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for Nurses, by Mary F. Porter
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Title: Applied Psychology for Nurses
Author: Mary F. Porter
Release Date: July 16, 2006 [EBook
#18843]
Language: English
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Applied

Psychology
for Nurses
By
Mary F. Porter, A. B.
Graduate Nurse; Teacher of Applied
Psychology,
Highland Hospital, Asheville, N. C.
Philadelphia and London
W. B. Saunders Company
1921
Copyright, 1921, by W. B. Saunders
Company
PRINTED IN AMERICA
PRESS OF
W. B. SAUNDERS COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA
TO
THE
MEMORY
OF
MY
FATHER
FOREWORD
This little book is the outgrowth of
a conviction, strengthened by some years
of experience with hundreds of
supposedly normal young people in
schools and colleges, confirmed by my
years of training in a neurological
hospital and months of work in a big city

general hospital, that it is of little value
to help some people back to physical
health if they are to carry with them
through a prolonged life the miseries of
a sick attitude. As nurses I believe it is
our privilege and our duty to work for
health of body and health of mind as
inseparable. Experience has proved that
too often the physically ill patient
(hitherto nervously well) returns from
hospital care addicted to the illness-
accepting attitude for which the nurse
must be held responsible.
I conceive of it as possible that
every well trained nurse in our country
shall consider it an essential to her
professional success to leave her patient
imbued with the will to health and better
equipped to attain it because the sick
attitude has been averted, or if already
present, has been treated as really and
intelligently as the sick body. To this end
I have dealt with the simple principles
of psychology only as the nurse can
immediately apply them.
The writer wishes to acknowledge
her indebtedness for criticism of this
work and for several definitions better
than her own, in the chapters The
Normal Mind and Variations From

Normal Mental Processes, to
Dr. Robert S. Carroll, who through the
years of hospital training helped her to
translate her collegiate psychology from
fascinating abstract principles into the
sustaining bread of daily life.
Mary F. Porter.
Asheville, N. C.,
August, 1921.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
page
What is Psychology? 11
Consciousness
The Unconscious
Consciousness is Complex
Consciousness in Sleep
Consciousness in Delirium
20
23
29
31
32
Organs of Consciousness 34
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
The Central and Peripheral

Nervous Systems in Action
The Sympathetic Nervous
System
35
37
Relation of Mind and Body
The Cerebrum or Forebrain
40
43
The Normal Mind 47
The Normal Mind (Continued)
Instinct
Memory
The Place of Emotion
59
59
62
67
CHAPTER VII
The Beginning of Reason
Development of Reason
and Will
Judgment
Reaction Proportioned to
Stimuli
Normal Emotional
Reactions
The Normal Mind
69
71

72
75
77
77
Psychology and Health
Necessity of Adaptability
The Power of Suggestion
One Thought Can Be
Replaced by Another
Habit is a Conserver of
Effort
79
80
84
89
90
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
The Saving Power of Will93
Variations from Normal Mental
Processes
Disorders and Perversions
95
95
Variations from Normal Mental
Processes (Continued)
Factors Causing Variations
from Normal Mental
Processes
Heredity

Environment
Personal Reactions
101
108
108
109
110
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
Attention the Root of Disease or
Health Attitude
The Attention of Interest
The Attention of Reason
and Will
112
112
118
Getting the Patient’s Point of
View
What Determines the Point
of View
Getting the Other Man’s
Point of View
The Deluded Patient
Nursing the Deluded
Patient
124
124
126
133

135
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
The Obsessed Patient
The Mind a Prey to False
Associations
136
137
The Psychology of the Nurse
Accuracy of Perception
Training Perception
Association of Ideas
Concentration
Self-training in Memory
139
141
142
143
146
150
The Psychology of the Nurse
(Continued)
Emotional Equilibrium
Self-correction
152
152
160
CHAPTER XIV
Applied
Psychology for

Nurses
Training the Will
161
The Nurse of the Future 164
Index 169
CHAPTER I
WHAT IS
PSYCHOLOGY?
Wise men study the sciences which
deal with the origins and development of
animal life, with the structure of the
cells, with the effect of various diseases
upon the tissues and fluids of the body;
they study the causes of the reactions of
the body cells to disease germs, and
search for the origin and means of
extermination of these enemies to health.
They study the laws of physical well-
being. They seek for the chemical
principles governing the reactions of
digestive fluids to the foods they must
transform into heat and energy. So the
doctor learns to combat disease with
science, and at the same time to apply
scientific laws of health that he may
fortify the human body against the
invasion of harmful germs. Thus,
eventually, he makes medicine itself less
necessary.

But another science must walk hand
in hand today with that of medicine; for
doctors and nurses are realizing as never
before the power of mind over body, and
the hopelessness of trying to cure the one
without considering the other. Hence
psychology has come into her own as a
recognized science of the mind, just as
biology, histology, chemistry, pathology,
and medicine are recognized sciences
governing the body. As these are
concerned with the “how” and “why” of
life, and of the body reactions, so
psychology is concerned with the “how”
and “why” of conduct and of thinking.
For as truly as every infectious disease
is caused by a definite germ, just as truly
has every action of man its adequate
explanation, and every thought its
definite origin. As we would know the
laws of the sciences governing man’s
physical well-being that we might have
body health, so we would know the laws
of the mind and of its response to its
world in order to attain and hold fast to
mind health. Experience with patients
soon proves to us nurses that the weal
and woe of the one vitally affects the
other.
“Psychology is the science of

mental life, both of its phenomena and
their conditions.”
So William James took up the
burden of proof some thirty years ago,
and assured a doubting world of men
and women that there were laws in the
realm of mind as certain and dependable
as those applying to the world of matter
—men and women who were not at all
sure they had any right to get near enough
the center of things to see the wheels go
round. But today thousands of people are
trying to find out something of the way
the mind is conceived, and to understand
its workings. And many of us have in our
impatient, hasty investigation, self-
analytically taken our mental machines
all to pieces and are trying effortfully to
put them together again. Some of us have
made a pretty bad mess of it, for we tore
out the screws and pulled apart the
adjustments so hastily and carelessly that
we cannot now find how they fit. And
millions of other machines are working
wrong because the engineers do not
know how to keep them in order, put
them in repair, or even what levers
operate them. So books must be written
—books of directions.
If you can glibly recite the

definition above, know and explain the
meaning of “mental life,” describe “its
phenomena and their conditions,”
illustrating from real life; if you can do
this, and prove that psychology is a
science, i. e., an organized system of
knowledge on the workings of the mind
—not mere speculation or plausible