Psychology

The task of evaluating the processes of man's subconscious is the province of psychology. Psychology does not regard its subject morally, but medically—i.e., from the aspect of health or malfunction (with cognitive competence as the proper standard of health).

  <div class="social_block">
  <div class="gplus_wrapper"><div class="g-plusone" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/1.html" data-size="medium"></div></div>
  <div class="fb-like" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/1.html" data-send="false" data-layout="button_count" data-height="20" data-width="90" data-show-faces="false"></div>
  </div>

As a science, psychology is barely making its first steps. It is still in the anteroom of science, in the stage of observing and gathering material from which a future science will come. This stage may be compared to the pre-Socratic period in philosophy; psychology has not yet found a Plato, let alone an Aristotle, to organize its material, systematize its problems and define its fundamental principles.

  <div class="social_block">
  <div class="gplus_wrapper"><div class="g-plusone" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/2.html" data-size="medium"></div></div>
  <div class="fb-like" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/2.html" data-send="false" data-layout="button_count" data-height="20" data-width="90" data-show-faces="false"></div>
  </div>

In psychology, one school holds that man, by nature, is a helpless, guilt-ridden, instinct-driven automaton—while another school objects that this is not true, because there is no scientific evidence to prove that man is conscious.

  <div class="social_block">
  <div class="gplus_wrapper"><div class="g-plusone" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/3.html" data-size="medium"></div></div>
  <div class="fb-like" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/3.html" data-send="false" data-layout="button_count" data-height="20" data-width="90" data-show-faces="false"></div>
  </div>

Psychology departments have a sprinkling of Freudians, but are dominated by Behaviorism, whose leader is B. F. Skinner. (Here the controversy is between the claim that man is moved by innate ideas, and the claim that he has no ideas at all.)

  <div class="social_block">
  <div class="gplus_wrapper"><div class="g-plusone" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/4.html" data-size="medium"></div></div>
  <div class="fb-like" data-href="https://aynrandlexicon.com/ # site base urllexicon/psychology/4.html" data-send="false" data-layout="button_count" data-height="20" data-width="90" data-show-faces="false"></div>
  </div>

See Conceptual Index: Psychology.