Author: American Psychological Association; Committee on the Academic Status of Psychology
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Published: 2015-06-26
Total Pages: 31
ISBN-13: 9781330220757
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Excerpt from Report of the Committee on the Academic Status of Psychology, 1914 To the American Psychological Association: Psychology has found difficulty in establishing itself in some of our colleges and universities as an academic subject. Its subject matter is closely related to the interests of several other departments. From the standpoint of each of these departments psychology is merely preliminary to their own needs a stepping stone to something higher. This failure to recognize the study of psychology as constituting an end in itself is perhaps most noticeable on the part of philosophers. To them the chief purpose of mental analysis is found in its epistemological implications. In many of our American colleges, and even in some of our larger universities, the so-called introductory course in psychology is conducted solely with this in view. In other institutions, more generally in the west, the science of education claims psychology as its own. In such cases the central motive of the first course in psychology, probably of the whole psychological curriculum, is its value to the prospective teacher. The analysis of mental processes is studied only so far as it throws light on educational methods and theory. In certain cases also we find a tendency to subsume psychology under the general anthropological sciences. In the A. A, A. S. this attempt to yoke psychology and anthropology together, like the traditional horse and ox, has proved irksome to one member of the team. Finally, the biological sciences have staked extensive claims in two separate quarters of the psychological domain. Some biologists treat mental phenomena as mere correlates of physiological processes, a view which finds expression in the sectional division of the British Association. Others, including a number of psychologists also, regard psychological phenomena as fully explicable in terms of behavior, and as constituting therefore a phase of biological science. The character of the American Psychological Association and the productivity of American psychologists in the aggregate effectively refute these views; they testify to the fact that a large and thoughtful company of trained workers regard psychological research and study as an end in itself. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.