{"title":"Humboldt’s Parrot and the Re-voicing of a Dead Language: A Metaphor for Family Histories of Depression","authors":"Joe MacDonagh","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2012.14.1.60","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2012.14.1.60","url":null,"abstract":"The 18th century explorer Alexander von Humboldt discovered the remnants of a dead language in a parrot he found in the South American rain forest. The Ature people had originated from the lands around the Orinoco river in Venezuela, but disappeared when the tribe was murdered by the rival group of Carib Indians in the last years of the 18th century. Von Humboldt discovered that the pet parrot of these dead people had survived with their language, albeit in a limited form, and he set about transcribing the language phonetically. Schützenberger tells a similar story of a parrot that retained the voice of a long dead family patriarch in France, who still had power over his family through his now disembodied voice being parroted by an old family pet. This paper will explore how depression can be perpetuated or kept alive in the words, phrases and voices, literal or metaphorical, which exist in families. Material from fictional and biographical family accounts will be presented in examining how families might learn to re-voice the language they use for each other and the world, to move away from maladaptive ways of interacting with the world.“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”Anna Karenina(Tolstoy, 1878/2003)","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124192565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On Richard Thurnwald’s Ethno-Psychology","authors":"G. Jahoda","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2008.10.2.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2008.10.2.22","url":null,"abstract":"While the work of Rivers with the Cambridge expedition to Torres Straits is well known, few psychologists in Anglophone countries or even Germany have heard of Richard Thurnwald (1860–1954). He was an anthropologist keenly interested in psychology, which he regarded as an important tool. In 1906 he went on an expedition to what was then a German colony in present-day Papua New Guinea. Although his primary task was anthropological, he carried out some psychological studies. Unlike Rivers, who had confined himself to sensory functions, Thurnwald also wanted to study higher mental processes. He conducted experiments that included colour vision and colour naming, attention and memory, association, elementary arithmetic, and several aspects of drawing, a topic popular at the time. Particularly noteworthy are his experiments on what he called ‘transmission of reports’, which anticipated Bartlett’s method of ‘serial reproduction’. Thurnwald was not as skilled an experimenter as Rivers, and he himself modestly described his efforts as mere pilot studies. However, he did have innovative ideas and, like Bartlett after him, related his work to the problems of culture change. Later in life he frequently wrote about what used to be known as ‘primitive thought’, but that was based on his field observations and he no longer did any experimental work.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124330641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"J.J.Waterston 1843: A neglected pioneer in physiological psychology – with some comments on recognition in science","authors":"E. Salzen","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2009.11.1.28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2009.11.1.28","url":null,"abstract":"Waterston’s 1843 book is a pioneering text on physiological psychology. It attempts a nerve fibre connectionist account of association with electrical activity passing through the equivalent of ‘nerve nets’. It describes a spatial co-ordination system of visual, tactile and muscle nerve fibres with cerebral endings spatially arranged so as to map their peripheral body endings, and it postulates re-afferent paths and muscle length detectors. It describes hearing and voice as another coordinated nerve fibre system, and discusses the nature of loudness, pitch, musical scale, and timbre, with composite auditory fibre activity for pitch detection possibly involving the cochlea. It analyses emotional expressions as facial, vocal and whole body actions, with internal and external re-afference of all three for sympathetic recognition of expressions of others. Finally it considers mental calculation and reviews phrenology’s ‘mental faculties’ as compound associations of lower level associations.The book ends with two notes – one on a kinetic theory of gases and the other on the nature of heat and temperature. Unlike the psychology, these were truly fundamental to physics and chemistry but when expanded and submitted to the Royal Society in 1845 the paper was deemed ‘nonsense’ and rejected. Fifteen years later others, including Clerk-Maxwell, developed the same kinetic theory. The history of J.J. Waterston illustrates some of the factors that are involved in the acceptance of scientific ideas.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117076435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Moral Consciousness in Oronzo Suma, Brentano’s Last Pupil","authors":"M. Sinatra","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2007.9.2.45","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2007.9.2.45","url":null,"abstract":"On the back of a photo given by F. Brentano to O. Suma in 1912 there was a dedication in verse, a testimony to the close friendship which bound the two. The latter was an Italian philosopher who followed Brentano ‘s teaching in Florence in the second decade of the 20thcentury, and after his death, retiredfrom all academic life having been largely unexplored.The current paper is a reconstruction of Suma’s idea of the rules governing moral behaviour. In addition, there is little common ground as regards moral philosophy among Brentano’s followers.As a background to a comparison between Brentano’s and Jhering’s ethical theses on justice, Suma’s thought is analysed in terms of its connections not only with the Brentanian views but also with F. De Sarlo’s Florentine school. The points at issue were the nature of knowledge and consciousness, and reflection on both the subject’s ways of behaving relative to the object and the correlate psychic determinations, like judgements.This analysis of Suma’s contribution includes a consideration of the attempts made between 1800 and 1900 to find guidelines different from the imperatives of Kantian reason.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117349913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Abnormal Psychology: Unresolved Ontological and Epistemological Contestation","authors":"D. Pilgrim","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2008.10.2.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2008.10.2.11","url":null,"abstract":"During the 20thcentury, the range of behavioural deviations from societal norms that came within the jurisdiction of mental health practitioners extended well beyond the original focus in the Victorian period of lunacy. At the same time, the ontological and epistemological basis of that extension became contested in a number of ways. This article takes stock of that legacy of contestation at the beginning of the 21stcentury by setting the Victorian tradition of ‘medical naturalism’, a form of naïve realism, against the positions justified by critical realism and radical constructivism. These two ongoing challenges suggest that scientific incrementalism promised by medical naturalism was doomed to failure.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"287 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123432050","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Doing student projects in Conceptual and Historical Issues: The potential of discourse analysis","authors":"P. Lamont","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2015.16.1.53","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2015.16.1.53","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116800387","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Psychologists’ Contribution to the Development of Educational Psychology and Child Guidance in Scotland","authors":"John Hall","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2010.12.2.24","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2010.12.2.24","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129521566","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making mental health politics: The DSM as technology","authors":"M. Pickersgill","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2014.15.1.35","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2014.15.1.35","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128407309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The nervous and allergic child: Food allergy and behavioural problems in mid-20th century US","authors":"Matthew Smith","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2017.18.1.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2017.18.1.3","url":null,"abstract":"In the United States (US) during the middle of the 20th century, the chronic health problems of children – both physical and mental – could be explained in disparate ways. On the one hand, the emergence of psychosomatic theories of medicine meant that many symptoms thought to be allergic in nature, ranging from asthma to eczema, were instead blamed on psychological factors, often relating to the child’s relationship with his or her parents (usually the mother). On the other hand, many allergists believed that many of the psychological problems of children were actually rooted in allergy, usually to foods. By the 1980s, however, both approaches were on the wane. This article explores the development of these very different understandings of mental health and allergy, ultimately questioning why they had to be seen as incommensurable with one another.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127461956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of the Poor Law in the Care of the Insane in the Nineteenth Century","authors":"E. Miller","doi":"10.53841/bpshpp.2006.8.2.17","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.53841/bpshpp.2006.8.2.17","url":null,"abstract":"Where writings in abnormal and clinical psychology refer to the ways in which the ‘insane’ were dealt with in the past, they almost universally assume that the two dominant features were the asylum and the asylum doctor. The large, nineteenth century public asylums were built for the ‘pauper insane’ and the vast majority of those regarded as insane were pauper insane. As a consequence of this the Poor Law played a crucial role in the care of the insane and it was the local Poor Law officials who, together with magistrates, determined who were to be regarded as the pauper insane and whether such individuals were to be sent to the asylum or dealt with in other ways. Even at the end of the nineteenth century about 20% of the pauper insane were resident in workhouses and not asylums. There was also considerable local variation in how officials handled the problem of insanity. Many of the pauper insane retained in workhouses remained there for long periods and their treatment was often unsatisfactory.","PeriodicalId":123600,"journal":{"name":"History & Philosophy of Psychology","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129028225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}