Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T20:03:55.907Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Thirtieth Maudsley Lecture: Perception and Imperception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

W. Russell Brain Sir*
Affiliation:
The London Hospital and to The Maida Vale Hospital for Nervous Diseases

Extract

I value very much the honour of giving the Maudsley Lecture. Henry Maudsley was a pioneer in the study of the physiological basis of mind, and hence of the physiological interpretation of mental disorder. In the preface to his book, The Physiology of Mind (Maudsley, 1876), he said with a blend of optimism and modesty: “The current of psychological thought having set so strongly in physiological channels, it is pretty certain that the reflections which one person has had, however original they may seem to him, some other person has had, has now, or will very soon have.” But half a century was to pass before physiology and psychiatry began to develop techniques which could illuminate the physiological basis of mind, and even now we are only entering the era which Maudsley would have found the fulfilment of his hopes and anticipations. Though intolerant of the idea that metaphysical speculation about mind could take the place of scientific study, he was nevertheless a philosopher, and my aim in this lecture is to try to use a philosophy of perception to interpret the clinical observations of perceptual disorder.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1956 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brain, W. R., Mind, Perception and Science, 1951, pp. 6163. Oxford.Google Scholar
Broad, C. D., Scientific Thought, 1927. London.Google Scholar
Dingle, H., The Scientific Adventure, 1952. London.Google Scholar
Hutton, E. L., in Perspectives in Neuropsychiatry, 1950. Edited by Richter, C. London.Google Scholar
Jackson, J. H., Selected Writings, 1932, 2, 147. London.Google Scholar
Köhler, W., The Place of Value in a World of Facts, 1938. New York and London.Google Scholar
Langer, S., Feeling and Form, 1953. London.Google Scholar
Lhermitte, J., Les Hallucinations, 1951. Paris.Google Scholar
Maudsley, H., The Physiology of Mind, 1876. London.Google Scholar
Penfield, W., and Jasper, H., Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain, 1954. London.Google Scholar
Russell, B., Human Knowledge, its Scope and Limits, 1948, pp. 218225. London.Google Scholar
Smythies, J. R., British Journal of Philosophy of Science, 1954, 5, 120.Google Scholar
Weinstein, E. A., Kahn, R. L., Malitz, S., and Rozanski, J., Brain, 1954, 77, 45.Google Scholar
Weinstein, E. A., and Kahn, R. L., Denial of Illness, 1955. Springfield.Google Scholar
Wicksteed, J., William Blake's Jerusalem, 1953. London.Google Scholar
Woodger, G. H., Biology and Language, 1952. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.