Fact and Fable in Psychology

Joseph Jastrow

Jan 1900 · Houghton, Mifflin and Company

About this ebook

"The present collection of essays is offered as a contribution towards the realization of a sounder interest in and a more intimate appreciation of certain problems upon which psychology has an authoritative charge to make to the public jury ... to show that the sound and profitable interest in mental life is in the usual and normal, and that the resolute pursuit of this interest necessarily results in bringing the apparently irregular phenomena of the mental world within the field of illumination of the more familiar and the law-abiding. They further aim to illustrate that misconceptions in psychology, as in other realms, are as often the result of bad logic as of defective observation, and that both are apt to be called into being by inherent mental prepossessions. Some of the essays are more especially occupied with an analysis of the defective logic which lends plausibility to and induces credence in certain beliefs; others bring forward contributions to an understanding of phenomena about which misconception is likely to arise; still others are presented as psychological investigations which, it is believed, command a somewhat general interest"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).