American PsychiatryOne Hundred Years of American PsychiatryReview by: M. F. Ashley MontaguThe Scientific Monthly, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Aug., 1944), p. 162Published by: American Association for the Advancement of ScienceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/18411 .

Accessed: 02/05/2014 05:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to The Scientific Monthly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.132.123.28 on Fri, 2 May 2014 05:14:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

162 THE SCIENTIFIC MONTHLY

function of habit strength." Drive itself is a logical construct ". . . since it cannot be observed directly any more than can effective habit strength" (p. 390). Drive stimuli be- come integrally associated with the habit involved through conditioning to the reaction which is associated with reduction of a need.

The concept of "behavioral oscillation" is introduced to account for the failure of eff ec- tive reaction potential to function fully in the evocation of action. Oscillation, or the variability of response from moment to moment in the presence of a constant stimu- lus situation seems to distribute itself in the form of a Gaussian curve. This little-under- stood physiological process ". . . is in a large measure responsible for the fact that the social sciences must pool many observa- tions before ordinary empirical laws become manifest. Thus natural laws in the social sciences must always be based on statistical indices of one kind or another" (p. 393). Is this not also true of the physical sciences? Behavioral oscillation ". . . has doubtless appreciably retarded the development of the behavior sciences" (p. 393). Apparently complexity, after all, must share honors with lack of objectivity in retarding the growth of these sciences.

Hull's prophetic credo hurls a ringing de- fiance against the decadent doctrines of Emergentism, Intuitionism, and similar de- featist theories. "Progress in this new era will consist in the laborious writing, one by one, of hundreds of equations; in the experi- mental determination, one by one, of hun- dreds of empirical constants contained in the equations . . . in the ruthless discard or revision of once promising principles or con- cepts which have failed wholly or in part to meet the test of empirical validation."

This book is more than a technical discus- sion and derivation of basic principles. It represents a bold and imaginative affirmation of faith in scientific method when the flame

of that faith is flickering in the winds of the world holocaust. For intellectual inspiration and inspiration in seminars on scientific method and psychology it will have few equals.-PRED BROWN.

AMERICAN PSYCHIATRY One Hundred Years of Amnerican Psychiatry. Pub-

lished for the American Psychiatric Association. Il- lustrated. xxiv + 649 pp. $6.00. 1944. Columbia University Press.

THIS handsomely produced volume marks the centennial of the American Psychiatric Association, the oldest national medical or- ganization in America. Thirteen contribu- tors, between them, deal with such subjects as the development of psychiatry from colonial days to the foundation of the Asso- ciation, psychiatry'in Europe at the middle of the 19th century, the founding and found- ers'of the Association, the history of Ameri- can mental hospitals, psychiatric research in America, American psychiatric literature, the history of psychiatric therapies, the his- tory of mental hygiene, military psychiatry in the Civil War and first and second World Wars, psychology in relation to psychiatry, American psychiatry as a specialty, legal aspects of psychiatry, and psychiatry and an- thropology. These papers are most attrac- tively written, and contain a remarkable amount of useful information interestingly presented. The book is well illustrated and contains an excellent index.

American psychiatry may well be proud of its hundred years of achievement, and in keeping with the high standards of that achievement the present volume forms a fit- ting centennial celebration of that event. The reviewer enjoyed the privilege of attend- ing the centenary meetings of the American Psychiatric Association held in Philadelphia in May, 1944, and he can testify not only to the success of that meeting but also to the glowing health of psychiatry as a branch of medicine.-M. P. ASHLEY MONTAGU.

This content downloaded from 130.132.123.28 on Fri, 2 May 2014 05:14:25 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions