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The stated purpose of this book is to survey the long history of psychology's efforts to achieve scientific status from its origins as mental philosophy and to present the philosophic backgrounds from which scientific psychology emerged. The result of this undertaking is a work of such scholarly breadth and penetrating inquiry that we are carried along into all of the fascinating details of man's age-old struggle to discern the nature of the universe and of his existence in it, and to fathom the riddle of his mind and consciousness. Almost encyclopedic in character, there is a wealth of information provided here and a masterful perspective on the background of many of the questions that still confront the mental sciences.
The author recognizes that history represents selective perception, that the historian's viewpoint determines the selection and interpretation of material, and that history as well as psychology requires an idiographic (individually determined) even more than a nomothetic (natural-law-determined) approach. In this connection it is pointed out that William James took a dim view of 'brass-instrument psychology', and that the issues he raised highlight the unresolved questions stemming from psychology's philosophic heritage. It is one or another of James's six basic questions that determines for the author the assigning of historical significance: 1, How is mind related to its physiological substrate? 2, Are objective techniques adequate to deal with subjective life? 3, How are experiences and impulses integrated into personality? 4,