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SELF AGAINST CHILDHOOD: THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALICE MEYNELL TO A PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGY OF MEMORY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2006

Linda M. Austin
Linda M. Austin
Affiliation:
Oklahoma State University
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Extract

THE IDEA OF THE SELF in its various constructions–political, economic, psychological–has always been shadowed by an English tradition of skepticism about the persistence of a conscious and stable identity. Voiced most disconcertingly by David Hume in his section, “Of personal identity” from A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40; I.iv.vi), this attitude was significantly advanced during the second half of the nineteenth century by a group of physiological psychologists who argued for the corporeal basis of mental functions, including memory. Henry Maudsley and George Henry Lewes, among others, challenged the metaphysical notion of a mind and drew instead from controversial and often suppressed theories of neuroscience to describe the physiological operation of memory. These theories, which located impressions and sensations in the brain or spinal chord, produced a form of identity that could endure alterations of consciousness. They offered, in addition, a new understanding of an adult's physical connection to the personal past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , March 2006 , pp. 249 - 268
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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