You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This posthumously published work, sponsored by the Paul Schilder Memorial Fund Committee, makes use of principles and investigations presented in the author's previous work, The Image and Appearance of the Human Body, in 'an attempt to investigate the principles of perception and thought'. In a foreword, the author states that he is deeply influenced by Freud, whose work he regards as an 'era in psychology', but that he has developed his own ideas independently. Not a little of the material presented has appeared in previous publications.
The first half of the book deals with perception and action, the second with higher mental functions. Sensory experience is investigated as an aspect of experience of objects in the outer world. (The term sensation is used to refer to the subjective aspect of an experience; the term perception is used when the experiences are considered as phenomenally objective.) Motility, action and vegetative phenomena as aspects of a process constituting the experience of an object are studied. The author outlines a 'psychology of the constructive energies of the psyche'. He particularly emphasizes the principles of configuration and the problem of gestalt. Most simply expressed, he attempts to deal with aspects of experience, but insists that no particular aspect of experience can be envisaged correctly except in relation to the total experience that relates body, self and object. 'One should not speak of sensations, feelings, emotions as units. The primitive unit is a sensory-motorvegetative unit in a unified attitude, which is either complete or incomplete action' (p. 375). Time and space are social phenomena; perceptions and distortions of time and space are dependent upon libidinal factors. Language, thinking, memory and learning are discussed from a similar viewpoint, that is, as by-products or aspects of experience ultimately of a social nature.
Schilder's observations are based upon his own clinical experience, experiments and