| 释义 |
psychological, a. (n.)|ps-, saɪkəʊˈlɒdʒɪkəl|
[f. as psychology + -ical.]
A. adj.
1. Of, pertaining to, or of the nature of psychology; dealing with or relating to psychology. Also fig. and absol.
a1688R. Cudworth in J. H. Muirhead Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philos. (1931) 64 Wherefore we have proposed another psychological hypothesis: that..there must of necessity be in the soul one common focus or centre in which all these kinds may meet. 1802Monthly Mag. XIV. 35/1 The grand drama of the Leipzig Easter-fair is certainly..very attractive and entertaining, whether one belong to the crowd of busy actors, or be only an idle looker-on—whether one have on his nose a pair of statistical, or psychological spectacles. 1812D'Israeli Calam. Auth. Pref. 5, I would paint what has not been unhappily called the psychological character. [Note] From the Grecian Psyche, or the soul, the Germans have borrowed this expressive term. 1818Coleridge Diss. Sc. Method ii. 40 Shakespeare was pursuing two Methods at once; and besides the Psychological Method, he had also to attend to the Poetical. [Note] We beg pardon for the use of this insolens verbum: but it is one of which our Language stands in great need. We have no single term to express the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 1873H. Spencer Stud. Sociol. xv. 382 Whether the minds of men and women are or are not alike; are obviously psychological questions. 1879G. Allen Colour Sense iii. 27 To trace out a few of the main steps in the evolution of such organs, from the strictly psychological point of view. 1951M. McLuhan Mech. Bride (1967) 143/2 They have a more organic approach than the Germans, whose attitude is closer to the psychological. 1974R. Assagioli Act of Will (1975) v. 48 This knowledge..enables us to make countless..applications of those psychological laws.
2. a. Loosely used for psychical: Of or pertaining to the objects of psychological study, of or pertaining to the mind, mental: opposed to physical. More recently, affecting or pertaining to the mental and emotional state of a person.
1794G. Adams Nat. & Exp. Philos. II. xvii. 272 Powers peculiar to that psychological unity which we call the mind. 1823Bentham Not Paul 258 Some physical process, to which in so many minds, the psychological effect in question has, by the influence of artifice on weakness, been attached. 1842Prichard Nat. Hist. Man 63 The greatest variations, both in structure and in psychological characters. 1870Disraeli Lothair lxxxii, Discourse about the Suez Canal..can be carried on without any psychological effort. 1907Illingworth Doctr. Trin. xi. 223 Different generations have lived on very different psychological levels, and with very different degrees of psychological intensity. 1929Language V. 212 Linguistics may thus hope to become something of a guide to the understanding of the ‘psychological geography’ of culture in the large. 1942E. Fromm Fear of Freedom iii. 49 Significant changes in the psychological atmosphere accompanied the economic development of capitalism. 1958R. I. Perusse in Daugherty & Janowitz Psychol. Warfare Casebk. ii. 34 The expressions..‘psychological operations’, and ‘target’ should..be avoided. US observers can vouch for the discomfiture of foreign peoples at being considered by us as a fitting subject for manipulation. 1958Times 15 July 11/5 Mr. Sylvester..said that to have coal stocks lying at the pithead or anywhere else had a psychological effect on the men in the industry. 1962E. Cleaver in A. Dundes Mother Wit (1973) 11/1 The destructive psychological impact of this standard of beauty. 1974M. Taylor tr. Metz's Film Lang. viii. 190 Since the advent of the talking film, we have had the ‘psychological comedy’ and the ‘dramatic comedy’.
b. psychological moment, = F. moment psychologique, applied to ‘the moment in which the mind is in actual expectation of something that is to happen’ (Hatzfeld Dict. Général); the psychologically (or rather, psychically) appropriate moment; often misused for ‘the critical moment’, ‘the very nick of time’, without any reference to psychology or to the mind.
The French expression arose in Paris in December 1870, during the Siege, when it was asserted to have been used by the German Kreuz Zeitung in reference to the bombardment of the city, and explained to mean that, as the bombardment had as its aim to act upon the imagination of the Parisians, it was necessary to choose the very moment when this imagination, already shaken by famine and perhaps by civil dissension, was in the fittest state to be effectively acted upon. (Sarcey, Le Siège de Paris, 1871, p. 263; Eng. tr. p. 242.) But the phrase with its explanation was due to an error of translation, in which the expression actually used by the German journal, das psychologische Moment, the psychological ‘momentum’, potent element, or factor, in the case (see momentum 5, moment 9), was mistaken for der psychologische Moment, the psychological moment of time. The article in the Neue Preussische (Kreuz) Zeitung of 16 Dec. 1870, p. 1, col. 3, says that very cogent psychological considerations spoke against opening the bombardment before the hopes built by the Parisians upon the raising of the siege by armies of relief should be overthrown; and continued ‘in all considerations the psychological momentum or factor must be allowed to play a prominent part, for without its co-operation there is little to be hoped from the work of the artillery’. Thus attributed to German pedantry, the nonsensical moment psychologique was ridiculed by the Parisians, and became a jocular phrase or ‘tag’ for ‘the fitting or proper moment’; and with this connotation it passed equally nonsensically into English journalese.
1871tr. Sarcey's Siege of Paris x. 243 The phrase became current and even fashionable. One used to say ‘I feel hungry; it is the psychological moment for sitting down to table’. 1891Daily News 29 Apr. 3/4 Unless we cable to New York, there is nothing to do but to forego turns and commissions at the very psychological moment. 1897Westm. Gaz. 30 Oct. 2/1 The Prince is always in the background, and turns up at the psychological moment—to use a very hard-worked and sometimes misused phrase. 1901Scotsman 17 Mar. 7/5 This was the psychological moment of the whole operations and..De Wet took advantage of it. 1907Expositor Sept. 270 ‘Hour’ in this Gospel means..a psychological moment in the evolution of the Messianic consciousness full of significance for the Saviour's purpose.
c. = mental a.1 1 c. colloq.
1952M. Allingham Tiger in Smoke i. 18 If it's Elginbrodde himself, he's ‘psychological’.
3. Special collocations: psychological hedonism (Philos.), the theory that the constitution of the human mind is such that one will always choose what is pleasurable; hence psychological hedonist; psychological novel, a type of novel in which the main interest lies in the mental and emotional aspects of the characters; hence psychological novelist; psychological warfare, the use of propaganda or other means designed to undermine the morale or allegiance of one's opponents; so psychological war (cf. psy-war s.v. psy-); psychological weapon, some particular action or reasoning designed to undermine resolution or morale in an opponent.
1884H. Sidgwick Methods of Ethics (ed. 3) i. iv. 40 There is, however, one view of the feelings which prompt to voluntary action... I mean the view that volition is always determined by pleasures or pains actual or prospective. This doctrine—which I may distinguish as Psychological Hedonism—is often connected and not seldom confounded with the method of Ethics which I have called Egoistic Hedonism. 1943Mind LII. 45 Butler is, in fact, right in rejecting Psychological Hedonism. 1961J. Hospers Human Conduct iv. 147 We must distinguish two varieties of psychological hedonism: the variety which says all that people ever desire is pleasure or satisfaction..and the variety which says that people desire many things but these things are all desired solely for the sake of the pleasure or satisfaction they will bring to the agent.
1903G. E. Moore Principia Ethica iii. 70 It is these two different theories which I suppose the Psychological Hedonists to confuse. 1969F. Vivian Thinking Philosophically v. 114 The psychological hedonist pushes these discoveries about our motives to what seems a logical conclusion.
1855Geo. Eliot in Westm. Rev. July 288 After courses of ‘psychological’ novels..where life seems made up of talking and journalizing. 1959Oxf. Compan. French Lit. 676/1 He has produced..purely psychological novels, depending for plot and interest on the workings of the characters' minds and their reaction to the outside world. 1960Beckson & Ganz Reader's Guide Lit. Terms (1961) 176 This term psychological novel is descriptive of content rather than form or technique and is applied to work as formally conventional as the novels of C. P. Snow and as unconventional as those of James Joyce.
1915A. D. Gillespie Let. 14 Mar. in Lett. from Flanders (1916) 49 He can tell a rattling good story, which many of those modern psychological novelists, with their elaborate analysis of character and of sensation, quite fail to do.
1970G. Jackson Let. 22 Mar. in Soledad Brother (1971) 187 The truth would aid the convict in the psychological war—con against cop.
1940Current Hist. Jan. 52 (heading) Psychological warfare and how to wage it... Psychological warfare is the fight conducted by the state with psychological weapons to strengthen its own prestige..and to weaken that of the enemy. 1946L. J. Margolin (title) Paper bullets: a brief story of psychological warfare in World War II. 1949Sun (Baltimore) 5 Feb. 17 Miss Gillars..is accused..of betraying her country by aiding Hitler's psychological warfare program over a period of more than four years. 1957G. E. Wright Bibl. Archaeol. ix. 161/1 Tiglathpileser..says that he ‘overwhelmed’ Menahem (evidently not by actual fighting but by psychological warfare!). 1974M. Babson Stalking Lamb xxi. 157 We have no objection at all to helping in what she calls her ‘psychological warfare’.
1940Psychological weapon [see psychological warfare above]. 1944J. S. Huxley On Living in Revolution iv. 44 Incomplete or unsatisfactory peace aims, which will have a..lower efficiency as psychological weapons.
B. n. (elliptical use of adj.: cf. medical B. 1). A student or professor of psychology.
1863Reade Hard Cash II. 355, I have accumulated..a large collection of letters from persons deranged in various degrees, and studied them minutely, more minutely than most Psychologicals study anything but Pounds, Shillings, and Verbiage. Ibid. III. 366 Oh, logic of psychologicals!
Hence psychoˈlogicalism nonce-wd., a psychological system or practice.
1893J. Reinach in Athenæum 1 July 14/3 Midway between the naturalism of M. Zola and the ‘psychologicalism’ (the barbarous word must be forgiven) of M. Bourget. |