The new psychology emerged in the 1890s, with men like Dewey and Scripture pressing for the departure from the practice of analyzing one's thoughts and feelings to the use of the experimental method. Susman states that one of the things that makes the modern world "modern" and thus different from all that went before was the development of consciousness of self. The word "consciousness" itself emerged in the seventeenth century with a shift in thinking of the human being as only part of the cosmos surrounding him to the individual human being him or herself. This was a significant shift:
Impulses that control human behavior and destiny were felt to arise more and more within the individual at the very time that the laws governing the world were seen as more and more impersonal. Not only was it more difficult to feel spiritual life and activity immanent in the world outside the self; as the rituals of the external church grew feebler, the needs of inner self grew stronger (Susman 212).
To a greater degree than their European counterparts, Americans have always emphasized individuality to a greater degree, and the Constitution that was created by the Founding Fathers balanced the interests of society and the individual for this very reason. Susman shows how the problem of self after 1880 or so would shape American institutions even more clearly into a conception of in
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