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:

 

'the assumption that consciousness is generated in some particular part of the brain, whether in the pineal gland, the medulla oblongata, or the frontal lobes, is quite unfounded and unnecessary. Here I would point out that the evidence is all the other way. For all that we know of localisation of function in the cerebral cortex, and especially of those cases in which by a local lesion, such as a haemorrhage or an embolus, the possibility of some particular form of consciousness is abolished, and of the phenomena of the epileptic aura, indicates that consciousness is immediately determined by neural processes, now of one, now of another part of the cortex. The phenomena of double personalities and of split-off parts of the self forming minor personalities indicate the same fact. For these cases are only explicable by the assumption that groups of neurons become functionally discontinuous with the rest of the nervous system, and form a separate minor nervous system capable of producing consciousness, and even some degree of self-consciousness.' (365)