X Insight

IF habit and reproduction are not to be regarded as the main motors of so-called mental life, what shall we say are the real ones? To this question there is one answer, not well formulated but implicitly accepted, which we may call the layman’s belief. It is the layman’s belief that, in general, he himself directly feels why at one time he has one attitude, and later on another; also that, for the most part, he knows and understands directly why he is inclined to do one thing in a certain particular situation and why a definitely different thing under subsequent different conditions. In his view, then, he is experiencing directly and truly much of that dynamical context, the development of which constitutes mental life. Opposed to this belief and altogether foreign to it, we have the view of most learned psychologists at the present time. From their viewpoint, one is inclined to do one thing now and then another, because, in the first instance, certain nerve paths are most available and, in the second instance, certain other paths are most open. Fortunate those people in whom the most permeable nerve paths in practise are usually the right and appropriate ones! From the psychologist’s point of view it would be a pure mystery if a person’s behavior should ever be determined, as the layman believes, directly by the concrete properties of the actual situation. The layman’s belief is in full agreement with everyday experience; the learned view harmonizes with what we suppose to be the viewpoint of natural science. I shall confess at once that I choose the layman’s belief whole-heartedly. In the treatment of sensory process gestalt psychology prefers the data of naïve description to the findings of prejudiced introspection. Following this line, the theory of the sensory field has begun to have a much more intimate contact with the natural sciences than it ever had when it imitated a self-made ideal of these disciplines. Similarly if, with regard to the total field, we adopt the view of common experience, what is called the viewpoint of natural science will soon be given up, in place of which we shall substitute the theory of dynamics. At the start of our present discussion, therefore, the obvious, almost the vulgar, will have to be said. It is not our fault that, to a deplorable degree, the obvious has disappeared from learned psychology, so that we have to rediscover it. Later in the course of this analysis the obvious aspects of common experience will be found to express certain fundamental properties of physical dynamics in the nervous system. This is exactly the contrary of the prevailing opinion.

We have attacked the atomistic theory of sensory experience. After things and the self, events and groups, have been recognized as natural parts of the field and its development, the worst mistake which might occur would consist in our falling back upon atomism at this higher level. It was once the psychologist’s primary aim to look for all possible sensations, to collect and to order them in something like a museum. After they were thus gathered and arrayed as independent bits of experience, the sensory field had consequently to be regarded as a mosaic of indifferent spots. We would face the same danger in this present treatment if, after discussing a certain type of segregated whole in one chapter, and another type in a later chapter, the self in one chapter, and attitudes in another, we should again seem to be opening a museum to the public. The ways of real life do not coincide with those of classification, and if, by abstraction, we unite the members of one class, we very probably cut the live bonds of dynamical reality at the same time. Perhaps, the most interesting forms of dynamical context occur between members of altogether different classes. It is instructive to see hundreds of hearts together in a collection; but, in operation, a heart has much more to do with a lung than with another heart. We should not learn very much about their specific coöperation in a classifying museum. In a similar way, when we treat sensory wholes as one class, selves as a second and attitudes as a third, we might easily be misled into the view that out of some sensory objects, some self and some attitudes, actual total fields might be composed ad libitum. It is evident to any one that such an assumption would be altogether childish, there being certain correlations between the objects, the selves and their attitudes occurring in one common field. Even from the viewpoint of traditional psychology, it would be so. However, we cannot be satisfied with this statement because, generally, much more than mere correlation will occur between the most essential parts of a given total field. Just this surplus is the obvious aspect of every one’s life to which we have alluded and it is forgotten in at least one-half of scientific psychology.

One attitude in which I sometimes find myself is admiration. But I am never simply “admiring.” My admiration always is “of” something; it does not occur as something by itself and indifferently. Nor is there the slightest doubt about what its object is at a given moment. In the concert-hall, yesterday at 9 o’clock, it was that alto voice, singing calmly, confidently and seriously, toward which my admiration was directed,—not the nose of my neighbor, not the back of the conductor, none of the thousands of other objects and events before me. How is that? Admiration is a directed attitude; the voice is heard as singing at a definite place. Do I state that the direction of the first goes to the place in question and stops there, as a long stick might be fastened between me and that place, and end there? Do I notice something like that and say, then: “Oh, I guess this curious attitude of mine somehow has something to do with that singing!”? I certainly do not. As my attitude arises, it is experienced as being the natural outcome of what characterizes the singing voice. So long as the attitude persists, it is felt as being founded upon the properties of that performance. No indirect criteria, no coefficients of correlation are needed, then, to teach me about some probable connection here, because this actual attitude is experienced as depending directly upon something definite.

Some weeks ago I saw my little child smiling for the first time, and I was charmed. How did I know that my attitude was concerned with that smile? If the total field were a mosaic of states, events and things, some of them directed and some not, but all of them distributed indifferently in consequence of some hidden mechanism, I could not guess their mutual connection except by the indirect procedure of scientific induction: a change here would be followed by a change there; elimination of this part would be accompanied by disappearance of that other part. Empirical rules of concomitant variation, and so forth, would be all I could find out about the connections existing between the several parts. In my case, the frequent concomitance of the smile on the child’s face with that other bit of experience, my being charmed, would have made me assume that probably there was some connection between the two. How far have we gone in psychology that it is possible, or even seems advisable, to carry on such discussion seriously! One side of my child’s face is a little darker because of a shadow. Before the sufficient number of experiences have occurred, I might as well refer my being charmed to that shadow!

After a long walk, on a hot summer day, I drink a glass of fresh beer. There is the cool touch and a characteristic taste in my mouth; there is also great pleasure. Did I have to learn gradually that the second refers to the first? That it has nothing to do with the spider that I see on the wall, or the size of that chair? I did not learn it. I am no more sure of my enjoyment as such, and of touch and taste by themselves, than I am of enjoying just this touch and taste. Enjoyment is felt as the adequate attitude belonging to those actual experiences, or as their natural result. Between the attitude and its sensory basis we experience what in German is called ihr sachlicher Zusammenhang.⁠[74]

The same is true in a great many cases which differ from the last ones only insofar as the attitude has a “negative” character.

For two weeks I have been busy arranging a carefully adjusted set of instruments for experimentation. This morning I found them completely out of order. Whoever may be guilty, I am angry. If, now, I should say that here is the window, there the desk, in one corner the instruments out of order, in another a chair, and near the door myself in an attitude of anger, would that be an adequate description of the total situation? It would not. I am sure that the door has no connection whatever with my attitude; for I know that, on discovering the unfortunate change, I was angry about the alteration. Again, the attitude is felt as founded upon something definite, its character being the natural and direct consequence of that something’s properties.

One beautiful night in Tenerife, when I was working calmly at my desk, I was suddenly frightened as I have never before been frightened. The house was rattling and shaking violently—my first experience of an earthquake! There was no doubt whatever about my being frightened by that sudden rattling and shaking. Once more the attitude—if fright may be called an attitude—was felt as obviously and naturally produced by that new experience. We do not gradually learn that unexpected events of a strongly dynamical type will be accompanied by fright, as though a priori any other experiences, a friendly face or the smell of a rose, might be accompanied by fright just as well. Fright is experienced as jumping at us right out of the very nature of certain definite events.

After sitting for half an hour in a restaurant, full of smoke and of talk all around me, I feel “nervous” and ready to go. My “nervousness” refers to those properties of my environment. I know this, not only because in past experience I may have discovered the rule that under such conditions I shall feel uneasy after a time. I experience myself directly as disturbed and confused by those surroundings. I might say also that I feel myself necessarily growing “nervous” under the pressure of sticky air and loud, disorderly noise. Actually these conditions can only produce that one effect upon me. That is how I feel them.

Last but not least, I was very much depressed two days ago. At the same time I could not hit upon an adequate presentation of what I conceived to be the subject-matter of this chapter. Were there two separate facts, then, the probable connection of which I might have stated by some indirect method? No need to! When I was trying to solve my problem, I felt my depression as based upon my failure directly. Just such a feeling had to grow out of such a situation because of its properties.

If, in all these examples, I feel how my own attitude is determined by the nature of something before me, in other instances something before me will be experienced quite as naturally as growing out of my attitude.

When I look at Fig. 1 without any special effort, I have two groups of dots before me. But if, for some reason, I become interested in oblique lines, the figure will be transformed into three oblique pairs of dots, for instance, each of which runs like an oblique line from a lower dot to the right to a dot higher up to the left. Suppose that the transformation really occurs; it grows out of my attitude quite as naturally as my anger develops out of a definite event. When I scratch my head or hum a tune simultaneously, I do not feel the slightest connection of these activities with the described transformation of Fig. 1. But the transformation is felt as depending upon that particular attitude directly.

What was the name of that town on the Santa Fé Railroad? There it comes! When I am searching for a name, searching does not occur as one thing apart; nor does the gap of the forgotten name occur as an isolated item among other things—a headache, the noise of the wind, the lamp before me, and so forth. Searching is experienced as directed toward that definite name, hidden as yet, but now, at last, yielding to the stress of my attitude. As it appears, its coming is felt as being achieved by just this little stress of mine. I ask again, Did I learn gradually through numerous experiences that in this particular situation such an attitude will be followed by a name so that now I may venture to guess about their mutual relation? Without previous training, would that noise outdoors be connected with the given attitude as well?

I hold my arm horizontally for a while. Very soon the arm will not remain in that position unless I exert a special effort. In my total field there is, besides this effort, the blue sky, a lark’s song, the aspect of the lifted arm, a smell of moist ground. There is also a curious feeling in the lifted arm, growing more intense as the minutes go by, and, with this feeling, something like a downward pull in the arm. Geometrically, as it were, or logically, my actual experiences allow a large number of different combinations into pairs. My effort may be combined with the lark’s song, the smell, the color of the lifted hand, and the blue of the sky. But my effort is not an isolated something, equally indifferent to all parts of the field. It is experienced as keeping the arm horizontal against that downward pull. The nature of the pull is felt as requiring just such an effort in compensation, and the nature of the effort is experienced as compensating just this pull. If some one tries to describe the situation in terms of indifferent data, each of which has a place, some of which have a direction (but independently of each other), some occurring at one time, and some at another, and all of them having hundreds of mutual “relations” as to place, distance, succession or simultaneity, intensity and so on,—he will not even touch what psychologically is the main feature of the situation.

In discussing a somewhat similar case David Hume emphatically defended the opposite view. I do not know how my arm is lifted, he said, when I wish to raise it. There can be no more than mere succession in time, since I do not know the nature of the physiological mechanism that effects the raising. What a strange argument! And how much opposed to what Hume had promised to furnish as an analysis of pure experience. When we talk about “the arm” in this connection, we have to deal with an experienced thing, not with a physical object and its movements in physical space. Whatever the nature of peripheral innervation may be in Hume’s case, we are dealing with a definite “wish” and a definite experienced movement of our arm. The problem is whether this particular wish is naturally experienced as being as foreign or indifferent to the arm’s felt movement as it is to the seen color of that cloud or the brown of the skin. In haste the great philosopher seems to have skipped over a dangerous point here, unintentionally making use of a simple logical trick, by which, however, he saved his theory for almost two centuries.

In order to make the import of these paragraphs more circumscribed, I shall consider an objection.

One might say after all that those experiences of “depending upon,” “being the natural outcome of,” “being based upon” or of “sustaining against” do not prove that a necessary connection exists in the field. I greatly enjoyed the overture to Tristan und Isolde twenty years ago and, at that time, I might have given exactly the same description of my enjoyment as the direct and evident outgrowth of just that piece of music. What has become of my attitude toward the piece? I am tired of it. At present, I should be rather inclined to find aversion the only possible and natural outcome of hearing the overture. Nor would I doubt for a moment what this aversion refers to or is based upon. The answer to this objection will consist in our saying that all this is absolutely true, but that it does not really constitute an objection. With exactly the same physical situation, or sequence of sound-waves, the same person will feel “pleasure” growing out of his sensory experience to-day, and be altogether disgusted by it only a few days later on. A simple way to achieve that alteration experimentally would be to give our subject the same sequence of sounds three hundred times each day.⁠[75] But we have no right to say that after more than a thousand repetitions the same melodies will be experienced as having quite the same properties they had to begin with. They have changed, no doubt; they have become a musical commonplace, sounding empty and stale. Keep away from these melodies for a few years! Then you may find something more similar to their original nature again, and if, then, you enjoy them once more, your enjoyment will be felt to grow out of them as obviously as when you first listened to them. An attitude is felt as being the natural outcome of actual experience; the objection stated above misinterprets this definition, as though it meant a constant connection between a set of stimuli and the attitude.

For still another reason, music which I enjoyed twenty years ago may not please me to-day, even without the unfortunate influence of frequent repetition. What I call my self has changed its properties considerably in the meantime. Why, then, should the music produce the same effects upon this changed self? Once more I must point out that our feeling of something naturally depending upon something else does not refer to a correlation, or a highly constant “togetherness” as such, stated in terms of the external observation of a great many cases. It refers rather to an evident dynamical dependence as experienced hic et nunc in one actual case. As this flower before me is certainly red, though if I should become color-blind later on, it would be gray, so such a dependence in the total field is real now, independently of what the future will make of it.

From this consideration we may learn something more. The way in which a piece of music affects me now, in contrast to the attitude it produced twenty years ago, has been determined by some change of my self. I should hesitate very much to assert that this change of my self was experienced as the only possible outgrowth of definite conditions, quite as evidently and directly as, at a given time, my attitude toward the piece of music is felt to grow out of its actual properties with natural necessity. Therefore, I did not experience the way in which one attitude instead of another has become the natural outcome of my listening to that piece. Certain conditions must have gradually changed outside the field of my experience; the change in my attitude must somehow depend upon that change of conditions. But I have never felt the former change being brought about by the latter change.

It is an old rule in science that nothing makes certain positive statements more worthy of credit than their author’s frank acknowledgment of negative cases and his attempt to emphasize the contrast himself. I shall be the last to deny that in hundreds of cases we are very far from experiencing how one state of affairs is brought about by others. Let a subject observe a continuous movement for a while and then fixate a face or a pattern. His surprise when he sees the after-image of that movement for the first time in his life will be sufficient as a proof here that the experience of the after-effect is necessarily brought about by certain conditions without the subject being aware of any natural bond between them. Probably, here, the main conditions remain entirely outside the field of direct experience.

Again, after fixating the center of Fig. 8 for a while, many subjects will be greatly surprised when suddenly another, quite different, shape appears before them. We do not directly feel why just this transformation should occur after continuous fixation. We feel it so little that once a physicist, who had been shown such a figure consisting of bright lines in an otherwise dark room, afterwards asked me how, from my position twelve yards off, I had been able to put another figure in the place of the first, so quickly and surprisingly! He did not even suspect that something in his own organism was producing the transformation.

Eventually there cannot be a doubt that even certain emotional attitudes may occur without our feeling their raison d’être directly. As sometimes we suddenly feel that we have caught a cold without knowing where and when, thus some morning we may feel the way an ominous cloud looks, i.e., with a silent anger which does not seem to have an obvious basis in the present field of our experience. Such a cloud of anger, it is often true, will easily find something upon which to discharge itself, and, then, that external something will appear as an adequate object of the anger. Before that time, we cannot do more than guess about the hidden first cause of our angry mood. It may be some unknown climatological condition working upon our organism, or it may be disturbed digestion. However, we do not directly “feel” any of these causes. This example may be regarded as particularly interesting, since it seems to teach us two different lessons: It corroborates the view that, as well as instances in which dynamical context as such is experienced directly and actually, there are other instances in which effects are conspicuous in experience, although experience is blind and deaf as to their determination. The second lesson is that both sorts of determination may be united in one single event, because when, in the attitude of a threatening cloud, we discover something upon which to release the tension, that something will appear and probably be appropriate to the production of an angry reaction. But that we should react so vehemently will be the result of those hidden conditions which had transformed us into an ominous cloud before there was this opportunity for “justified” anger.

I do not see, however, that the fact of hidden determination as observed in some cases is an argument against experienced determination in others. In the case of cholera and plague, germs are found to be the decisive condition of disease. In diabetes this is not the case. Who would deduce an argument against bacteriology from such a “negative” case? Therefore we may accept the same duplicity in our case, too.

But is it not evident that, in spite of our examples, so-called “experienced determination,” in a great many instances, may be a simple product of learning? When, in my mail, the address on one envelope is in a certain handwriting, I feel happy over the discovery; whereas with the finding of some other handwritings, just the contrary is true. We may neglect the graphological and esthetic sides of our reaction, since we know that it is chiefly our acquaintance with the writers which makes one handwriting very pleasant and the other disagreeable. In either case we seem to feel that our attitude is “the natural outcome” of the aspect of the handwriting. Nevertheless, our reaction seems to be one which we have had to learn. The same words and letters would not be felt as “being the natural basis of our reaction,” if we had not become “conditioned” to them. What, then, about that mysterious feeling of natural determination? The answer is simple enough. Those words and letters have become imbued with all the friendly experiences we have had with one person or with all the animosity connected with another. As these persons themselves, when present, directly arouse the corresponding attitude, their handwritings do so now; not because this attitude has become gradually “connected” with the handwriting, but because, saturated with the specific character of those past experiences, the handwriting represents a natural basis for just this attitude, indeed. There is no reason why this determination of attitude by the now apparent properties of something before us, should not occur and be felt directly.

With respect to this question another remark will be to the point. When I am thirsty, I am inclined to think of refreshing drinks. What I am thus directed to is brought into my actual experience by reproduction. That does not matter very much in our present problem. However reproduction may have occurred, once the so-called “idea” of the drink is in the actual field, it is felt to be the natural basis of longing for it, and the craving is experienced as being determined directly by just that sort of “idea” in the present state of the self. The mere circumstance that something has come into our actual field by reproduction does not at all decide what kind of context it may be experienced in when it is there. It will be wise to remember that well, because the overwhelming importance of learning, of habit, of reproduction, has been so constantly emphasized in psychology, that we will almost stop thinking and considering any further problems with respect to a situation in which some influence or participation of past events and of reproduction has been shown. But even if all “parts” of a given situation should be found to owe their actual presence to reproduction, there would still be one problem before us: In what degree do they belong dynamically to each other here and now, in the manner we are discussing in this chapter?

We have come back to what has been called above the layman’s belief. Without knowing anything about the fundamental weight of his conviction he takes it as the simplest matter in the world, that he has such a feeling now “because of” a certain aspect of his actual situation, and that he feels the “because,” too; also, that he lifts his arm with an effort felt as “directed against” a heavy weight and “in spite” of it. I agree with the layman. In the organization of the total field and in thousands of cases, we do experience the live dynamical context determining one state this way and that change another way. Moreover, we feel where they come from and where they go to, in those instances. Above all, we may experience why, issuing from just such an event, thing or attitude, a given effect should be just the one we find growing out of it.

Surprisingly enough, in modern science and most of all in psychology, there is a tendency not only to neglect this simple truth, but even to persecute it, as though it could not be acknowledged from the scientific viewpoint. David Hume has been thought of as the father of all the energetic fight against it. But probably in this great figure of history we should rather see the exponent, the most eminent representative and the best enunciator of an intellectual current which took its origin in Greece or even before, thousands of years ago, arising from some deep need of mankind for clearness.⁠[76]

There is one sort of clearness and simplicity into which our statements and the layman’s belief do not fit very well. That ideal of clarity would be achieved, if the world could be conceived as an enormous number of equal and unequal pieces, related indifferently as neighbors in space and successors in time. That this is a true picture of experience, at least, is silently presupposed at the very outset in Hume’s famous work, so that he does not prove subsequently more than he has already implicitly treated as a settled affair. Since we have noticed that, in a great many cases, we really do not at all feel how something is determined by something else, he had no difficulty in gathering examples appropriate to his point of view; and since he did not see the other cases, or disposed of them as quickly and incorrectly as I have described above, he seemed to have demonstrated the truth of his view beyond all argumentation.

Being neighbors and following each other, indifferent bits of experience will show all possible mutual relations as to space and time, which, however, do not prevent them from being an indifferent aggregate. In addition, there will be an indefinite number of other relations referring to quality, intensity, and so forth. These, however, would also form an indifferent network throughout experience, merely visible to something like a logical eye, but unreal from the viewpoint of experience itself. Laws about natural coexistence and sequence of events? No direct grasp of them is possible in such a world à la Hume! He is said to have been the greatest empiricist of them all. But if he constructs such a world, the plan of which is determined by his need for a special type of intellectual clarity, he might quite as justifiably be called a rationalist.

In his radical empiricism William James laid great stress upon the fact that “the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive, are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves.”⁠[77] This view is an obstacle in our way rather than an aid; neither do we receive any help from James, when he, though attacking atomism in the treatment of experience, clearly fails to recognize natural segregations in the sensory field (Chap. V). “Relations” might be found indifferently between all parts, fractions, or bits of the field, if we search for them. In this respect, and unless more is said, relations will be entirely unfit to make us understand why some definite and particular attitude is experienced as arising “because of” some definite and particular event or thing in the field. The field is by no means experienced as being everywhere full of those dynamical bonds. There are relations, nevertheless, between that same attitude and all the rest of the field.

In some places, it is true, James attacks our problem from another side, as when he writes about our “sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles, and overcoming or being overcome”;⁠[78] also where in his description “the experiencer feels the tendency, the obstacle, the will, the strain, the triumph, or the passive giving up, just as he feels the time, the space, the swiftness or intensity, the movement, the weight and color, the pain and pleasure, the complexity, or whatever remaining characters the situation may involve.”⁠[79] This is something quite unlike an indifferent network of relations throughout the field. The stress is not placed precisely where I have tried to place it, largely because for James “activity” as such was of chief importance, whereas our description centers around the experience of a great many different attitudes as they arise naturally out of the properties of an event before us, or vice versa. Still there is some agreement, at least, about our experiencing directly certain determinations in the total field.⁠[80]

A great deal of purely sensory organization may be called “silent” because, though we experience the result of it as segregated wholes with specific properties, we do not usually feel how this result is dynamically brought about and maintained. In this respect the total field is different; it tells us more about its innermost nature. Here, not only the result is experienced, but also very much of its “why” and “how” is felt in just the actual context. Wherever this is the case we apply the term insight. When I used this term in my treatment of intelligent behavior in apes, I ran the risk of an unfortunate misinterpretation. Since that behavior comprised extraordinarily conspicuous accomplishments which we did not expect to find in animals, insight would be readily misinterpreted as some special and supranatural faculty producing admirable and otherwise inexplicable results. As I used and intended the term, nothing of that sort should be implied in it. To avoid a similar misunderstanding this time, I have introduced the concept here in application to very common and simple facts. It does not mean more than our experience of definite determination in a context, an event or a development of the total field; and in the actual cases there need be nothing like an invention, or a new intelligent achievement, or so forth. A total field would be experienced without insight, if all its several states, wholes, attitudes, etc., were simply given as a pattern, in which none was felt directly to depend upon any other and none to determine any other.

I have repeated several times that, from the viewpoint of common and unsophisticated experience, nothing can be more obvious than just that direct determination. So much so, that in natural life scarcely a single actual total field would be said to lack that characteristic. With respect to this conviction of the layman we have not added more than truisms, indeed. Among learned psychologists, however, there will only be a minority at present who, fully realizing the theoretical importance of this point, are quite ready to accept it. There is a second group, much larger than the first, comprising psychologists, who time and again will talk in a manner involving, presupposing and implying insight as a characteristic of their subjects’ or their own experience. This is done, however, without their being aware of it, and consequently one does not find trace of it in the list of their theoretical concepts. To participate, practically, in the naïve and sound procedure of the layman is not the same thing as to realize what one is doing from a theoretical viewpoint. The less so, since the well-established and socially acknowledged concepts of experimental psychology belong almost completely to the theoretical world of Hume. In a third and last group of psychologists all those scientists may be counted, to whom the creed of Hume or the scientific epoch of the nineteenth century seems to be the final stage of theoretical advance, any essential change or development thereof being forbidden. What has been described in the last paragraphs is mysticism in their eyes. They would probably find no difficulty in asserting that, riding in a bus, we might refer actual anger to the friendly face of a beautiful girl before us just as well as to the man who has at that moment chosen our feet as a basis for the considerable weight of his whole body. Or, more correctly, they would not acknowledge any experience of natural reference at all, since what “connections” there are, are all due to indirect learning or conditioning. Consequently, they never mean an actual “reference to”; they mean merely a “coming together” or a “following each other.” There is no doubt that true behaviorists belong to this third class. But usually they decline to enlist in any of the parties; because our problem still seems to remain entirely in the field of direct experience, of which they refuse to take any account.

The problem can be readily transformed, however, into a matter of brain physiology. At the very outset (Chap. II) it was proposed to use direct experience as an indicator of those physiological processes which, occurring between the realm of outer conditions and the overt behavior of the organism, are not directly observable at the present time.

In that field of the brain the processes of which underlie our experienced field, the context of states and events was said to be a true picture of direct experience. To the actual order of the experienced field there corresponds the actual order of nervous processes, in each case. When one thing appears as a segregated whole in experience, a corresponding, detached whole exists in nervous process, and so forth. Mere continuity and consistency of theory has obliged us to acknowledge then, that, in some part of the same physiological field those processes must occur which, whether they be sensory or not, underlie the self, its actual states, properties and attitudes. As in experience I am surrounded by the things and events of my environment, so the processes corresponding to my self will be in the midst of a corresponding environment, consisting of sensory processes and so forth, in the brain field. If, now, there is experience not only of things and events, of my states and attitudes, all occurring indifferently by themselves, but also of this actual attitude being the direct outcome of that feature of the environment, or of this state in my surroundings being determined by that actual attitude of mine, there seems to be only one way to conceive the underlying physiological context. Where, in dynamical determination, the properties of one part of a field depend directly upon the actual nature of some other particular part, those properties do not exist indifferently as such; they originate and they are maintained by the stress of just those particular forces which issue from the determining part, according to its actual nature. Assuming that the same is true in the brain field which is true in a physical field, the properties of the actual physiological self⁠[81] will change and may be kept changed a while, under the stress of some particular process in the same field, corresponding to an essential thing or event in the experienced environment. The changed state of the self does not exist independently; it is produced and maintained by something definite, the actual nature of which expresses itself in just this dynamical influence. If, therefore, this particular dynamical context is taken to be the physiological fact underlying our experience of direct determination of attitude, no mystery remains in our description of common experience.

To make this point more clear, the situation in one of our concrete examples could be thus stated. When, on a hot day I enjoy a cool drink, my enjoyment is felt to refer to, or to be based upon, the properties of the drink and my thirst, but not to the spider on the wall, nor to the size of a chair, nor to thousands of other things. In the brain-field, more particularly in that part of it which corresponds to the self, there is a special process B, felt as thirst in experience. Now when I begin to drink, another process A, corresponding to experienced coolness and taste, develops in the same region of the brain-field (experienced interior of the mouth) where until now there was only the process of “thirst.” In terms of the theory of insight and of direct physiological determination, A begins at once to exert an influence upon B, the influence depending upon the concrete properties of A and those of the actually existing state B. The change, which is produced, is felt as pleasure (and, concomitantly, decreasing thirst). And this change I assume to be determined by A no less directly than is the rising temperature of a black surface determined by the rays of light falling upon it or the “attitude” of a dwindling fire by a fresh supply of oxygen. From our viewpoint we do not have separate bits in experience where we have a functional context in the physiological total field, one part of which reacts directly to the definite and particular properties of another. Therefore, in our example, we cannot experience enjoyment as something apart, among a pattern of hundreds of other things. Enjoyment has to be felt as “referring to” and as referring to something definite, the process of which determines the process of enjoyment.

So far, instead of mystery, the most elementary concepts of physics are introduced into our view of the total physiological field. There is not the slightest reason why we should not experience determination as such; nor is there any reason why, in concrete cases, we should not feel just what our actual state or attitude is based upon; in one word, there is no reason why insight should not be an essential characteristic of much experience in the total field. Of course, what has been said about the determination of the self by parts of the environment, may be applied to the opposite case at once, in which an actual attitude of ours is felt directly as producing or as maintaining a change in our surroundings. Here, the influencing and the influenced have only changed places, both physiologically and in experience.

Although the layman’s belief is thoroughly justified by such a view, there is strict contradiction between it and the opinion now prevailing in scientific psychology. The contrast between machine theory and dynamical theory becomes clear once more. Neither in the usual scheme of a reflex, nor in that of a conditioned reflex, nor even in any attempt to explain association (in the older form of that concept), will the properties of one particular process determine directly the nature of another. An influence always remains a matter of some intermediate “paths of optimal conduction,” the particular properties of a first process A being something apart, transmission of “nervous energy” along those paths another separate event, and the effect upon a later process B, still a third thing, determined by the arrival of that indifferent “nervous energy.” Therefore, if another path had been a better conductor, a different realm or process C, instead of B, would have been changed by the sudden impulse from without; in any case, the change of B into a B¹ or of C into a C¹ would have been independent of the concrete properties of A. In terms of such a theory A will produce B¹ only because there is that one-way street between them. By some change in nervous connections a thirsty man might be roused into a fit of anger at the experience of the coolness and the taste of a fresh drink!

The objection will perhaps be raised that, excluding certain radical behaviorists, no one has explicitly presented such an absurd theory of mental life. I shall not give much weight to this historical question, because one thing is much more important: Why do we not formulate the positive theory of direct dynamical determination in the total field? Why do we not expressly acknowledge insight as one of the most fundamental and common facts of mental life, and, therefore, as fundamental theoretically? Why do we discuss as many psychological problems as we possibly can as though the machine concepts were the only ones available or, at least, the best ones from the viewpoint of natural science? I do no more than derive quite frankly the consequences of such a scientific situation. In doing so, I have but one aim. We must advance from an implicit and almost unwitting presupposition of insight and direct dynamical determination, which, expressed in careless psychological terminology, cannot give rise to concrete consequences, to a clear realization of the essential point. This I believe to be the contrast between the indirect and indifferent connections of processes in machine theory and the directly adequate determination of one process by another in the dynamical theory of the brain field.

In the last pages it was my original intention to talk about insight as occurring only in an established total field, in which an actually existing attitude is felt to be the outcome of some definite fact in the environment, or vice versa. I have not been able, however, to restrict the discussion to such a settled case, despite my intentions. And nothing could be more characteristic of our problem than is this failure, because, in order to produce a somewhat accurate description, we must necessarily go beyond the actual state of the total field and take account of a certain new feature intrinsic to some of our concrete examples.

In more than one example it was not so much an existing state of the self which we felt to be determined directly by the properties of a given fact before us, but a change of the self as growing out of something particular, just appearing in the field. Sudden fright at an unexpected event of a certain sort is an instance of this sort of dynamical determination. Again, when in climbing a mountain we reach a dangerous place, fear may quickly grow out of the observation of the lie of the land where we must take the next three steps. After these steps have been successfully accomplished, a feeling of relief will develop out of the situation, no less directly.

Nevertheless there will sometimes be more of a development in such a dynamical state of the total field. When I described my feeling in a restaurant, full of smoke and full of talk, “nervousness,” or uneasiness, was not the only thing I had to report about myself. I had to add that I felt very eager to go. This means that, beside my experiencing uneasiness as the natural effect directly determined by the environment, I felt a tendency in my self to move away from it. Again, this tendency was not experienced as something arising, as such, without reference to definite other parts of the total field; on the contrary it was felt to grow directly out of certain properties of the situation and my uneasiness. As a layman I would say that I wanted to go because of my uneasiness in this particular situation, and as a psychologist I shall admit that the layman’s expression is absolutely correct, because it corresponds once more to the fact that there is insight into the direct determination of that tendency toward a definite sort of activity.

Our life is full of trivial instances of this kind and, occasionally, the most important and decisive impulses toward definite forms of conduct arise directly out of given conditions in the same way. And generally we experience the how and the why of such experience.

I am sitting in full sunlight quite contentedly. After a while I feel too hot; at the same time a tendency to move away from where I am sitting, arises. A shadowy place near by seems pleasant; the impulse away from the sunlight becomes at once a tendency toward the shadow, and as at first the properties of one place made me inclined to move away from it, the properties of another now arouse an impulse of approach. In both cases there is insight, since we feel how in the first case one tendency grows directly out of the nature of one situation, and in the second how some other part of the field, due to its properties, quite as naturally determines another impulse. From an earlier remark the reader will remember that it does not at all matter for our present problem whether the relevant properties of the seen shadow are known to us by previous learning or some other way.⁠[82]

The same description may usually be given of fright. When a sudden event is felt as producing fright in me, I shall have to add at once, in a correct description, that with the fright there arose a vehement impulse to move away from the locus of that event. Again, this tendency immediately to increase the distance between that place and myself is experienced as being the direct outcome of the startling occurrence quite as much as the fright itself is felt as its direct result. We noticed before how, in Watson’s description of a child’s behavior, the overt behavior of withdrawing from the uncanny object may be regarded in the sensory experience of the onlooker, as a visible picture of the child’s own total field. Does any one believe that the child feels a fear of the object, on the one hand, and an impulse to move away, on the other, as independent experiences? Or that the child might just as well feel a tendency toward embracing or swallowing the object, during his fear? As Watson has shown in this case, the object has become “dangerous” through previous learning. This does not prove, however, that between the danger itself, the fear and the withdrawal, there is not more than indirect connections.

As an impulse of withdrawal arises directly out of certain given situations, so the opposite tendency belongs as naturally to other situations. I have mentioned above the case of a shadow attracting, as it were, a person who has had more than enough of the sun. We all know that similar instances are more frequent in our life than trees in a wood. The child, observed objectively as reaching for an animal’s head in Watson’s experiment, feels attracted towards that interesting object, if we are willing to grant him any experience at all. From our own total field we are well acquainted with the fact that such a tendency appears to us as being a natural characteristic of exactly such a situation and of a great many similar ones. In Spain, after a particularly brilliant achievement of the toreador, the admiration of the crowd often drives them so intensely in their hero’s direction, that, unable to enter the arena themselves, they hang over the balustrades, reaching toward him as far as possible; the stress will sometimes be so great that hats, handkerchiefs, and so on, are thrown down in the direction of the dominating impulse. Did these people learn gradually by some process of conditioning to connect an approach-tendency with admiration, as though a tendency toward frowning or shaking the left leg might have been, if conditioned, equally well “connected” with admiration? I cannot help thinking sometimes that whether we are introspectionists, behaviorists or whatever else, the chief dividing line among contemporary psychologists would separate those who acknowledge obvious, direct determination as it appears in common experience from those who can only admit indirect “connections.”

As a last example I choose a simple, practical event: for some purpose I wish to break a wooden board. I press against it and, feeling my effort directed against the felt resistance of the board, I see and feel the board yielding in the same direction. Is it true that, as Hume would have us say, this yielding of the board in my experience does not develop more naturally out of the direction of my effort than would, for instance, a change of the board’s color or a darkening of the sun, under the same circumstances? Personally, I feel the board yielding just in the direction of my effort and not otherwise, almost as naturally as I feel myself yielding in a definite direction, if a friend of mine and I measure our strength by pressing hard against each other’s shoulders, and I lose the battle. However that may be, if once the board begins to yield to my effort, I immediately feel a tendency toward going on or, rather, increasing the pressure as a direct outcome of that change in the board’s resistance. And, indeed, I really do increase my effort.

What is the common content of these examples? That there is more than mere succession in the development of our attitudes as they refer to actual objects in our field! Things might occur in human experience in this way: First, I feel uneasy near a hot radiator, for instance; then, as something apart and as an altogether separate bit of experience, I feel an impulse away from the radiator, and, eventually, as a third independent feeling, I find myself moving in some direction which, geometrically, would increase the distance between that object and me. It is almost impossible to talk about these three experiences in a manner which would exclude any natural context between them as radically as, in terms of the viewpoint I wish here to exhibit, it ought to be excluded. As we read the words, the context of insight is built up at once, spontaneously. What is meant will become more apparent if again I say that, from such a viewpoint, any event whatsoever might follow the first instead of the second, and similarly with the relation between the second and the third. In experience the real development is supposed to have no better “connection,” originally, than any other sequence would have. The first experience does not require the second, nor the second the third!

Again we return to machine theory. Normally, one might say, the development will consist of just those three events, indeed. Feeling hot, feeling a tendency toward moving and moving in a direction which, geometrically, coincides with the direction of that tendency. Why do just that second and that third event follow the first? One possibility: because there is something like an original reflex, a well-established path in the nervous system conducting from the place of the first process to the place of the second, and a number of similar paths leading from this second place to the centers controlling the particular movement of our feet in the certain direction. In such a theory of the sequence, the result would be practical enough from the viewpoint of an observer, and even the subject himself might feel satisfied at the end of the series, but that would be all. If, in the same situation (heat), pinching his left thumb between the fingers of the right hand occurred, followed by his moving in a certain direction and, then, by his feeling well, the subject would understand the sequence quite as much as or, better, quite as little as, when he sees a natural context in the real development. Mere connections between parts of the nervous system enforce the sequence, the properties of A as such do not take part in the determination of B, and those of B are altogether innocent of C’s succession. Such a production of the sequence cannot produce in experience more than a series of feelings indifferent to each other. There cannot be insight.

Suppose that no reflexes are provided in this case; what theoretical explanation can we give, then, of the right succession? The second possibility is learning or habit. Many different things originally happened in my experience when I felt very hot. Among them, occasionally, there were impulses toward moving. Again, among these now and then there was one accidental impulse, the direction of which was away from the radiator, geometrically. (Not for the subject, however, who might just as well define this direction as northwest, for instance!) After these few occasions another series of events followed in a haphazard fashion, all of them equally indifferent to the foregoing. But sometimes real motion in the stated direction, and the experience of it, would be the next events and, finally, an experience of feeling satisfied. However it came to pass in the first instance, this one sequence, after it has fortunately happened to occur frequently enough, becomes a well-established chain of events, in short, a habit. Thereafter it operates as soon as our subject feels hot enough. But its operation is no more immediate or natural than all those other possible combinations as such would have been. The subject feels satisfied at the end of the sequence. But if, after the feeling of heat, counting from one to twenty-six had brought about this same feeling of relief, and if this sequence had been well associated, he would not experience a less natural or satisfying development than he really does in the case of the habit of withdrawal. No one development is more natural than any other; without exception all sequences are merely sequences, and nothing else. It is only by some fortunate mechanism that those sequences are “stamped in” as a habit, the end of which is practical success. The subject cannot feel in experience more than an indifferent series of events since, in the associated series, the properties of heat do not have any influence upon the “right” tendency as the next event, and the experience of the “right” movement will be the third event, independently of the nature of that tendency. Synapses have become less resistant between the localities of those processes; the connecting fibers have become more readily conductive. But the connections in the nervous system have had nothing to do with the properties of the heat or with the direction of that tendency away from the radiator or with the direction of the movement itself. The neural factors were merely frequency of repetition, recency, and success in a purely external sense of the word, or any other principle independent of the concrete properties of heat, tendency and movement in their mutual relations with one another.

And instinct? I know only two ways to give this term a somewhat concrete meaning as an explanation of real development in experience and in behavior. Often the concept means the same thing as “a chain of reflexes,” with or without some adornments in the guise of habit formation. In this case what has already been said about machine theory, about habit or conditioning as the building up of a secondary machine, applies immediately to instinct. Two machine theories of development, knit together in one application, can lead only to a more complicated theory of essentially the same type. Instinct is sometimes regarded as a supranatural process, accomplishing those practically adequate sequences of behavior which we are not able to explain otherwise in a sensible manner. In this form the concept is so little suited to my scientific taste that I should like to be excused from further discussion of it.

And then? Surprisingly enough, apart from these explanations of behavior, we do not seem to recognize other than merely “random” sequences in psychology. Where neither an inherited nor an acquired machine determines the sequence of events, our theoretical formulations, not accustomed to dynamical considerations, will regard chance as ruling whatever may happen to occur. So much we have already seen in Chapter IV. But a third possibility of orderly determination was found there, which we shall now discuss in its application to the total field.

After what has been said about the states of the self as depending upon the properties of its environment, felt uneasiness (felt as resulting from too much heat on one side of the body) will have a corresponding process in the underlying brain-field, which will be determined directly by that other process underlying the experience of an excess of heat on one side. But the tendency to move away from the heat is felt as developing in this situation, just as directly as the uneasiness is. Consequently we must again draw the same physiological conclusion: if some process underlying a certain sensory experience directly causes another process underlying dislike and uneasiness in the self, a tendency toward increasing the distance between the place of the first and the place of the self must develop just as directly at the same time. As the tendency is felt to grow out of the nature of that sensory experience, and of the experience of uneasiness, the tendency must be physiologically determined by the concrete properties of the corresponding processes. In dynamics such a tendency toward increasing the distance between two things or events is called a field of force. We may say, then, that there is in the brain-field a field of force tending to increase the distance between the place of the radiator and the place of the self. If, now, the subject overtly moves in that direction, what happens in the brain-field? As the distance is enlarged objectively, exactly the same occurs in the brain-field,—the process corresponding to the self moving away from the processes of the radiator and of the heat. The subject will feel himself moving in precisely the same direction which was felt one moment before as the direction of a tendency to movement; and, physiologically, the increase of distance in the brain-field will correspond exactly to the stress which, as a field of force, was tending in that same direction. Therefore, physiologically, as well as in experience, what happens will be no more than the natural consequence, the real development, or the evolution of something which, in germ, was already implicitly contained in the tendency.

So we are led to a more complete application of the theory of direct dynamical determination. There is no mere sequence of indifferent events, connected indirectly. Each phase of what happens grows out of its predecessors, depending upon their concrete nature. And the subject, whose experiences are an expression of this one developing context in the brain-field, will experience the development, along with its “referring to,” “depending upon,” “away from” and so forth—that is, with insight.

One remark is needed here with regard to the overt movement of the organism in its relation to a field of force, existing between the self and some part of its environment, in the brain-field. We know that during the first months a child is not able to move his hands, in accordance with the interest which an object has aroused in his sensory field. This fact may be interpreted in two different ways: (1) Either there is no natural determination of overt movement by definite fields of force in the brain. In this case all “connections” between the two would have to be learned. (2) Or the hand does not yet move in the direction of actual interest for some other reason, whereas when that unknown obstacle is removed a little later by organic development, the general direction of the clumsy movements depends directly upon actual fields of force in the brain. The astonishingly early coördination of eye-movements would make me inclined to consider the second hypothesis no less seriously than the first. However, the theory of direct determination does not depend upon this choice. Even if learning should be the only way in which movements of the hand or of any other parts of the body become connected with the distribution of forces in the brain-field, the right movement will still be marked out by more than the final success it achieves. As soon as, partially or entirely, the direction of an overt movement coincides with the actually existing nervous field of force, there will be a relaxation of tension or stress. Therefore, any beginning in the right direction will be felt as being in the right line. Later on, when coördination of movement is complete, familiar overt movements will always go in the right direction; and they will be felt as fitting into the dynamics of the situation, because, in the brain-field, they produce the release of previously existing tension.

In order to show how the fundamental motors of behavior can bring about more complicated conduct through direct determination, I shall conclude with the analysis of an observation made on an ape several years ago.

Outside the animal’s cage a banana is placed on the ground, beyond the reach of his arm. In a similar situation some days before the ape had used a stick as an instrument for the first time. He finds a stick to-day, too, but it is a rough thing. A branch projects from the side of the stick, near the ape’s hand. At first this branch does not operate as an obstacle because, when he reaches for the fruit, the ape holds his instrument accidentally in such a position that the branch is parallel to the bars of the cage and does not touch them. Presently however, in order to change his place with regard to the fruit, the ape pulls the stick back into the cage. When he reaches for the fruit again, the branch hits a bar and the stick does not move in the direction of the fruit. The animal tries to overcome the difficulty by pushing hard and crudely a few times. Suddenly, however, and just after pressing forward with all his force, he pulls the stick back in the cage and bites the branch with the ferocity of anger. It does not matter for our purposes whether or not this new conduct was successful. But how did it come about at all? An explanation may be given in terms of brain-physiology or from the viewpoint of experience. Though I do not think that the experience of animals is a matter of great intrinsic interest for us, I shall treat the case in terms of experience, since it would be more difficult to understand the meaning concretely if I made the neurological analysis. When the ape is first directed completely toward the fruit, his reaching for it is determined directly in the manner we have described. To begin with, the obstacle in his way directly produces an increased effort in the same direction. But the ape can scarcely push against the bar of his cage without localizing the place of the obstacle after a while by touch and, perhaps, by vision. He does not feel the obstacle in the direction of his main effort; he feels it in the locality of the branch. When an obstacle is experienced in our way we become angry by immediate determination, and our anger is an attitude directed toward or against the obstacle. Consequently, after the main object, the banana, has determined the primary direction, the felt obstacle will make the ape’s direction bend toward the branch, and since the tendency directly determined by anger is attack or destruction, the ape will begin to destroy the obstacle.

I do not know whether this is a completely satisfactory description of the whole process. When he attacks the branch, the ape, though actually angry, is probably still determined by his main tendency at the same time. And this would be required. Otherwise the whole development would become a sequence of events, each occurring in direct determination, i.e., with insight, but not to be regarded as members of one single development occurring in one given situation. Here, however, we reach the field of intelligence proper, which I have excluded from the program of these chapters.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

W. Benary: Psychol. Forsch. 2. 1922.

K. Duncker: The Pedag. Sem. 23. 1926.

Erismann: Die Eigenart des Geistigen. 1923.

K. Jaspers: Psychopathologie. 1921.

K. Koffka: The Growth of the Mind. 1924.

K. Koffka: Psychol. Forsch. 9. 1927.

W. Köhler: Mentality of Apes. 1925.

W. Köhler: Die Methoden der Psychologischen Forschung an Affen. 1922 (cf. Chap. II).

W. Köhler: Arch. f. Entw. Mech. 1927.

K. Lewin: Vorsatz, Wille und Bedürfnis. 1927.

M. Wertheimer: Schlussprozesse im produktiven Denken. 1920.

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