General: James Drever and Ernest Jones. The Classification of Instincts (A Symposium at the Seventh International Congress of Psychology), British Journal of Psychology, General Section, 1924, Vol. XIV, p. 248.

After a brief survey of previous attempts at classification (reaching back to Plato), Drever contrasts the biological and the psychological bases of classification and devotes some consideration to the biological classification into ego, sex and herd instincts, with, in particular, some critical references to the work of McCurdy. He then proposes a psychological classification on the basis of three main distinctions, as follows: —

• 1Into general and specific.

• 2Under each head into appetitive and reactive.

• 3Under the last head, into simple and emotional.

Such a classification, it is suggested, has the advantage of embodying many of the chief distinctions made by other writers, such as (among the moderns) Freud, Myers, McDougall and Rivers.

Jones raises the question of the aim of classification—whether it is merely a matter of convenience for description, or whether there is the intention of making the classification correspond to inherited biological characteristics. In the former case (which unfortunately predominates at present) a classification into a few major groups is, it is suggested, the most hopeful, a parallel being drawn between the classification of the instincts and that of psychotic disturbances, where the division into a few main groups by Kraepelin heralded a period of greater analytic understanding. Psycho-analytic work has thrown doubt upon many of the classificatory entities found in the lists of instincts hitherto adopted, tending to show that these entities are not elementary but are capable of further analysis. This is of course particularly the case as regards the sexual instincts.

Jones suggests the following: —

Psychological classification of instinctual tendencies.