38. Modern Soul Research

The development of science in the last century could not wrongly be called a conquest of the scientific spirit over almost all areas of human cognition. The triumphant power of this procession can be seen nowhere better than in the character that research into the human soul has assumed in scientific circles over the last few decades. The modern psychologist, who tries to get to grips with the rising and falling phenomena of our inner being with his counting and measuring apparatus, bears little resemblance to the earlier soul researcher who merely wanted to look at his own soul with his mind's eye; he looks all the more like the physical or chemical experimenter. If one wants to characterize the nature of modern soul research, one will always have to refer to a word coined by the great thinker and writer Friedrich Albert Lange, the author of the "History of Materialism": "Psychology without a soul." It is a word that can easily be misunderstood. It had a good meaning as a battle cry. It was intended to say that anyone who wants to explore the soul must not have a preconceived notion of this "soul". And Lange made such an accusation against the older psychologists. They had certain dogmatic ideas about the soul. They imagined it to be a being with very specific characteristics. And when they then set about investigating the real phenomena of the soul, their view was clouded by these preconceived dogmas. For example, those who believe that the human will is absolutely free do not see the processes of the will impartially. They take on such an involuntary character in his observation that the opinion of "free will" can exist. Lange now demands that the soul-searchers give up all such opinions. Examine, he tells them, the processes of the will as they present themselves to you, and at first leave it completely undetermined whether the will is free or unfree. Whether it is, you cannot say beforehand, but that must first be the result of your investigation. A comparison with a historical fact suggests itself when you think about the term "soul science without a soul". Columbus once sailed westward with the intention of finding a known land. He found an unknown one. Psychologists should be aware that the right concept of the soul cannot be known before the investigation, but that it can only become apparent to them at the end of their voyages of discovery. Modern psychologists proceed accordingly. They seek ways and means of getting to know the phenomena of the soul in their context and are convinced that they will arrive at a concept of the "soul" at the end of their journey. Lange's word has the same meaning in relation to the question of the soul that one could associate with the similar one, "natural science without nature". The natural scientist, too, does not base his research on any preconceived notion of "nature". He investigates the phenomena of light, electricity and life and is convinced that a comprehensive concept of nature will only emerge from the totality of his research.

The researcher and thinker who brought completely new perspectives to the study of the soul was completely dominated by this way of thinking: Gustav Theodor Fechner. Using a method that Goethe, with his far-sighted scientific view, demanded for all natural research, Fechner showed the extent to which it can be applied in psychology. "When we deliberately repeat the experiences - these are Goethe's words - which have been made before us, which we ourselves or others make with us at the same time, and represent again the phenomena which have arisen partly by chance, partly artificially, we call this an experiment. The value of an experiment consists chiefly in the fact that, whether simple or compound, it can be produced again at any time under certain conditions with a known apparatus and with the necessary skill, as often as the conditional circumstances can be combined." To have given the experiment its right in psychology is the merit that Fechner has earned through the explanations of his work "Elements of Psychophysics" (1860). A problem that has occupied the human mind as long as it has been concerned with questions of knowledge, the relationship of the physical to the spiritual, appeared here for the first time in a sense that Goethe also characterized perfectly accurately with the words: "We have to learn from the mathematicians the thoughtfulness of only stringing together the next to the next, or rather to deduce the next from the next, and even where we do not make use of any calculation, we must always go about our work as if we were accountable to the strictest geormeter." This is how Fechner thought and acted in the area where the physical and the spiritual meet. A weight presses on my hand. I feel the pressure. A physical phenomenon - the pressure - causes a mental phenomenon, the sensation. I increase the pressure. My sensation also increases. Fechner asks: How can I use numbers to express the extent to which the sensation increases when the pressure increases? The dependence of the mental on the physical is determined as if one were accountable to the strictest geometer. Wilhelm Wundt, who continued to work in Fechner's spirit in this field, says of the founder of "Psychophysics": "Perhaps in none of his other scientific achievements does the rare combination of gifts that Fechner possessed emerge so brilliantly as in his psychophysical works. A work such as the "Elements of Psychophysics" required a familiarity with the principles of exact physical-mathematical methodology and at the same time a tendency to delve into the deepest problems of being, which only he possessed in this combination. And for this he needed that originality of thought which knew how to freely reshape the traditional tools according to its own needs and had no qualms about taking new and unfamiliar paths. E.H. Weber's observations, admirable for their ingenious simplicity but limited in scope, the isolated, often more accidental than systematic experiments and results of other physiologists - they formed the modest material from which he built a new science." Since Fechner's ingenious idea, a mathematical formula has told us how sensation increases with an increasing external stimulus, just as since Galileo's fundamental ideas a mathematical formula has told us how the speed increases when a ball rolls down an inclined plane. Psychology has become an experimental science. Its new character is clearly expressed in Wundt's "Lectures on the Human and Animal Soul" (1863). We read there: "In the following investigations I shall show that experiment is the main aid in psychology which leads us from the facts of consciousness to those processes which prepare conscious life in the dark background of the soul. Self-observation, like observation in general, provides us only with the composite appearance. Only in the experiment do we strip the phenomenon of all the accidental circumstances to which it is bound in nature. Through the experiment we create the phenomenon artificially out of the conditions that we hold in our hands. We change these conditions and thereby also change the appearance in a measurable way. Thus it is always and everywhere the experiment that leads us to the laws of nature, because only in the experiment are we able to see both the causes and the results." Simply immersing oneself in one's own inner self, self-observation, has lost much of its trust among specialist psychologists. Wundt turned against them in the sharpest possible terms. He asked: What has psychology gained from introspection? If an inhabitant of another world descended to our earth and wanted to deduce the nature of the human soul from the textbooks of psychology, he would probably come to the conclusion that the various descriptions of the psychologists, who all claim to have gained their views from self-observation, refer to beings of quite different worlds. "There is nothing special about imagining a person who observes some external object attentively. But the idea of such a person absorbed in self-observation is almost irresistibly comical. His situation is exactly like that of a Munchausen trying to pull himself out of the swamp by his own pigtail." This judgment is undoubtedly one-sided. But it is quite understandable in the case of the leader of experimental psychology. Kraepelin, the editor of "Psychologische Arbeiten", certainly characterizes Wundt's merits correctly when he says: "We are inclined to take the existence of physiological psychology as something so self-evident that in places it is already beginning to be forgotten what a tremendous influence Wundt's summarizing and stimulating work has had on the expansion of old and the emergence of new fields of psychological research." It is absolutely true that introspection is a rich source of errors. But it is equally undoubted that nothing is known to us more intimately and directly than our own inner self. Whatever else we may observe: it remains an exterior to us. We cannot penetrate into its core. In the circle of our psychic phenomena we stand in the middle. They are therefore closer to us than anything else in the world. Should this not also be the reason why we are exposed to so many errors when observing these phenomena? Objectivity and impartiality are certainly more difficult towards what is close to us than towards what is far away. Because self-observation is something so immediate, it is likely to be difficult. And it is possible that only those who are well trained in other fields of observation could practise sufficient self-observation. What Goethe said of nature in general: "And what it may not reveal to your spirit, you do not force from it with levers and screws", this saying must apply especially to the nature of the soul. But there are wide areas of the soul's life from which so much can be extracted with "levers and screws" that their laws confront us in strict mathematical formulas. - A sound impression acts on my ear. I feel it. My sensation sets my will in motion. I feel prompted by the perceived sound to perform an action. The psychological experimenter takes possession of this fact. He switches a clock into an electric circuit, the hands of which move as long as pressure is exerted on some device. Let two such devices be connected to the circuit. Then the hand only moves as long as pressure is exerted on both devices. An observer now does the following. He presses on one device until he perceives a certain sound. Then he lets go and presses on the second device at the same time. While he does this, the pointer moves. So there is a time when he presses on both devices. This is the time that has elapsed between the reception of the sensory impression and the action that follows this impression. It is found that one-eighth to one-sixth of a second elapses from the perception of a sensation to the moment when man can execute a movement in response to that sensation. By similarly ingenious precautions one can investigate the diminution of the strength of a memory with the time that has elapsed since an impression has been committed to memory; one can recognize how quickly a new conception attaches itself to an old one; one can also judge the influence of fatigue, of exercise on our mental life, and similar phenomena in inexhaustible abundance and variety. In an impressive series of volumes, Wundt published the results of such research as "Philosophical Studies", which he and his students carried out in the mother institute of experimental psychology, his Leipzig laboratory. A number of German and foreign universities have set up similar institutions based on the Leipzig model. Students from all parts of the educated world came to Leipzig to learn the new methods under Wundt's guidance. And they carried modern psychological research methods everywhere. In Copenhagen and Jassy, in Italy and America, experimental psychology is taught in the spirit of the Leipzig researcher. A number of important scholars can be named who have more or less independently pursued their psychological laboratory work and achieved fine results. Carl Stumpf in particular has made valuable contributions in the field of sound psychology, Hermann Ebbinghaus in the field of memory phenomena. Ernst Mach is particularly successful in combining experiment with intellectual explanation. Hugo Münsterberg, who worked in Zurich for a long time, was called to Cambridge to cultivate the new science.

It is impossible in a brief overview to mention all the perspectives opened up by experimental psychology. Among many things, the most important thing that pedagogy has to learn from this young branch of research will certainly not be the least important. The teacher, who has to direct the laws of the adolescent's mental life, will in future have to be guided by the experimentally established laws of this mental life. He will have to trust memory and practice only as much as these mental faculties can achieve according to the psychological results. - And Kraepelin makes the decisive demand on psychiatry to make use of the results of experimental psychology. For many years, this researcher has endeavored to answer the question of "in what way and to what extent" this is possible. He is of the opinion that the time has come when psychiatry can make no further progress with the observation methods in use up to now. These methods must be supplemented by those of the newly blossoming experimental psychology. - It is precisely Kraepelin's testimony that one likes to refer to when it comes to appreciating the new science. For this level-headed and intellectual researcher is not blind to the dark sides of this science, which some of its proponents are guilty of. "We must admit that among the flood of experimental work that the last decade has brought us, some of it does not meet the justified requirements, that the weeds have often sprouted abundantly along with the wheat." But Kraepelin's other words are just as true: "Nevertheless, we can expect with certainty today that the young science will survive this developmental disease without damage and will be able to permanently assert its independent place alongside the other branches of natural science and physiology in particular."