McDougall, William
McDougall, William
(1871-1938) Formerly of Oxford and later of Harvard and Duke Universities, was the leading exponent of purposive or “hormic” (from Gr. horme, impulse) psychology. “Purposive psychology . . . asserts that active striving towards a goal is a fundamental category of psychology, and is a process of a type that cannot be mechanistically explained or resolved into mechanistic sequences.” Psychologies of 1930, p. 4. In his epoch-making book, Introduction to Social Psychology (1908), McDougall developed a purposive theory of the human instincts designed to serve as an adequate psychological foundation for the social sciences. His social psychology listed among the primary instincts of manflight, repulsion, curiosity, self-abasement, self-assertion and the parental instinct. McDougall’s teleological theory is psychological rather than metaphysical, but he believed that the psychological fact of purpose was a genuine instance of teleologilcal causation. (Modern Materialism and Emergent Evolution, 1929.) He was also led by his psychological studies to adopt a metaphysical dualism and interactionism which he designated “animism.” See Body and Mind, 1911. — L.W.