The Foundations of Personality

There is one kind of energy discharger that we may call the hyperkinetic, controlled practical type. This group is characterized by great and constant activity, well controlled...

There have been various philosophies dealing with the purposes of man. Man seeks this or that--the eternal good, beauty, happiness, pleasure, survival--but always he is represen...

One of the problems in all work is to place things in their right order, in the order of origin and importance. This difficulty is almost insoluble when one studies the characte...

From the time any one of us is born into the world he is subject to the influences of forces that reach backwards to the earliest days of the race. The "dead hand" rules,--yes,...

In a preceding chapter we discussed man as an organism reacting against an outside world and spurred on by internal activities and needs. We discussed stimulation, reflexes, inh...

I shall ignore the complexities that arise when we seek to organize our reactions into various groups by making a simple classification of feeling, for the purposes of this book...

Originally reproduction is a part of the function of all protoplasm; and in the primitive life-forms an individual becomes two by the "simple process" of dividing itself into ha...

There are two qualities of nervous tissues (possibly of all living tissue) that are basic in all nervous and mental processes. They are dependent upon the modificability of nerv...

No matter what happens in the outside world, be it something we see, hear or feel, in any sense-field there is an internal reverberation in our bodies,--excitement. Excitement i...

The social group, in its descent from the herd, has become an intensely competitive, highly cooperative organization. There are two sets of qualities essential to those phases o...

Having asked concerning any person, "What are his purposes?" whether of power or fellowship, whether permanent or transitory, whether adjustable or not, we next ask, "How does h...

The history of Man's thought is the real history of mankind. Back of all the events of history are the curious systems of beliefs for which men have lived and died. Struggling t...

There are three fundamental factors in the relation of any organism to the environment and in the relation of the various parts of an organism to each other which we must now co...

In the preceding chapter we spoke of the feeling of energy and certain of the basic emotions--such as fear, anger, joy, sorrow, disgust, surprise and admiration. It is important...

Hysteria was known to the ancients and in fact is as old as the written history of mankind. Considered essentially a disease of women, it was given its present name which is der...

I find in William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience", the following definition of religion: "Religion, therefore, as I shall ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean f...

I shall not attempt an analysis of the psychology of humor, for illustrious writers and thinkers have stubbed their intellectual toes on this rock for centuries. In later years...

One of the great difficulties in thought is that often the same word expresses quite different concepts. Some superficial resemblance has taken possession of the mind and expres...