Quoted by T. Quick, 'Disciplining Physiological Psychology: Cinematographs as Epistemic Devices, 1897-1922', Science in Context 30 (4), pp. 423-474.
Description:

'McDougall conveyed his findings in terms that went directly against the mechanistic tendencies of late nineteenth century British physiological physiology (Young, 1990). He began his career by rejecting the widely-held proposition amongst British physiological psychologists that mental faculties could be identified with one or another anatomical part of the brain or nervous system. Instead, he proposed, awareness was ‘immediately determined' by 'neural processes' as a whole (McDougall 1898, 15, 365).'

 

Relevant passage from McDougall:

 

'Psychology has been and, by some writers, still is defined as the science ofconscious processes or affections of consciousness, and the older psychologists described mental life as consisting in the performances of various faculties of the conscious soul or ego. Perhaps the greatest improvement in modern methods of psychological description has resulted from the recognition that these faculties of the soul are but names that concealed our ignorance, and from the consequent reduction of their number, and the limitation of thesphere of action ascribed to them. At the present time the many faculties of the soul have been replaced by a few functions of the mind, such as perception, apperception, attention and volition, and of these it is more or less explicitly recognised by many writers that they are but convenient terms by which we designate very complex processes - networks of cause and effect.' (15)