause. We do this whenever we attribute to a performer, whether a human being or other organism, an ability to produce the performance under observation. Why does a child shut his eyes when I flash a bright light before them? Because he is able to make a movement having the purpose of excluding the bright light, and because the light makes him shut his eyes. Every performance is at one and the same time the result of an attributed ability and the effect of a cause or stimulus. Every ability attributed to the performer in order to explain his behavior, is both a cause, in the sense of a purpose to initiate the performance, and also a cause in the sense of a stimulus to effect a reaction. An ability which we attribute to a performer in order to explain his behavior may be either congenital or acquired, but is usually both. I use the word “capability” to indicate that the ability in question is mainly or wholly congenital; thus curiosity is a capability, but observation is partly congenital and partly acquired, whereas scientific observation is wholly acquired, although developed from congenital abilities.
Every acquired ability, in so far as it is acquired and not congenital, is the effect of causes acting during the individual’s lifetime. Whether the existence of a congenital ability can be explained as the effect of causes acting through heredity and derived from the environment, I leave to philosophers and biologists. The starting point of psychology is the assumption of a number of congenital abilities, and the first question to be answered is how many and what congenital abilities are to be recognized as potentially existing in every normal individual.
EXCITABILITY
Spontaneity Irritability Initiative Guidance Performance Reaction Expressibility Susceptibility Competency Efficiency The Start The Guide Control Direction Motivation Stimulation
Excitability is the ability of a performer to be excited by a stimulus to initiate a performance. It is displayed by living organisms at the lowest point of the species scale and the highest, from the point of birth on the age scale to its terminal of death. Excitability initiates a performance and reacts to a stimulus. It is the teleological cause of a performance, and at the same time, the initiated excitement is the effect of a stimulus. It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish the initiative of excitability, sometimes called spontaneity, but for psychology better known as expressibility, from the ability to react to a stimulus, which is called irritability by the biologist, and susceptibility by the psychologist. The primitive and unparticularized performance initiated by excitability is an excitement, a part of which excitement is an emotion. Emotional excitement is therefore the primal display of the excitability of a performer as well as his unparticularized reaction to a stimulus. The primal urge of the organism is the urge for air, food, water and sex. In the course of ancestral evolution and individual development, the more primitive and unparticularized urge, becomes the particular urge to fight; the urge to migrate, of which truancy is a variety; the urge to court, to marry, to beget and raise children. The highly particularized urge to organize an educational system for the benefit of all the children of a community is only a particular display of the aboriginal urge for the preservation of the individual and the race.
The motivation includes all the purposive antecedents of performance, whether the purpose is discerned by the performer or not. It includes all his congenital and acquired abilities, among which some may be particularized as emotions or ideas, others, as instincts or habits.
When the purpose of an ability, operating to produce a performance, is discerned by the performer, or its existence is assumed by an observer, the discerned or assumed purpose is called a motive. Included among the motives are the emotions and many instincts. When the performer not only discerns his purpose but also particularizes the consequence or result of his performance, we call the purpose of his performance, an intention. When his judgment, accepting the motive or intention, approves the purpose and means employed to secure the end or result of the performance, the performer gives a reason for his performance. When the performer’s motives, intentions and reasons are compared with a prevailing standard of conformed behavior, the observer diagnoses the performer’s judgment as being either good or bad, successful or unsuccessful. Teleology therefore presents the motivation of human behavior. It offers a classified list of the congenital and^acquired abilities which constitute the performer’s initiative. Etiology is a study of the stimuli causing him to react to the changing conditions of his own body or to the objects and occurrences of his environment. Motivation and the initiative are endogenous, stimulation and the reaction are exogenous.
The human body occupies a peculiar position. Within it originates the motivation of behavior, and within it, as well as beyond it, are the stimuli of reactions. The etiology of stimulation includes stimuli arising within the performer’s body, excluding only what belongs to the teleology of motivation.
152 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. THE EMOTION Emotives Directives Mood Desire Exhilaration Dejection Inclination Disinclination Elevation Depression Want Aversion Interest Ennui Like Dislike Wish Dread Love Hate Hope Fear Mania Phobia Glee Gloom Inertia Mania MelancholyLethargy Passion Feeling Sympathy Antipathy Pleasure Displeasure Tolerance Intolerance Appetite Distaste To make To break To seek To shun To build up To tear down To welcome To eject To promote To oppose To acquire To reject Apathy To accept To refuse Torpor The primal motive of the organism is desire, discriminated as an inclination or disinclination. Nearly every performance displays a want or an aversion as its motive. Desire is a display of energy; its varying intensity measures the amount of energy at the disposal of the individual. The indifference point of desire is inertia, a diagnostic symptom of exhaustion, malnutrition or satiety. On the intensity scale of desire, we may pass from an inclination or disinclination to stronger likes or dislikes, and ultimately to the maxima of love or hate, the pathological manias and phobias.
Desire is the performer’s motive. Its expression is a performance resulting in success or failure, satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Mood is the expression of an urge to performance, either wishing or dreading, either hope or fear, and at the same time, it is a reaction to the initiating energy of the organism. On the one hand, there is the exhilaration of wishing or succeeding; on the other, the depression of dreading or failing. Lethargy is the indifference point. Interest and ennui, hope and fear, are increasingly more intense displays of the alternating moods of exhilaration and depression. Pathological exhilaration is displayed in the maniacal stage of manicdepressive insanity, while melancholia is the final stage of depression. The fear psychosis is at the basis of many defects in children, just as it is the source of much mental disorder in adults. In both children and adults it is a display of depression.
The etiology of exhilaration and depression must concern itself with the normal surge of energy, now to exhilaration, now to depression, as well as with the pathological and more or less permanent stages of manic-depressive insanity. The mood line of every normal individual rises and falls now above and again below the zero line of indifference separating exhilaration from depression. Desire and mood are both dependent upon the kinetic energy at the disposal of the organism and employed in the performance. The rhythm of desire is a short pulse, that of mood, a longer surge of energy. The metabolism of the so-called kinetic glands is the etiological factor determining the display and rhythm of desire and mood. Likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, are the primal and unparticularized expression of metabolism. They are fundamental motives of behavior, early discriminated by man as the four emotions ?I call them emotives?love, hate, hope and fear.
Desire and mood are expressed in the emotionalized attitudes of sympathy and antipathy. These, in turn, motivate the performer to do something, “to promote” or “to oppose,” and in the performance, he will display respectively the emotionalized attitude of tolerance or intolerance. Directed more particularly to objects, expressibility leads him “to build up” or “to tear down,”?toward individuals, “to yield” or “to fight,” displaying respectively friendliness and hostility. From this stage of development, particularization rapidly becomes more definite. Sympathy or antipathy is an emotionalized urge to unparticularized performances. Like desire and mood, they are emotives. The particularized operation, however, is commonly called an instinct, by which is meant the congenital ability of the performer to carry on an operation of definite particularization. The indifference point of passion is apathy, a condidition in which motives are incapable of giving rise to expressive operations. Doubtless, like other emotives, apathy is dependent upon the energy conditions of the organism. The instinctive urge to performance may produce an operation without a motive, and at times even in apparent opposition to a motive. The performer is then said to act upon instinct or impulse. Operations which are never (or seldom) controlled by the performer’s motives are generally classified as reflexes. The initiative of the performance includes, not only the motivation of performance by motives and intentions, but also operations produced without emotional motivation. Expres154 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. sibility, therefore, is the ability to do, to carry on, to operate, no matter what the source of motivation may be.
A particular form of expressibility is the urge to seek pleasure and to avoid displeasure. Pleasure and displeasure are emotives. Appetite and distaste are particularized expressions of desire, as sympathy and antipathy are expressions of love and hope on the one hand, of fear and hate on the other. Towards individuals or towards objects, susceptibility leads the performer to seek and to welcome, or contrariwise, to shun and to eject. Acquisitiveness and rejection are the contrasting attitudes and operations of susceptibility; appetite and nausea the concrete prototype. Torpor is displayed at the zero point of indifference. Torpor, like apathy and the other zero points of motives, is dependent upon the energy of the performer.
I have now differentated eight emotives: inclination and disinclination, hope and fear, sympathy and antipathy, pleasure and displeasure. Under one or the other of these, or under some combination of two or more, the motives to behavior may be classified. Inertia, lethargy, apathy and torpor are displayed at the physiological zero point of metabolism. The etiology of these emotives, referred to anabolic and katabolic processes, constitutes an interesting and important study of the physical conditions of the body upon which health and disease as well as performance ultimately rest. The emotives, as such, display the performer’s initiative, which expresses itself now in one operation and again in another. The particularization of any one operation rather than another displays the performer’s ability to guide or direct as well as to initiate a performance. The first directives to be discerned by primitive man and the child would appear to be appetite and distaste, pleasure and displeasure. As discernability increases, desire and aversion are observed, both by the performer himself and also by other observers, to be a part of the performer’s guidance. Any directive, however, may be a part of the performer’s motivation and play the role of an emotive, and any emotive may be employed to guide the expression of the performer’s excitability. Mood and passion are commonly displayed as emotives, desire and feeling as directives. In the interpretation of any particular performance, the performer and those who observe his performances will often differ in opinion as to whether a displayed emotion is to be explained teleogically as an emotive or etiologically as a directive. As a matter of fact, this is precisely the line of distinction which differentiates what is called a motive from an intention. PERFORMANCE AND SUCCESS. 155 DISCERNABILITY Discernability is the ability of a performer, when excited by a stimulus, to observe not only the stimulus but also his own performance. The performer does not observe all of his own performance; for example, the contraction of the pupils of his eyes under the stimulus of pain. On the other hand, the performer observes what another observer does not discern: the emotion. Performances, discernable only by the performer, are called conscious performances. The performer observes his own mental operations. The unitized aggregate of a performer’s mental operations is his consciousness. The observation by the performer of his own mental operations is called self-observation or introspection. Psychological tests stimulate the performer to initiate performances, in which mental abilities may be displayed. The psychological examination is concerned with those performances in the interpretation of which it is necessary to assume the existence of consciousness, and to attribute to the performer mental abilities. The performer’s mind is the individualized aggregate of all his mental abilities, operating with varying degrees of particularization. The so-called “intelligence tests” are strictly speaking only performance tests. When performances are interpreted with the aid of the psychological assumption, performance tests become mentality tests, tests of the performer’s mental abilities.
Every performance is a resultant of the operation of one or more mental abilities. The more definitely the performance is particularized, the more clearly do we recognize it to be a discrete operation. A fit of rage, adding up a column of figures, answering a letter?these are operations. In the course of racial and individual evolution, unparticularized excitement, whether emotionalized or not, developed into more definitely particularized operations. In the life of the individual, this is partly the result of knowledge acquired either by experience or by training, and partly the unfolding of congenital capabilities. The operations of discernability, are measured on the scale of vividness and on the scale of definiteness. On the scale of definiteness, the operation of discernability is what is commonly called attention.
THE OPERATION The Start The Guide Kinesis: Motibility Aesthesia: Discernability To do?to struggle To feel?to taste To promote To oppose To get To eject Pliability Obstinacy Pleasure Displeasure Imitation Negativism Enjoyment Suffering Creation Destruction Acceptance Refusal Organization Disorganization Belief Disbelief Law Anarchy Acquisition Rejection The urge to do, or, to struggle, and the urge to smell, to taste, to feel with the hands, to listen, to look at, to move about, acquiring pleasures and rejecting displeasures, these motivate the performer to employ his muscles in coordinated movements. The movements are the operation. The instinctive operations of “doing,” I call kinesis. The instinctive operations of “feeling,” I call aesthesia. In proportion to the energy at the performer’s disposal, he employs force in the operations necessary to accomplish his purpose. To overcome resistance, man uses force. He discerns at once his own force and his need of more force. He, therefore, seeks to augment his own force, and to win the supporting forces of nature and of the supernatural. The acquisition of force and ever more force has led man to discover knowledge and to organize and employ it as an instrument to overcome the resisting forces of nature. The child’s instincts are his first instruments of expression. His organic heredity endows him with instruments of locomotion, with the right hand for operations requiring skill, with organs of articulation, which are the instrument of speech, and with those highly developed instruments of precision, the eyes, which work together as a single binocular organ of vision enabling him to explore objects even though at a distance. “Knowledge is power!” Upon this maxim, European civilization has been nourished. Fire, the chemical balance, writing, the printing press, the mariner’s compass, gunpowder, the telescope and the microscope, all these instruments have been added to man’s congenital forces.
The urge of appetite and distaste (nausea) leads man to smell, to taste, to put food into his mouth or reject it, to masticate, to savor and then to swallow it. If distaste does not reject it, an organic nausea may, and the congenital reflexes can even eject itjfrom the stomach after he has swallowed it. Along this road, man^began to particularize his pleasures and displeasures, and these in turn became motives to wider exploration. He discovered, also, the pleasure of accomplishment, but strenuous activity always remained a joy in itself, for activity is an exhilarant and awakens desire without the intermediation of pleasure. Men do and dare; living they struggle, and struggling die, often without asking why, neither expecting rewards in terms of pleasure, nor fearing penalties in terms of displeasure. Kinesis is motibility; the ability “to do,” to carry on? even without the motive of desire or enjoyment. It motivates the strenuous life in which the pursuit of power becomes an ideal of desire, in comparison with which the pursuit of enjoyment offers but feeble interest.
If kinesis has led man to exert his own force and to discover the forces of nature, aesthesia has led him to discriminate and appreciate his sense-perceptions. Seeking enjoyment, accepting the agreeables and rejecting the disagreeables, he learned to know good and evil. If kinesis has initiated the pursuit of knowledge, aesthesia has directed it.
power: mentability Initiative Guidance Competency Efficiency Eccentricity Conformity Control Direction Control is the ability to employ the necessary organic and other instruments so as to accomplish the purpose of the operation, or briefly, “to make a success of it.” When did your child begin to walk? When did he begin to talk? These questions are always asked at the Psychological Clinic. The answer will disclose whether the child has been slow to display control of his capability to walk and to talk. How well does he walk and talk now? The answer to this question establishes his present proficiency in walking and talking. The ability to walk at all is one of the capabilities comprising what I call the child’s congenital competency. Reading and writing are acquired abilities. As soon as he is just able to read and write, he establishes his competency to read and write. He has then acquired control over many different capabilities, and learned to coordinate them to the desired end. In time, his efficiency in reading and writing, which at the first successful attempt is approximately zero, will increase until he gains control over these two operations and begins to employ them as instruments to acquire knowledge and express his thoughts. A child’s competency to read and write may be easily ascertained by the attempt to teach him reading and writing. During the first school year, he should have established his competency and acquired a measurable efficiency in these two operations. As he passes from grade to grade he will increase in efficiency, attaining at successive levels of performance the proficiency standards prescribed for each grade. Proficiency is a composite result of the measured efficiency of an operation and of the performer’s estimated competency. To determine the efficiency of an operation, we measure the amount of product obtainable in a given unit of time. Arithmetic for example, is made up of four elementary operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Efficiency in the operation of addition is determined by the number of accurate additions which the child is able to produce in a given unit of time. Accuracy measures the competency. Efficiency is measured in terms of time and product.
Practice and training may increase efficiency indefinitely. The excessive efficiency of an operation is no more to be desired than inadequate efficiency. The standard of efficiency to be established for a particular operation will depend upon the use to which the operation is put. A child need not learn to write with a copperplate efficiency. The standards of efficiency in writing are concerned with legibility, speed and ease of production. When the performer has acquired the standard efficiency in any operation, it becomes a new ability, an acquired competency, an instrument under his control and ready for use. The child should acquire reading and writing as instruments before he has completed the sixth school year, although by the time he has finished the first school year, we may ascertain whether he has the competency to read and write. If a foreign language is to be learned, the aim should be to develop an adequate instrument which can be used to exchange ideas with the foreigner and to procure information or enjoyment not otherwise obtainable.
The history of organic evolution, as well as the ontogeny of a child is the story of the organization and control of a number of diverse abilities so as to perfect a new unitized ability, which is then controlled as a single instrument. The right hand is a congenital instrument. Speech is another. The discovery of fire meant the organization and control of many abilities, with the result that an important tool of civilization was invented. Printing, gunpowder, and the discoveries of science and art, provided the human being with instruments of precision, enjoyment and general utility. Of congenital instruments, the eye is perhaps the most important. In comparison with other organic instruments, binocular vision, articulate language and the right hand are instruments of precision, comparable to the chemical balance, the telescope and the microscope among mechanical and scientific instruments.
Conformity is displayed in the relative constancy or accuracy of an operation. Absolute conformity or accuracy is the only acceptable standard in arithmetic. The performer, when required to add two and three, either succeeds at the task assigned him, or fails. If he fails to give the sum, he displays a lack of competency. In operations other than those of arithmetic, an absolute standard of conformity is not commonly obtained. Walking is an operation displayed by every normal child or adult, but the gait of individuals will display much variety, in grace, rhythm and precision of movement. In walking, the individual may display considerable eccentricity, and yet come within the accepted standard of conformity. Organic eccentricity is called variability. Some measure of conformity to type is required of every operation. No individual, however, conforms to type in all his operations. He displays more or less eccentricity. The line between normal variability and abnormal deficiency or defect is a proficiency criterion, determined partly by the biologist, but in mental operations chiefly by individual or social requirements.
INTELLIGENCE
The Competency Grades The Intellectual Levels Intelligence is eccentricity. Its only criterion is success. Intelligence is the ability of the individual to solve what for him is a new problem. It is the ability of the organism to change a conformed competency to meet new conditions. Intelligence is a capability which does not necessarily increase with the intellectual and other resources at the performer’s command. It may atrophy through disuse, however, and often does, especially under a rigid system of educational training.
Intelligence, then, is successful eccentricity. It is competency achieving success without efficiency. It is the performer’s initiative operating successfully but without sufficient guidance to make success more probable than failure. Any test is an intelligence test if the performer has not been so well instructed or is not given such directions that success is sure. The formboard is an intelligence test for a three- or four-year-old child, provided he is merely directed to replace the blocks. If he is shown how to replace the blocks or if, as he proceeds, he is told when he is right or wrong, the formboard no longer serves as a test of intelligence. Intelligence is displayed only where the probability of success is fifty per cent or less, and intelligence increases as the probability of success diminishes. If a test is above the intellectual or knowledge level of the performer?for example, the formboard at the two-year level, the cylinder test at the four-year level or a problem in arithmetic at the six-year level?the probability of success is zero, and it can not be used as an intelligence test. A performer’s failure with an intelligence test indicates that his invention is deficient or that the test is above his intellectual level.
For a more extensive consideration of intelligence see my article on “TheRelation of Intelligence to Efficiency” in the Psychological Clinic, May, 1915. JUDGMENT Qualitative Quantitative Normality Abnormality Success Failure The primal judgment is probably an expression of antipathy for the unusual. Abnormality attracts attention and arouses dislike. The qualitative judgment of conformity is approval; of eccentricity, disapproval; and the naive distinction between normality and abnormality is based upon the emotionalized excitement initiated by an inclination for what is familiar or a disinclination for what is strange.
Success and failure give rise to the primal quantitative judgment. It is based upon an observation of the operation and its results. The judgment may express approval even of eccentricity provided it has brought success. Judgments may be either reflective or emotive. Judgment, however, is displayed even in behavior which is not intentional or reasonable. The behavior of an individual is the resultant expression of all his motivation?the organic urge to performance, as well as the discerned motives. A startling conflict is often to be observed between the individual’s initiative and the social standards of conformity.
ATTENTION
Alertness Persistence Speed Endurance The time which the performer requires to initiate a movement in response to a stimulus is called his reaction time. It measures the alertness of attention. It depends upon the speed at which the energy of senso-motor reaction is discharged. Speed is a congenital characteristic. The “rate of movement,” i. e., the speed of an operation is probably dependent upon the same conditions of metabolism as the speed of “energy-discharge.” It is also an individual characteristic, as displayed, for example, in the speed of walking, running, talking and thinking.
The motivation of organic energy causes the organism to display now this, now that, capability; now this, now that, operation; the performer is always on the move, his attention is always flitting from one particularized performance to another. Persistence of attention is the ability to keep on particularizing one and the same reaction to a given stimulus, despite distractibility due to the motivation of other capabilities and despite the distraction of other stimuli. The ability to give persistent attention distinguishes man from the apes, the intellectual man from one who is less highly organized. Alertness is the liveliness of attention. It is measured by the time the performer requires to initiate a movement in response to a stimulus. Attention is alert when the performer’s excitability is quick to cause him to discern and to react to each and every stimulus that may be presented. As the alertness of attention becomes particularized, it develops into expectant attention, alert to one class of stimuli but inert to others. Competent attention is the successful compromise between unparticularized alertness and particularized expectancy.
Attention may or may not be motivated by interest. A child can be compelled to pay attention to what does not interest him, but interest is an exhilarant,and although we can be compelled to give attention to what depresses us even to the point of ennui, the effect upon the organism, if prolonged, is to make heavy drafts upon the store of energy.
Endurance is the ability to carry on the same operation despite the distraction of fatigue, or to carry on some operation, no matter what, despite exhaustion. In the ability to resist fatigue and exhaustion, the performer displays the amount of energy at his disposal.
Rapid fatigue or exhaustion and a slow speed of reaction and operation indicate relatively little energy. A slow rate of reaction and operation may, however, be a congenital attribute and have no apparent relation to endurance, excepting that slow reactors and slow operators cannot be speeded up to keep pace with quick discharging and moving organisms, without causing loss of control and rapid fatigue, and, when the demand for speed is long continued, more or less profound nervous exhaustion.
162 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. ORIENTATION The Self An Other A group The Herd To orient oneself is to get one’s bearings. Primitive man established his geographical orientation at an early stage of development. He turned upon the spot where he stood, and faced the rising sun. Then he directed his attention to the right, to the left, to the rear, up to the sky above, and down into the earth beneath, and thus his exploring attention discriminated the six principal directions, and adding the spot of orientation on which he stood, he derived therefrom the number seven, which filled him with such amazement that he has ever since ascribed to it a symbolical significance. Look at any object, let us say the figure of a square, and you will find that your eyes and attention are directed by perference to one part, usually the bottom line, and after that the eyes and attention move upward over the rest of the figure, or around the other three sides of the square, beginning usually at the left and moving to the right. Tilt the square up on a corner, and it becomes to perception a diamond, which you will orient from its lowest point and explore by a movement of the attention upwards and from the left to right around the four sides. To make a square standing on one corner look like a square, you must orient one of its sides and then explore it as you would a square.
Orientation is the point of view from which the individual observes the performances, of himself and others, objects and ideas. The earliest and still most common orientation is egoism, which observes and values everything with an egocentric exploration. Selfinterest determines much human behavior, and prejudice is often displayed in both thought and action. We do, however, even though it be only at times, look at things from the point of view of an other performer. “Put yourself in his place!” This precept motivates the altrocentric exploration, which must be made the cardinal motivation of the psychologist. Altruism is an ideal for the control of the individual’s behavior toward others; it is a rule of conduct, framed in the words “Do unto others as you would have them do to you.” Altruism is therefore benevolent altroism. We also look at individuals and things from the social point of view, by which I mean the point of view of a group of individuals, the family, the community, the nation, the race, humanity. What is called the social consciousness is another name for the social orientation. I have invented the word “sociatism” to distinguish group orientation from socialism, which is a theory or ideal of conduct to regulate and control social and individual behavior. Socialism in all its varieties claims to be benevolent sociatism, in other words, an attempt to do the greatest good to the greatest number.
EXPLORATION Objects Performers 1. Expansion 1. Superior 2. Seriation 2. Equal 3. Contraction 3. Inferior The movement of attention, flitting from object to object, is an expression of the urge to do something no matter what. Persistent attention is an acquired ability to control the performer’s own distractability, due to the multiplicity of urging initiatives, on the one hand, and on the other, to resist the distraction of multiple stimuli. It is the urgent quest of change and novelty, the exploration of attention and not its persistence, which predominates in childhood and youth, and often throughout life.
Persistent attention having particularized an object, the exploring attention may then proceed to particularize a part of the object. Attention thus moves from the whole to the part, as when we observe a man and then look at his head and features. Attention moves in the opposite direction from part to whole, as when we look from the man to survey a group of which he is one of the component parts. Contraction and expansion are characteristic operations of the exploring attention. Contracted particularization makes discrimination more definite and analytic. The expanding particularization of attention is not so productive of exact knowledge, but it has been fruitful in art and religion. It is the parent of romance, mysticism, and pre-scientific philosophy. If attention moves from one object to another, neither expanding nor contracting, as when we look around a room and observe one object after another in serial order, the exploration of attention may be called “seriationa term which I prefer to the current “association of contiguity.” Similar diversity may be observed in the direction of our attention to individuals. With an egoistic orientation, the inclination of each performer is to look upon another, either as a superior, an equal, or an inferior. This primal characteristic of attention has entailed consequences of great magnitude in the history of races and nations. It gives rise to emotional attitudes which cause perversity as well as diversity in human relationships. It is the parent of caste and other varieties of social stratification.
ASSOCIABILITY Distribution of Attention or Memory Span The memory span is really the ability of the performer to distribute his attention over two or more discrete operations or stimuli;? in other words, to particularize at one time several operations or objects. The memory span is a congenital characteristic, the primal associability, which makes the development of an intellect possible.
DISCRIMINABILITY Qualitative Quantitative Known Strange More Less Good Bad Most Medium Least Discriminability is discernability particularizing and differentiating performances. Its simplest operation is naming things, a characteristic of infancy and primitive science. The observation of unlikeness is an operation of discriminability at a relatively low level of development. The teleological categories of the child as well as of primitive man are denotative, and are based upon the observation and discrimination of obvious contrasts. Love and hate are two such contrasting opposites. At a higher level, analytic discriminability discovers abstract qualities and the elements upon which generalization builds the connotative categories of science. The primal judgment of qualitative differentiation was expressed perhaps in the words, “it goes ill,” “it tastes bad,” or “it looks strange.” Doing, tasting and knowing, in the sense of reacting to the familiar and the strange, seem to have given rise to the primitive differentiation of good from evil. Motibility led man to the pursuit of power, sensibility led him to discriminating enjoyment, and together they motivated him to acquire knowledge, to systematize it in the sciences and arts, and then to organize it into instruments for his use.
To carry on an operation required the individual to exert more or less force to overcome resistance. Thence, no doubt, he derived his first quantitative discriminations. Wherever we employ such terms as more or less, greater or smaller, higher or deeper, better or worse, we estimate quantity however uncertain this estimation may be. Comparison is an operation of discriminability employing distributed attention. Comparison and discrimination are perhaps the earliest operations of the intellect. They require an adequate associability for their employment and development.
Even the primitive intellect added the superlative to the comparative degree. The five-point scale for the estimation of quantityis based upon primitive discriminability. Its psychological foundation makes it still the best and most practical scale of estimation. Measurement is a method devised by man’s intelligence and intellect to arrive at something more certain than an estimate. Without the yardstick and the balance, science could not have laid the foundation of modern civilization. It is impossible, however, to measure all the quantitative differences of performance, although we can and do express them as estimates. We may be quite certain that “A” dances more gracefully than “B,” but there is no standard scale of measurement for grace. Most of the quantitative judgments employed in every-day life and even in some sciences are estimates and not measurements.
TRAINABILITY
The senso-motor reaction is a capability. The organism responds with a definitely particularized reaction to a stimulus. The reaction is exogenous.
A child, for example, has a congenital urge and also the ability to say A when he sees and hears some one else say A; to say B when he sees and hears someone say B. Memory will be displayed, if the child acquires the ability to say B when he hears A. His reaction has been modified. The congenital ability has been developed by training into a new ability. All training is based upon this simple procedure. Trainability is measured by the number of repetitions necessary to establish an acquired competency. The ability to reproduce what has thus been learned is subject to the same laws of stimulation as the original ability. RETAINABILITY The competency of memory is dependent upon another congenital ability, the ability to retain, commonly called retentivity;? in fact, memory is essentially retentivity. It is conveniently measured by the rate of forgetting or by the amount forgotten over a given unit interval of time. IMAGEABILITY The boy who throws a ball against the wall and then secures it again on the rebound, initiates a movement of the ball and then reacts to the movement of the ball which he has initiated. The child, who has learned to say B when he hears A, says A to himself, but checks its expression and reacts to the inner but unexpressed operation, by saying B outloud. Thus originate endogenous reactions. The child, who has learned to say B when he hears A is in position 166 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. either to say A or to say B when he hears A. The first reaction is congenital and exogenous; the second is acquired and endogenous. The endogenous stimulus of the acquired reaction becomes a part of the performer’s initiative. The exogenous reaction is a sense perception. The endogenous reaction is called an image, because it is discerned as a faint likeness of the exogenous reaction. The ability to have images, i. e., the ability to initiate endogenous reactions is congenital. I call it imageability. It is measured in terms of motivating force and stimulated vividness. The relative vividness of an image may be discerned by the performer but its motivating force does not vary directly with its vividness and can be ascertained and estimated only from an observation of the performance which it initiates. The training of imageability develops memory and imagination. Memory is imageability conformed to the exogenous stimulation. Imagination is unconformed imageability; it is eccentric reproduction. It is to be carefully distinguished from defective memory which also produces lack of conformity. The eccentricity of imagination is an expression of the individual’s initiative. It creates performances and operations by initiating new combinations of acquired reactions. The creative imagination, solving new problems and producing results till then unknown to the performer, is intelligence. Intelligence, producing what is new to an entire civilization or culture, is commonly called genius. Cunning is a variety of intelligence. Talent is an unusual quantity of a particular capability. It always implies skill, which is a variety of proficiency, but it need not imply much intelligence. ANALYSIS Analysis is the characteristic intellectual instrument of European civilization in art as well as in science. The exploring attention contracts from the object first observed to some part of the object and arrives at elements and abstract qualities not further divisible by analytic discrimination. Teleologically, the analytic elements of psychology are the congenital and acquired abilities. Etiologically, the element is a psycho-motor reaction, and the first inquiry into the etiology of stimulation concerns itself with the discrimination of the specific sense energies. GENERALIZATION Contracted particularization and discrimination disclose a multiplicity of discrete elementary qualities. Like qualities are grouped as a species, subsumed under a general term. Red, yellow, green and PERFORMANCE AND SUCCESS. 167 blue we call colors, living and moving creatures we call animals. Generalization is a scientific method but it is a primary intellectual operation essential to the systematization of knowlege. CLASSIFICATION Scientific classification is an intellectual instrument invented by man only after he had arrived at an advanced stage of civilization. Primitive man and the child classify by contrasting opposites. The good is thus differentiated from the bad, the familiar from the strange, the bitter from the sweet, the beautiful from the ugly, and the true from the false. These primitive categories still play an important role in thought and speech. More useful categories have been developed by the advance of civilization and science, which has perfected analytic discrimination as an intellectual instrument. The thoughtless girl, to whom everything is either lovely or hateful, is categorizing at the intellectual level of primitive man. The discovery that qualities constitute a continuous series and the employment of this discovery in the motivation of thought and action has been an important agent in the development of civilization. “Black is not white” is certainly a wise judgment. But those who make it often fail to recognize that between the blackest black that ever existed and the whitest white, there is a continuous series of grays, of which black is only the darkest gray, and white, the lightest. To draw a line between what is good and what is bad, between success and failure, often serves a useful social purpose. It establishes what I call the social criterion, the line that separates the feebleminded, the insane, and the criminal from the normal man; but the psychologist recognizes that there is no gap between these groups, and the point on the scale of performance, which is cut by the social criterion, is arbitrarily determined and in fact wavers to and fro as social standards and economic conditions vary. DEFINITION Definition is also an intellectual operation and a scientific method. It is a statement of the qualities which suffice to distinguish one class of objects from another. THE INTELLECT The intellect is knowledge put to use. Information tests do not necessarily test intellect. They test the efficiency of memory and indicate an intellectual level. It is conceivable that one might know 168 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. all the definitions in the dictionary, all the dates of history, and the contents of an encyclopedia, and yet have no more intellect than a scrap book. Intellect is displayed by the knowledge employed in performance. The use to which knowledge is put may be only to earn one’s bread and butter, it may be to acquire more knowledge as in science, or to create objects of enjoyment and invent instruments of power as in art. Knowledge leads to power, to enjoyment, to both, or neither. The intellect is an acquired instrument; it is organized knowledge employed for acquisition, appreciation and enjoyment. Congenital abilities make intellectual organization possible. An intellect is acquired by training or practice in observation, description, discrimination, analysis, generalization, definition and classification. By the time a child is six years of age, if he is going to have an intellect worthy of the name he will already have displayed, on his own initiative, all these elementary operations, which are called scientific methods only because science perfects what nature gives. If our education were not so defective, it would be unnecessary to teach these methods to college and professional students. The child employs them. He does not need to be taught them; he needs only to be given an opportunity to exercise the capabilities with which he is endowed at birth. If the intensive training of his memory trains these intellectforming methods out of him, and leaves him at a low intellectual level, bereft of the creative imagination which is intelligence, it is then the thankless and often hopeless task of higher education to awaken what is dormant or dead. Note.?On the following pages I give an outline of Part I, The Teleology of Competency, and suggest the contents of succeeding parts of my psychology. Every competency may be subdivided into an indefinite number of particular abilities. The number of abilities to be discriminated and named will depend upon practical considerations. A classified list of thirty-one capabilities suffices for my present purpose. The further teleological analysis of competency will necessitate an adequate differentiation of varieties and compounds. PERFORMANCE AND SUCCESS. 169 PART I The Teleology of Competency EXCITABILITY EXPRESSIBILITY susceptibility A. vitality: mentality Emotives and Directives Mood Desire Wish1 Dread2 Want3 Aversion4 Passion Feeling Sympathy5 Antipathy6 Pleasure7 Displeasure8 The Start The Guide kinesis: motibility aesthesia: discernability To Promote9 To Oppose10 To Get11 To Eject12 B. power: mentability Initiative Guidance Competency13 Efficiency14 Eccentricity15 Conformity16 Control17 Direction18 C. invention: intelligence The Competency Grade The Operative Levels D. control: judgment Quantitative Qualitative Failure Success Abnormality Normality E. FORCE: ATTENTION Alertness19 Persistence20 Speed21 Endurance22 Play23 Work24 Exploration25 Orientation26 170 THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CLINIC. F. organization: associability Discrete Multiplicity Integrated Multiplicity Multiple Personality The Individual Distributability27 Unitability28 Trainability29 Retainability30 Imageability31 Imagination Memory G. direction: intellect 1. Observation 2. Comparison 3. Discrimination 4. Analysis 5. Generalization 6. Classification 7. Integration 8. Description 9. Definition 10. Intellectual Levels Note.?The numbers 1-31 indicate the congenital and elementary abilities; i. e., the capabilities. PART II The Etiology of Efficiency Reactions and Stimuli, including the educational treatment of normal and exceptional children. PART III The Social Criterion Ability and Defect, Competency and Deficiency, Normality and Abnormality. PART IV Group Psychology The family, races, nations, and humanity. Adventitious groups. Note.?I am not ready to offer Parts II-IV even in outline, but our courses in psychology at the Summer Session of the University of Pennsylvania not only supplement the outline of Part I, but also cover many topics belonging under the headings of the other three parts.
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