ABSTRACT
The explanation of human mental processes that Donald O. Hebb provided some 30 years ago in his Organization of Behavior (1949) is now a permanent part of the conceptual equipment of psychology. The cell assembly is as familiar a construct as the reflex. In rereading the book, one is immediately struck again with the insight and imagination of its author in building a coherent picture of mind from a mass of complex and confusing evidence. What may be less evident—unless one has a long memory—are the reasons why Organization of Behavior produced such a violent shock wave when it impacted on the hard shell of a behaviorism reluctant to look inside the human head, much less populate it with structures as rich as cell assemblies. The courage of the author in rejecting the dominant S–R psychology and reintroducing central mental processes is quite as remarkable as his psychological insight.
