Psychology and Life

The poet creates mental life in suggesting it to the soul of the reader; only the man who decomposes it afterward is a psychologist. The poet works as life works; the child who smiles and weeps causes us to think of pleasure and pain, too, but it offers us no psychological understanding of pleasure and pain. Just so the poet smiles and weeps, and if he is a great artist, with strong suggestive power, he forces our minds to feel with him, while we have only an intellectual interest if he merely analyzes the emotions... -from "Psychology and Art" Whether or not you approve of the culture of mass psychology that resulted from the work of Hugo Münsterberg, his continuing impact on American society is inestimable. From the reliance on standardized testing in public schools to the corporate perspective on employees as "human resources," the practical applications of psychology to industry, medicine, education, the arts, criminal investigation, and the social order that he pioneered still exert a dramatic influence on how we, a century later, continue to think about the mind and how it shapes human behavior. In this seminal 1899 book, Münsterberg explores: . the psychological view of personality . the biological development of the psychophysical apparatus . the teaching of psychology . psychology of the child . the artist as psychologist . psychology and history . psychology and mysticism . and much more. Also available from Cosimo Classics: Münsterberg's The Eternal Life, Science and Idealism, Psychology and Social Sanity, The War and America, American Traits, and Psychotherapy OF INTEREST TO: students of psychology, readers of social history AUTHOR BIO: German-American psychologist and philosopher HUGO MÜNSTERBERG (1863-1916) was professor of psychology at Harvard University from 1892 until his death. He was elected president of the American Psychological Association in 1898.