History of PsychologyPub Date : 2022-05-01Epub Date: 2021-09-13DOI: 10.1037/hop0000156
Giuseppe Bianco
{"title":"Georges Politzer's \"brilliant errors\": Concrete psychology in France (1930-1980).","authors":"Giuseppe Bianco","doi":"10.1037/hop0000156","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000156","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The present article assesses the hidden importance of Georges Politzer's (1903-1942) work in the development of French philosophy and psychology. After sketching his biography and isolating the most important concepts developed in his book <i>Critique of the Foundations of Psychology</i> (1928), this article proceeds by dividing his reception into four distinct moments, the features of which derive from the interconnected mutations of the scientific field in its relation with the transformation of the political field. In the first moment, the publication of the <i>Critique</i>, Politzer's most important work, played an essential role in introducing psychoanalysis into philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry, and in sketching the path of a possible encounter between psychoanalysis and Marxism. In the second moment, during the 1940s and the 1950s, following Politzer's Marxist auto-critique, French communists widely rejected psychoanalysis as a dangerous ideology. In the third moment, during the 1960s in a context marked by structuralism, both the psychoanalysts and the Marxists addressed to Politzer's humanism a new, theoretical, critique. Finally, at the end of the 1960s and even more after May 1968, Politzer's works were republished and reevaluated, and new transformations taking place in the intellectual and political field during the 1970s contributed to a better understanding of Politzer's essential role in French philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 2","pages":"170-189"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39414433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How statistics became a \"forbidden trick\" for Soviet psychologists.","authors":"S. Morozova","doi":"10.1037/hop0000204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000204","url":null,"abstract":"This study reconstructs the process by which quantitative methods were gradually displaced from Russian psychology in the early Soviet period. By the early 1930s, there was a decline in the importance of mathematical methods in psychological disciplines. It was accompanied by the rejection of some mathematical methods and the ideologization of the description of quantitative methodology. After the Central Committee's decree \"O pedologicheskikh izvrashcheniyakh v sisteme Narkomprosov\" (\"On Pedological Perversions in the System of Narkomproses\") of 1936 was published in the pages of national newspapers, statistical practice was completely discredited. At the same time, textbooks on statistics in psychological disciplines were withdrawn from circulation. Scientists' attempts to defend the neutrality of scientific methods were unsuccessful and were publicly criticized. As a result, statistical practice almost completely disappeared from psychological disciplines after 1936, although there was no outright ban on the use of statistics. There are two possible reasons for this. First, psychologists may have abandoned statistical practices as a result of ideological pressure. Second, owing to the elimination of mathematical methods, internal disciplinary contradictions-in particular, those characteristic of pedology-were eliminated. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 2 1","pages":"121-142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45725187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"Eugenics, social reform, and psychology: The careers of Isabelle Kendig\": Correction to Harris (2021).","authors":"","doi":"10.1037/hop0000215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000215","url":null,"abstract":"Reports an error in \"Eugenics, social reform, and psychology: The careers of Isabelle Kendig\" by Ben Harris (History of Psychology, 2021[Nov], Vol 24[4], 350-376). In the article, multiple instances of \"St. Elizabeths Hospital\" were incorrectly changed to \"St. Elizabeth's Hospital.\" The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2021-90746-001.) The psychologist Isabelle Kendig had two careers before earning her doctorate and rising to the position of chief psychologist at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. She began as a eugenic field worker in 1912, focusing on Shutesbury, Massachusetts, where she administered intelligence tests to the locals, collected gossip about their character, and created genealogical charts. When she presented her research to Charles Davenport and other social scientists concerned with social defect, Kendig dissented from eugenics orthodoxy. She was shunned by Davenport, who, in turn, falsified her findings to fit his beliefs. She was then hired by Massachusetts and New Hampshire to survey intellectual disability in each state. Following her work in eugenics, Kendig was briefly a leading figure in feminist and antimilitarist campaigns, including the National Women's Party and the 1924 presidential campaign of Senator Robert La Follette. In 1933, she earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Radcliffe and went on to help guide the field's post-WWII expansion. True to her feminist ideals and with the help of her husband, she juggled marriage, her three careers, and the parenting of four children. She thus serves as a noteworthy member of the second generation of women in psychology in the United States. Using unpublished correspondence between Kendig, her parents, and her future husband, this article offers a rare glimpse of a young feminist struggling to build a career and a life unconstrained by patriarchal norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48504938","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The quest for objectivity and measurements in phrenology's \"bumpy\" history.","authors":"S. Finger, P. Eling","doi":"10.1037/hop0000213","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000213","url":null,"abstract":"Phrenology is based on correlating character traits with visible or palpable cranial bumps (or depressions) thought to reflect underlying brain areas differing in size and levels of activity. Franz Joseph Gall, who introduced the doctrine during the 1790s, relied heavily on seeing and feeling skulls when he formulated his theory, as did Johann Spurzheim, who served as his assistant until 1813 and then set forth on his own. But Peter Mark Roget, a British critic of the doctrine, first assailed these methods as too subjective in 1818, and never changed his mind. George Combe, a Scotsman who admired Spurzheim, introduced calipers and other measuring instruments during the 1820s, hoping to make phrenology more like the admired physical sciences. In the United States, the Fowlers also called for more numbers, including measuring distances between the cortical sites above the organs of mind. Nonetheless, phrenologists realized they faced formidable barriers when it came to measuring the physical organs of mind, as opposed to basic skull dimensions. This essay examines the subjectivity that left phrenology open to criticism and shows how some phrenologists tried to overcome it. It also shows how vision and touch remained features of phrenological examinations throughout the numbers-obsessed 19th century. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44330372","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History of PsychologyPub Date : 2022-02-01Epub Date: 2021-10-28DOI: 10.1037/hop0000206
Silvia Lévy, Miguel Huertas-Maestro, Rafael Huertas
{"title":"The reception of psychodrama in Spain: Correspondence between Jacob Levy Moreno and Ramón Sarró.","authors":"Silvia Lévy, Miguel Huertas-Maestro, Rafael Huertas","doi":"10.1037/hop0000206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000206","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Jacob Levy Moreno, the well-known creator of psychodrama, had a close epistolary relationship with the Spanish psychiatrist Ramón Sarró; a collection of these letters has been located in the Sarró personal archive, deposited in the Library of Catalonia. After locating and arranging this correspondence, we proceeded to analyze and contextualize its contents. The analysis of this collection serves as a basis to outline the context in which the relationship between Moreno and Sarró developed, the role played by certain psychotherapy congresses in strengthening their relationships, and the process that resulted in the University of Barcelona awarding Moreno Doctor Honoris Causa. This study has allowed us to identify certain areas of how psychodrama was received in Spain during the 1960s and reflect on the creation of international collaboration networks and the creation of schools and professional and academic legitimation strategies in the wake of the approaches to group psychotherapy and psychodrama that Moreno developed while based in New York. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 1","pages":"56-67"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39583224","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Review of Max Wertheimer, Productive thinking.","authors":"Mitchell G Ash","doi":"10.1037/h0101875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/h0101875","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Reviews the book, <i>Max Wertheimer, Productive Thinking</i> by Viktor Sarris (2020). This volume contains a reproduction of the original edition of Max Wertheimer's study of productive thinking, published posthumously in 1945, with a brief preface and a more extensive introduction by Viktor Sarris, Professor Emeritus of General Psychology and former holder of the Max Wertheimer Chair at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. In his introduction, Sarris briefly summarizes the 1920 study, and then provides a chapter by chapter account of the 1945 volume's content, summarizing the results in a section called \"Wertheimer's Credo.\" The original edition of <i>Productive Thinking</i> has been out of print for some time, as has a second edition, with an additional article by Wertheimer, published in 1959 by his son Michael Wertheimer, himself a professor of psychology. An expanded edition was published in 1982, but is now also out of print. This republication of the original text offers an opportunity to libraries as well as students of teachers of psychology to acquaint themselves with a classical study, which is infused with the lively spirit of inquiry characteristic of its author, but is more often cited than read. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 1","pages":"92-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39884319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
History of PsychologyPub Date : 2022-02-01Epub Date: 2021-12-30DOI: 10.1037/hop0000198
James Schlett
{"title":"When Rollo May's \"little band\" of New York psychologists fought back against organized medicine's attempts to control psychotherapy.","authors":"James Schlett","doi":"10.1037/hop0000198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000198","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>At a time when New York was best positioned to influence the development of the profession of psychology in the mid-twentieth century, efforts to pass licensing or certification in Albany floundered for more than 15 years due to opposition from physicians and psychiatrists. That changed when Rollo May emerged as the leader of New York psychologists' lobbying effort in 1952, and he turned their losing and defensive campaign against organized medicine into a winning and offensive one. He inspired his fellow pioneering psychologists to withstand the \"overwhelming power\" of organized medicine and see their profession through its \"frontier struggles,\" which culminated in the Empire State's psychologist regulation law in 1956. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 1","pages":"3-33"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39650204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Society for the History of Psychology news and notes.","authors":"Stephan Bonfield","doi":"10.1037/hop0000214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000214","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Article presents 2021 Society for the History of Psychology award winners. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 1","pages":"91-92"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39884318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Archival oddities: The manifesto of the upper left hand corner club.","authors":"Ben Harris","doi":"10.1037/h0101876","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/h0101876","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Forty-two years ago, a small group within the Cheiron Society formed a dissident caucus, the Upper Left Hand Corner Club (ULHCC). The founding document, preserved in an old file folder, featured a diagram of the place of the history of psychology in relation to other fields, such as social history and the history of ideas. The goal of the caucus was to move the history of psychology to the upper left-hand corner of the diagram. That meant shifting the history of psychology from a somewhat immature version of the history of ideas, in which the precursors of late 20th century psychological theories could be discovered in the work of earlier figures ranging from Wilhelm Wundt and William James to William Wordsworth and Isaac Newton (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 1","pages":"93-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39884320","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inaugural editorial.","authors":"Christopher D Green","doi":"10.1037/hop0000212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000212","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Now in its 25th year, the journal has become an important institution within the discipline since an article of the editor's (on Aristotle's theory of mind) was the first to appear on its pages in back in 1998. It is the editor's aim to build the journal in ways that serve the community of historians of psychology even better than it has over the past quarter of a century. First, the editor intended to follow and expand even further the previous editor's impressive efforts to have the journal reflect the diversity of its disciplinary community. Second, the editor also hopes to encourage innovative practitioners of the historiographic craft-especially digital researchers-to look to the journal as a friendly outlet. Third, in sympathy with APA's adoption of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines, the editor will work with authors to ensure that the sources of their historical claims are as clear as possible. Finally, please allow the editor to personally invite you, the reader, to assist me in supporting and enriching this journal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":51852,"journal":{"name":"History of Psychology","volume":"25 1","pages":"1-2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39884317","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}