RE: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!

[Mike Palij]

On Tue, 21 Dec 2010 02:40:08 -0800, Allen Esterson wrote:
>Mike Palij cites Douglas Whitman’s “Cognition” textbook giving the 
>“consciousness is the tip of the iceberg” analogy:
>>A check of his references shows two entries by Freud, both
>>in Strachey's "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
>>Works of Sigmund Freud" (Hogarth Press).  First is the 1925
>>"Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety" (pp77-175). Second is 1895
>>"Project for a scientific psychology" (page 302).
>
>As Annette reminds us, the TIPSter Iceberg Group established that no 
>such analogy occurs in Freud’s writings, and this is the case with the 
>above citations, which may refer to something else in Whitman’s text.
>
>As should be well known by now, the general notion in question was a 
>commonplace among psychologists in the latter half of the nineteenth 
>century, as expressed by Henry Maudsley (*The Physiology and Pathology 
>of the Mind*, 1867):
[snip]

I think that it can be reasonably argued that many 19th century 
psychologists probably derived the iceberg metaphor from the
writings of Johann Friedrich Herbart (circa 1824) who articulated 
a mathematical model of how "ideas" could move between consciousness 
and unconsciousness and whose theory/ideas were well known to
people like Fechner, Wundt, Ebbinghaus, Muller, and other
experimental psychologists -- Freud was exposed to Herbart's
ideas indirectly through his coursework.  The pattern of influence
is outlined in the following article: 

Boudewijnse, G.A. Murray, D.J.  & Bandomir, C. A. (2001). The fate
of Herbart's mathematical psychology.  History of Psychology, 4(2),
107-132.

A copy of this article is available as a Google doc here:
http://tinyurl.com/googleherbart 

Herbart's mathematical psychology may be more accessible to 
contemporary psychologists because a number of the ideas that
he treated mathematically (e.g., inhibition, excitation, etc.) are
used in many current models of cognition and memory.  An earlier
article by the above authors provides a detailed presentation of
Herbart's mathematics which he attempted to model on Newton's
mathematics; see:

Boudewijnse, Geert-Jan A.; Murray, David J.; Bandomir, Christina A. 
(1999). Herbart's mathematical psychology. History of Psychology, 
2(3), 163-193. doi: 10.1037/1093-4510.2.3.163 

Wikipedia has an entry Herbart (yadda-yadda) and the section relevant 
to the iceberg metaphor is presented here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Friedrich_Herbart#Apperception 

Quoting from this section:

|Herbart believed ideas crossed a limen of consciousness, or a boundary 
|between the conscious and the unconscious, as they became clearer and 
|strong enough to preserve themselves against their struggle with other forces. 
|The ideas powerful enough to break through to the conscious formed the 
|apperceiving mass, or a congregation of similar and related ideas dominating 
|the conscious at any given moment. Expounding upon Leibniz’s concept 
|of petites apperceptions and the idea of apperception, Herbart believed 
|the apperceiving mass to be crucial in selecting similar ideas from down 
|in the unconscious to join its forces in the conscious. Although the 
individual 
|is focusing all of his/her attention on those complex ideas a part of the 
|apperceiving mass in the conscious, it is possible for ideas in the 
unconscious 
|to combine with other ideas related to them and struggle to break through 
|the limen into the conscious, disrupting the present ideas a part of the 
|apperceiving mass. Apperception played a key role in Herbart’s educational 
|theory. He saw apperception as more pivotal in the classroom than 
|sense-perception because focusing on a child’s apperceiving mass in relation 
|to the material being taught can inform teachers of how to implement the 
|material in such a way as to direct the child’s ideas and thoughts to attend 
|to certain information.

The "apperceptive mass" is the collection of "ideas" representing a person's
knowledge and at some point this was metaphorically referred to as an 
iceberg, with all of the associated baggage.  When this happened is unclear
but at least one late 19th century article makes the connection between
Herbart and the iceberg metaphor (though not in a compelling way).

Whitman might be better off reviewing Herbart's work instead of Freud's,
for a variety of reasons.

-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu




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RE: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!

[Allen Esterson]

Mike Palij cites Douglas Whitman’s “Cognition” textbook giving the 
“consciousness is the tip of the iceberg” analogy:
>A check of his references shows two entries by Freud, both
>in Strachey's "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
>Works of Sigmund Freud" (Hogarth Press).  First is the 1925
>"Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety" (pp77-175). Second is 1895
>"Project for a scientific psychology" (page 302).

As Annette reminds us, the TIPSter Iceberg Group established that no 
such analogy occurs in Freud’s writings, and this is the case with the 
above citations, which may refer to something else in Whitman’s text.

As should be well known by now, the general notion in question was a 
commonplace among psychologists in the latter half of the nineteenth 
century, as expressed by Henry Maudsley (*The Physiology and Pathology 
of the Mind*, 1867):

“It may be affirmed that the most important part of mental action, the 
essential process on which thinking depends, is unconscious mental 
activity… Far more important than any conscious mental state is the 
unconscious mental or cerebral life… Consciousness reveals the 
particular state of mind of the moment, but does not reveal the long 
series of causes on which it depends.” (Quoted in Mark D. Altschule, 
*Roots of Modern Psychiatry*, 1957, pp. 68-69.)

Francis Galton, in an article in Mind (1879), reiterated that there 
exist “still deeper strata of mental operations, sunk wholly below the 
level of consciousness, which may account for such mental phenomena as 
cannot otherwise be explained.” (Quoted in M. D. Altschule, *Origins of 
Concepts in Human Behavior*, 1977, pp. 140-141.)

Galton’s (typically Victorian!) analogy was with “the complex system of 
drains and gas and water-pipes, flues, bellwires, and so forth… which 
are usually hidden out of sight, and of whose existence, so long as 
they acted well, we never troubled ourselves.”

Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
allenester...@compuserve.com
http://www.esterson.org

-
From: Mike Palij [m...@nyu.edu]
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:14 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Cc: Mike Palij
Subject: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!

So, I got my review copy of Douglas Whitman's "Cognition"
textbook today (ominously, it's identified as First Edition) and
I was skimming through the chapters.  There is a chapter on
consciousness (another bad sign) and what did I behold?
A subsection labelled "Conscousness Is the Tip of the Iceberg".
Quoting from page 332:

|Sigmund Freud, proposed an "iceberg model of consciousness,"
|illustrated in Figure 10.2.

Fig. 10.2,  on page 334, is similar to many other "iceberg"
representations Tipsters may be familiar with but with far
more detail to the three levels (i.e., conscious level, preconscious
level, and unconscious level).  Of course, there is no citation either
to Freud or any of the "usual suspects".  It's almost as though
Whitman's saying so was enough to make it true for him. ;-)
A check of his references shows two entries by Freud, both
in Strachey's "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud" (Hogarth Press).  First is the 1925
"Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety" (pp77-175). Second is 1895
"Project for a scientific psychology" (page 302).  Anyone have a
copy handy to check what is on these pages?

I thought that intro psych textbooks were abandoning the
Freud iceberg and it comes as a surprise that a textbook
for an upper level course would use such a figure.  Is this
a sign of progress in cognitive psychology or another sign
of the apocalypse?

-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu

-
RE: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!
Annette Taylor
Mon, 20 Dec 2010 15:32:37 -0800

More likely a sign of a particular author's lack of knowledge about
this bit of unsupported information--as is other information attributed
to Freud :(

Of course, the little iceberg group that formed as an off-shoot of
tipsters interested in this topic never published anything that I am
aware of on this topic :( :(

Annette

Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D.
Professor, Psychological Sciences
University of San Diego
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 92110
tay...@sandiego.edu<mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu>





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Re: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!

[michael sylvester]

And my heart will go on

Michael
- Original Message - 
From: "Mike Palij" 
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" 


Cc: "Mike Palij" 
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 9:14 PM
Subject: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!


So, I got my review copy of Douglas Whitman's "Cognition"
textbook today (ominously, it's identified as First Edition) and
I was skimming through the chapters.  There is a chapter on
consciousness (another bad sign) and what did I behold?
A subsection labelled "Conscousness Is the Tip of the Iceberg".
Quoting from page 332:

|Sigmund Freud, proposed an "iceberg model of consciousness,"
|illustrated in Figure 10.2.

Fig. 10.2,  on page 334, is similar to many other "iceberg"
representations Tipsters may be familiar with but with far
more detail to the three levels (i.e., conscious level, preconscious
level, and unconscious level).  Of course, there is no citation either
to Freud or any of the "usual suspects".  It's almost as though
Whitman's saying so was enough to make it true for him. ;-)
A check of his references shows two entries by Freud, both
in Strachey's "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud" (Hogarth Press).  First is the 1925
"Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety" (pp77-175). Second is 1895
"Project for a scientific psychology" (page 302).  Anyone have a
copy handy to check what is on these pages?

I thought that intro psych textbooks were abandoning the
Freud iceberg and it comes as a surprise that a textbook
for an upper level course would use such a figure.  Is this
a sign of progress in cognitive psychology or another sign
of the apocalypse?

-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu



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RE: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!

[Annette Taylor]

More likely a sign of a particular author's lack of knowledge about this bit of 
unsupported information--as is other information attributed to Freud :(

Of course, the little iceberg group that formed as an off-shoot of tipsters 
interested in this topic never published anything that I am aware of on this 
topic :( :(

Annette

Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph. D.
Professor, Psychological Sciences
University of San Diego
5998 Alcala Park
San Diego, CA 92110
tay...@sandiego.edu

From: Mike Palij [m...@nyu.edu]
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 3:14 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Cc: Mike Palij
Subject: [tips] Ahoy! Iceberg Ahead!

So, I got my review copy of Douglas Whitman's "Cognition"
textbook today (ominously, it's identified as First Edition) and
I was skimming through the chapters.  There is a chapter on
consciousness (another bad sign) and what did I behold?
A subsection labelled "Conscousness Is the Tip of the Iceberg".
Quoting from page 332:

|Sigmund Freud, proposed an "iceberg model of consciousness,"
|illustrated in Figure 10.2.

Fig. 10.2,  on page 334, is similar to many other "iceberg"
representations Tipsters may be familiar with but with far
more detail to the three levels (i.e., conscious level, preconscious
level, and unconscious level).  Of course, there is no citation either
to Freud or any of the "usual suspects".  It's almost as though
Whitman's saying so was enough to make it true for him. ;-)
A check of his references shows two entries by Freud, both
in Strachey's "The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud" (Hogarth Press).  First is the 1925
"Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety" (pp77-175). Second is 1895
"Project for a scientific psychology" (page 302).  Anyone have a
copy handy to check what is on these pages?

I thought that intro psych textbooks were abandoning the
Freud iceberg and it comes as a surprise that a textbook
for an upper level course would use such a figure.  Is this
a sign of progress in cognitive psychology or another sign
of the apocalypse?

-Mike Palij
New York University
m...@nyu.edu



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