Remembering and Forgetting

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REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING BY T. H. PEAR.. M. A., B. Sc. PROFESSOR OP PSYCHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OP MANCHESTER WITH NINE DIAGRAMS METHUEN m CO. LTD. 36 ESSEX STREET W. C, LONDON TO MY FATHER AND MOTHER PREFACE WHATEVER there may be of definiteness in the structure of this book is due to the circum stances under which its first draft was made. It was necessary to compress into a few lectures enough information about ordinary remembering and forgetting to enable officers of the R. A. M. C. to estimate the abnor mality of these functions in their patients. It might have been better if the book had appeared in that shape but more than three years have now passed, and the temp tation to add to these lectures as new information has arrived from time to time has been irresistible. These additions have naturally obscured the original outlines of the book. At first, however, it was the medical man to whom these chapters were addressed, and if they now help him in any way this must be accredited to the Medical Research Council, whose grant facilitated the giving of these lectures at the Maghull Military Hospital, near Liverpool, and to the encouragement of its late commanding officer, Dr. R. G. Rows. In thanking those friends who have helped me, I wish to acknowledge first my great debt of gratitude to the late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, the loss of whom to psychology is incalculable. He not only gave to the viii REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING manuscript his painstaking Attention and the benefit of his wide knowledge, but discussed several parts of it at length with me. To Mr. R. H. Thouless, who has very kindly read the proofs to Miss Evelyn Chorlton, who rendered me invaluable secretarial help during two years when pressure of other duties made book-writing very difficult to my wife, who helped me considerably with the book in its early stages and to Miss Mair Jones and Mr. L. B. Yates, who have prepared much of the typescript, I offer my best thanks. I am indebted to the editor and the publishers of the British Journal of Psychology for their kind permis sion to reprint chapter viii., with its illustrative dia grams, and parts of chapters ix. and xii. to the editor and the publishers of Discovery for a similar courtesy in regard to part of chapter v. to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, who have allowed me to reproduce from their Memoirs chapter xi. with dia grams and to the University of London for permis sion to reproduce Plate III from Sir Francis Galtons Inquiries into Human Faculty By the students of psychology who have been privi leged to learn their subject from Dr. C. S. Myers the influence of his teaching upon this book will certainly be discernible. I wish to acknowledge here how much I owe to his friendship, help, and advice since the days when his lectures, convincing a student of the physical sciences that the problem of the observer is no less in teresting than that of the observed, led me to the study of the mind. T. H. P. . MANCHESTER August, 19m CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. WHAT is MEMORY i II. THE APPARATUS OF REMEMBERING .... 14 III. THE PERCEPT AND THE IMAGE .... 3 IV. THE FUNCTIONS OF THE IMAGE .... 44 V. THE MODERN STUDY OF DREAMS .... 69 VI. THE MECHANISM OF DREAMS 86 VII. RIVERSS VIEW OF THE DREAM Summary of Chap ters V, VI, VII 102 VIII. THE ANALYSIS OF A DREAM 119 IX. How WE FORGET 134 APPENDIX X. SYN ESTHESIA 178 XL NUMBER-FORMS 188 XII. THE INTELLECTUAL RESPECTABILITY OF MUSCULAR SKILL . . 205 XIII. THE SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE PROBLEMS OF RE MEMBERING AND FORGETTING OF CERTAIN EXPERIMENTS ON THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. . 232 INDEX 237 INTRODUCTION IN no sense is this a text-book upon the subject of memory. It has been written in the hope that it may serve as a guide-book to some of Memorys most interesting facts helping the uninitiated to find their way through, and pointing out attractive items in a vast collection which has not yet been satis factorily arranged or labelled...