Excerpt from Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes In a course of lectures on the elementary psychology of Feeling and Attention, published last year, I remarked that "the system of psychology rests upon a threefold foundation: the doctrine of sensation and image, the elementary doctrine of feeling, and the doctrine of attention." This statement, which formed the basis of my whole discussion, was promptly challenged by reviewers. I was misled, they affirmed, by a sensationalistic bias; I should have taken account of current experimental work upon the thought-processes; I had no right to assume that all intellection is imaginal in character. I could not but acknowledge the essential justice of this criticism, although I could not either accept my critics' point of view. I was, indeed, engaged in writing a brief defence of psychological sensationalism, when I received an invitation to deliver a series of lectures at the University of Illinois. Here was an opportunity, of which I gladly availed myself, to treat in some little detail of the recent experimental contributions to the psychology of thought. The present volume is the result. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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The evolution of cognitive psychology, traced from the beginnings of a rigorous experimental psychology at the end of the nineteenth century to the "cognitive revolution" at the end of the twentieth, and the social and cultural contexts of its theoretical developments. Modern psychology began with the adoption of experimental methods at the end of the nineteenth century: Wilhelm Wundt established the first formal laboratory in 1879; universities created independent chairs in psychology shortly thereafter; and William James published the landmark work Principles of Psychology in 1890. In A History of Modern Experimental Psychology, George Mandler traces the evolution of modern experimental and theoretical psychology from these beginnings to the "cognitive revolution" of the late twentieth century. Throughout, he emphasizes the social and cultural context, showing how different theoretical developments reflect the characteristics and values of the society in which they occurred. Thus, Gestalt psychology can be seen to mirror the changes in visual and intellectual culture at the turn of the century, behaviorism to embody the parochial and puritanical concerns of early twentieth-century America, and contemporary cognitive psychology as a product of the postwar revolution in information and communication. After discussing the meaning and history of the concept of mind, Mandler treats the history of the psychology of thought and memory from the late nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth, exploring, among other topics, the discovery of the unconscious, the destruction of psychology in Germany in the 1930s, and the relocation of the field's "center of gravity" to the United States. He then examines a more neglected part of the history of psychology—the emergence of a new and robust cognitive psychology under the umbrella of cognitive science.