Applied Psychology for Nurses, Mary F. Porter [100 best novels of all time txt] 📗

function of motion any longer. The fires under the boiler are still burning and can be kept burning so long as fuel is provided, but the connection is broken and the great bulk of iron is a useless thing in that it can no longer fulfil its purpose.

In just such a way may the mind be paralyzed; but the spark of life, which has through all the years kindled the now lost mind to action, may still remain—a useless thing, which would die away if not tended from without by other bodies whose minds are still intact.

But in the demented mind consciousness still remains, the awareness of the young child or baby stage of life. The connection between the upper or conscious brain centers and the body has been tampered with; it no longer is direct, but breaks off into switch-lines. But the contact still holds between the lower or unconscious mind and the body; so the automatic body functions go on, directed as they were in babyhood before the independent mind assumed control. Hence, when all acute consciousness is finally gone, the unconscious mind, a perfect automaton, may still carry out the simplest vegetative activities of existence.

When body is dead, mind, so far as its reactions to the world we know are concerned, ceases to act. But when the conscious mind is “dead” the body may yet live as a vegetable lives, with all its distinctively human functions lost. Motionless, save for the beating of the heart and the reaction of the lungs to air, the body may still be alive, though the mind long since has ceased all earthly activity.

So we discover that an organ of mind is an essential, here, to life of mind, and that mind only can induce this organ to any action above the vegetative stage. But, on the other hand, we find that life can exist without conscious mind, even if untended by others, for a limited time.

If the direct nerve connections between the brain and the hand, the brain and the foot, or the brain and the trunk are cut off, the mind henceforth realizes nothing of that part except as the sense of sight reports upon it; for the optic nerves relate the hand and mind, through this sense, as truly as the motor nerves which carry the mind’s message for motion to the hand, and the sensory nerves which carry back to the mind the hand’s pain. But let the optic nerve be inert, the sensory and motor connections broken between brain and hand, or foot and trunk, or brain and trunk, and the hand or foot may be amputated and the mind never sense the fact; the trunk may be severely injured and the mind be serenely unconscious. So the brain in man is “the one immediate bodily condition of the mental operations.” Take away all the brain and man’s body is a useless mass of protoplasm.

The brain’s varied and intricate nerve connections with all parts of the body, through nerves branching from the main trunks in the spinal cord, we shall not discuss, for you know them through your study of anatomy. For the purpose of our psychology we need consider only two of the main divisions of the brain—the cerebrum, which includes what we call the right and left hemispheres, and the cerebellum.

The Cerebrum or Forebrain

For convenience the various lobes of the cerebrum are known as frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital, according to the parts of the brain referred to: as forehead, temples, crown, or occiput. The cerebellum, or hind brain, is also divided into two hemispheres, and is situated behind and below the hemispheres of the cerebrum.

A system of localization has been roughly mapped out, the result of careful laboratory work on animals and of studying the loss of various functions in human beings as related to the location of brain injuries.

From these experiments it seems proved that consciousness belongs only to the cortex or surface of the upper brain, and that the vast realm of the unconscious belongs to the lower brain centers. Hence the cortex is the organ of consciousness, and the lower centers are the repository of the unconscious until it again becomes conscious.

The motor zone of the cortex we now know to be situated in the convolutions bordering the fissure of Rolando. Vision is evidently excited from the occipital lobes, though not yet conclusively proved. Smell, presumably, is located in the temporal lobes. Considered action is directed from the upper hemispheres only. It is significant that the hemispheres of the cerebrum are also accepted as the seat of memory for man—that intellectual quality which makes him capable of acting from absent stimuli, stimuli only present to memory; which makes it possible for him to reason the present from the experiences of the past.

But in all animal life, except the higher forms, the control of action is from the lower brain centers, centers which respond only to present objects. With them memory, as man knows it, is lacking; but the reactions of the past are indelibly imprinted upon motor nerves and muscles, so that when the present object presses the button, as it were, calling forth the experience of the race, the animal instinctively reacts.

But of what use to man, then, are the lower brain centers?

In man, as in lower animals, they care for the vegetative functions of life, so that our blood continues to circulate, the air enters and leaves our lungs, digestion is carried on, with no assistance from the upper centers, the hemispheres of the cerebrum being thus left free for concentration on the external world of matter, which it can transform into a world of thought.

It is the lower or vegetative brain that may still exist and keep life intact when the functions of the cerebrum are destroyed. We can say, then, of the brain as a whole that it is the organ of the mind, the sine qua non of the mind, the apparatus for the registration of sense impressions. The senses themselves are the rudiments of mind, are the means by which stimuli alighting on sense organs enter consciousness; for the nerves of special sense immediately carry the impetus to the brain, where it is recognized as the “not me,” the something definitely affecting the me, and demanding reaction from the me.

The functions of the cerebrum we find grouping themselves in three classes: intellect, emotion, and volition, more simply, thinking, feeling, and willing; and we find no mental activity of the normal or abnormal mind which will not fall into one of these groupings. This does not mean that one part of the brain thinks, another part wills, another part feels; for in the performance of any one of these functions the mind acts as a whole. Our thinking or our willing may be permeated with feeling, but the entire mind is simply reacting simultaneously upon various stimuli.

CHAPTER V
THE NORMAL MIND

Mind, we found, is born in the form of consciousness when the outside world impresses itself upon the brain-cells by way of the senses. This consciousness, observation and experiment prove, is first a feeling one, later a feeling-thinking-willing one. The mind, then, is really the activity of the brain as it feels, as it thinks, as it wills. We express this in descriptive terms when we speak of mind as the flow of consciousness, the sum of all mental associations, conscious and unconscious. For mind is never a final thing. Looking within at our own mental processes we find that always our thought is just becoming something else. We reach a conclusion, but it is not a resting place, only a starting place for another. My thought was that a moment ago, but while it was that it was becoming this, and even now it is becoming something else.

Thinking is mind. Feeling is mind. Willing is mind. But for the sake of clearness we speak of feeling, thinking, and willing as being functions of mind. Mind acts by using these powers. But to what end does it act? What purpose does it serve? For these functions are not the reasons of being for the mind, even as motion—while the immediate purpose of the locomotive—is not its chief end. The steam engine may stand in the same spot while its wheels revolve madly; it may move along the tracks alone, and accomplish nothing; or it may transport a great train of loaded cars. Unless it moves to some definite point and carries merchandise or people there, it is a useless, indeed, a dangerous invention. We find, in fact, that it functions to the very definite end of taking man and his chattels to specified places.

And so it is with the mind. If it is thinking and feeling and willing only for the sake of exercising these mental powers, it might better not be. But what end do we actually find these functions serving?

Mind, with its powers of thinking, feeling, and willing, gives an external world of matter; an internal world of thought, and so relates them to each other as to make them serve man’s purposes. Thus these functions exist for accomplishment.

In the solving of a problem, for instance, the mind thinks, primarily; in the enjoyment of music it feels, primarily, though its feeling may be determined by the intellectual verdict on the music; in forcing its owner to sit at the piano and practice in the face of strong desire to attend the theater, it wills, primarily. Now one of its functions predominates; now another. But the whole mind, not a feeling section, or a thinking section, or a willing section, operates together to produce action. When I play the piano it calls on all my mind. I think the music. I feel it. I make my fingers play it. But the thinking, the feeling, and the willing act together to result in the fingers playing.

The mind, then, is an instrument of achievement. It fulfils its purpose when it makes matter serve useful ends.

Emotion or feeling is the function of the mind which associates a sense of pleasure or pain with every thought or act.

Feeling is the affective state of mind. By this we mean that it has the power to move us. And this emotion primarily does; for our feeling of pleasure or pain moves us to action, as well as precedes and accompanies and follows action. The word emotion is usually employed to denote an acute feeling state, while the word mood denotes a prolonged feeling condition, i. e., a less acute emotional state. The word feeling, however, is used to cover both; for in each case the sensational element manifests itself in a definite physical affect, pleasurable or painful in some degree.

Thinking is a conscious mental activity exercised to evolve ideas from perceptions, and to combine and compare these ideas to form judgments.

Intellection, or thinking, might be explained as the mental process which converts sensation into percepts, groups percepts to form concepts or ideas, stores away ideas and sensations for future use, and recalls them when needed—the recalling being memory—and by reason combines, compares, and associates ideas to form judgments, then compares judgments to form new judgments. The process of intellect we name by terms denoting activity, such as intellection, thinking, the stream of thought, and the latter describes it most truly.

Volition or will is the function of the mind which compels the expression of thought or feeling in action.

For clarity we might indicate the mind and its functions in the following diagram:

Mind Emotion Pleasure Pain Intellect, or the Stream of Thought Sensation (impression on mind from sense organs) Eye Ear Nose Mouth Skin Muscles Viscera General Sensation Perception (recognition of cause of sensation) of object of quality Memory Self Organic Inorganic Percept Concept Ideation Abstract Concrete Imaginative Fanciful Constructive Reason Judgement Will

The following terms are