Dear Tipsters,
I wonder what happened to the iceberg project that a number of Tipsters were
working on a few years ago?
Sincerely,
Stuart
___________________________________________________________________________
"Floreat Labore"
[cid:[email protected]]
"Recti cultus pectora roborant"
Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402
Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661
Bishop's University,
2600 rue College,
Sherbrooke,
Québec J1M 1Z7,
Canada.
E-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> (or
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>)
Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page:
http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy<blocked::http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy>
Floreat Labore"
[cid:[email protected]]
[cid:[email protected]]
___________________________________________________________________________
From: Beth Benoit [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: February 9, 2015 10:11 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: Re: [tips] Icebergs redux
Great sleuthing, Sherlock! I'm going to include that in future lectures. I
always slip in the point that the iceberg was probably not Freud's idea, and I
also include the tidbit about G. Stanley Hall hosting Freud's only American
visit when he spoke at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, since most
of my students are familiar with Clark - Worcester is "in the neighborhood"
when you live in New England. Now I have another interesting bit. Thanks!
Beth Benoit
Plymouth State University
Plymouth NH
On Mon, Feb 9, 2015 at 9:57 AM, Christopher Green
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear TIPSters,
Many times the question of the origin of the iceberg metaphor for the
relationship between the conscious and unconscious minds has come up on this
list. It is generally agreed that, although it is often used in textbooks to
explicate Freud’s theory of the unconscious, it was not used by Freud himself.
Usually, someone finds the vaguely similar reference to icebergs in the work of
Fechner, and suggests that this must be the source f the metaphor.
I was just reading through an 1898 article by G. Stanley Hall on the
development of the sense of self, and I ran across the following passage:
The mistake of ego-theorists is akin to that of those who thought icebergs were
best studied from above the surface and were moved by winds, when in fact about
nine-tenths of their mass is submerged, and they follow the deeper and more
constant oceanic currents, often in the teeth of gales, vitiating all the old
aerodynamic equations (p. 393).
Considering that Hall was the man who (11 years later) would host Freud (and
Jung) in America, and that he was one of the early American promoters of
psychoanalysis (translating Freud’s “Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis,”
and publishing it in his own American Journal of Psychology (before it was
republished in book-form), it seem not impossible, that the association of the
iceberg with the structure of (un)consciousness that we now find associated
with Freud comes, originally, from Hall.
The full citation is:
G. Stanley Hall (1898). Some aspects of the early sense of self. American
Journal of Psychology, 9, 351-395.
I have included the passage above in its original longer context below.
Chris
…..
Christopher D Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
………………………………...
When we are told that nothing but the soul can mirror it-self, that
self-consciousness is the Bible of the psychologist, I reply that only a part
of the soul is therein revealed; that personality has far deeper roots in
unconsciousness; that the testimony of consciousness, wherein only a part of
the soul content knows another part, can not express the most impor-tant
elements; that all the processes in it are land-locked, as in an inland sea,
far from the great ocean of life and mind, because thought must at best imitate
sense, however dimly and remotely, and that consciousness is "not the creator
or bearer of the ego-synthesis, but only one form of its expression." Even if
we had a complete history of the consciousness of every member of the race, it
would be a very incom-plete expression of the human soul, not only because
con-sciousness is yet in its babyhood, and the best things are not revealed in
it yet, but because from its very nature they never can be. We have sought the
real ego in the intellect. It is not there, nor yet in the will, which is a far
better expression of it than thought. Its nucleus is below the threshold of
consciousness. The mistake of ego-theorists is akin to that of those who
thought icebergs were best studied from above the surface and were moved by
winds, when in fact about nine-tenths of their mass is submerged, and they
follow the deeper and more constant oceanic currents, often in the teeth of
gales, vitiating all the old aerodynamic equations. We must, therefore, without
neglecting these older oracles, turn to a different source for real knowledge
of the real self, viz.: the objective study of every phase and every growing
stage of the psyche and of the soma in animals, savages, and children. Soul is
vastly larger than consciousness, and the highest powers are those that spring
from roots that start deepest down in the scale of life. Consciousness is as
differ-ent from mind as froth is from beer, and the syllabub of some of its
exploiters and "promotors" suggests the mediaeval barber's apprenticeship,
which ended when the tyro could make two tierces of foam from two ounces of
soap. Perhaps the excuse of some philosophic apprentices, were it as naive,
would not be unlike that of the Boston tapster, who, when remonstrated with by
his customers for selling so little beer and so much froth, replied that the
better the beer the more it foamed, and also that the profit was in the froth.
Hence child study, because of these limitations of intro-spection, and even of
consciousness, and because the real deeper self can confessedly never be thus
known, turns to more purely objective methods. It is a homely term, and
psychogenesis, paidology, or some others might have been more academic, but it
represents a movement so fundamental that it was necessary to appeal to the
larger constituency of virgin minds, who knew none of the prejudices so
inveterate in philosophic schools and sects, and to utilize the deep instinct
of parental love which has created all education sys-tems and institutions. In
doing this education and philosophy have both gone back to re-examine the
foundations from which they sprang; have turned to first principles and to
plain common sense as the ultimate court of appeal, and sought to reaffirm the
practical obligations of these studies and to meet some of the crying needs for
a philosophy that shall do for our land and age what the great philosophers of
other periods have done for theirs. Recha was rescued from a fire by a stranger
in white who vanished, and her gratitude idealized her saviour till she thought
she owed her life to an angel, and her mystic, contemplative mind elaborated a
cult of worship which gradually absorbed her life almost to the point of mental
alienation, when suddenly came the announcement that a man, A. B., who had
snatched her from the flame, was dying for a woman's ministration. Her
illusions vanished, and she found sanity, and he was restored by her to life,
and a career of philanthropy. Philosophy was to Plato a quest of eternal
foundations,when a decaying state and a sophistic culture seemed to threaten
general dissolution. Later it wrought old cults to unity and opened the way for
Christianity, and still later gave it an organ. It gave science its methods and
instruments, unified the Teutonic spirit, and expressed the English induction
and utilitarianism, and in this country it laid down the methods of church,
state, school and college. Latterly, however, we have been almost playing with
philosophy and fascinated by not only unfruitful but un-solvable problems, have
striven to be critical and polemic, brilliant and literary, gone astray in
technicalities and de-tails, revived problems once vital, but now dead, because
no longer practical in the high moral sense; rendered a rather doubtful and
uncertain service to religion and plain right liv-ing, and above all
hypostatized to theoretical regions the agencies that were meant to save men
from passion, fill them with enthusiasm for the ideal, purge their souls from
faction, jealousy, superstition and selfishness, and bring consecration to the
vocation of leading lives devoted to the highest service. With regard to the
self, indeed we have lapsed almost to the standpoint of Condillac, who said:
"When I smell a rose, e. g., this sensation of smell is my entire ego."
Teachers of philosophy, now called, like Recha, to more serviceable work, are
responding as she did, and the results already seen are a new sense of the need
of these chairs, despite the many rival claimants for scholastic time and
money, the better ministration to troubled adolescent needs, the decline of
epistemological and simply historical, and the increase of neurological and
ethical teaching, the aid to impending religious and social transformation, and
the better development of children and youth to the fullest maturity of mind
and body. This is the best and highest test of home, school, church, state and
civilization itself, and the basis of the only true philosophy, not only of
education, but of history.
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To unsubscribe click here:
http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13105.b9b37cdd198e940b73969ea6ba7aaf72&n=T&l=tips&o=41959
(It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken)
or send a blank email to
leave-41959-13105.b9b37cdd198e940b73969ea6ba7aa...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-41959-13105.b9b37cdd198e940b73969ea6ba7aa...@fsulist.frostburg.edu>
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as:
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
To unsubscribe click here:
http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13510.2cc18398df2e6692fffc29a610cb72e3&n=T&l=tips&o=41960
(It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken)
or send a blank email to
leave-41960-13510.2cc18398df2e6692fffc29a610cb7...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-41960-13510.2cc18398df2e6692fffc29a610cb7...@fsulist.frostburg.edu>
---
You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected].
To unsubscribe click here:
http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=41961
or send a blank email to
leave-41961-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
