ABSTRACT
ONLY in recent years has the psychology of thinking, which momentarily held the stage in the first decade of this century, revived as a serious and active interest for a considerable number of psychologists. Elsewhere (Hearnshaw, 1954) I have suggested that there were a number of reasons for this trend, and that contemporary work in psychopathology, child psychology, and the experimental investigation of learning and perception, together with various developments in physiology, biology and philosophy were all converging in a way that almost forced psychologists to reconsider the whole question of thinking. I have chosen this topic because there is among psychologists and others a growing sense of its importance, a growing sense that, however complex and difficult, it is a topic that can profitably be investigated, and indeed must be investigated if progress in other areas of psychology is not to be held up. My aim is to present a sort of interim report on some of the more recent work and speculations of psychologists in the field of normal psychology, and tentatively to pick out certain trends which may possibly be significant. I can lay no claim to any particular originality in what I have to say, and am well aware that there are many others far better equipped than myself to make such a report, in particular of course, Professor George Humphrey to whom we all are indebted for two very valuable books on the psychology of thinking (Humphrey, 1948, 1951).
