Search

Contemporary discussions about operational definition often hark back to Stanley S. Stevens' classic papers on psychological operationism. Still, he was far from the only psychologist to call for conceptual hygiene. Some of Stevens' direct colleagues at Harvard—most notably B. F. Skinner and E. G. Boring—were also actively applying Bridgman's conceptual strictures to the study of mind and behavior. In this paper, I shed new light on the history of operationism by reconstructing the Harvard debates about operational definition in the years before Stevens published his seminal articles. Building on a large set of archival evidence from the Harvard University Archives, I argue that we can get a more complete understanding of Stevens' contributions if we better grasp the operationisms of his former teachers and direct colleagues at Harvard's Department of Philosophy and Psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the debates around the "miracle of Maglavit", a shepherd's vision of God that took place in 1935 in Romania and attracted much contemporary popular and intellectual interest. The debates drew in arguments from doctors and theologians, who discussed the psychology of divine revelation and tried to elaborate the implications that such an event could have for the life of the Romanian nation. The paper places these debates in the context of wider contemporary discussions about psychology and religion. I argue that what Maglavit shows is that, in Romania at least, public debates about visionary experience in the 1930s were not only debates about its psychology, but of a psychology thoroughly imbricated with political concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a brief history of Yugoslav psychology and a review of the current state of psychological research and practice in the former Yugoslav countries. Bibliometric mapping was used to explore the knowledge domain and international visibility of psychological research in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Judging by the number of papers visible in Scopus, psychological research activity in these countries is similar to the other former communist countries. In a relative sense, it is even higher in Slovenia and Croatia. However, psychologists still rely heavily on national journals indexed in Scopus when publishing their papers. Regarding psychological practice, former Yugoslav countries are facing challenges that are more or less typical for all small countries in the global scientific and economic market. Keeping in mind all the obstacles and traumas in the past decades, it should be considered a success that psychology in the former Yugoslav countries is now a fully established profession and a recognized scientific discipline., (© 2022 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Contemporary Argentinian psychology has a unique characteristic: it is identified with psychoanalysis. Nonpsychoanalytic theories and therapies are difficult to find. In addition, there is an overt antiscientific attitude within many psychology programs. How should this be explained? In this paper, we claim that a philosophical history of psychology can shed new light on the development of Argentinian psychology by showing that early Argentinian psychoanalysts held positions in the newborn psychology programs and a distinctive stance toward scientific research in general and psychology in particular. In the absence of an explicit and articulate philosophical position, psychoanalysts developed an implicit meta‐theory that helped shape the context that led to the institutionalization and professionalization of psychology in Argentina. Although we do not establish or even suggest a monocausal link between their ideas and the current state of Argentinian psychology, we do claim that their impact should be explored. Finally, we discuss some limitations of our study and suggest future complementary investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How should historians employ psychological insight when seeking to understand and analyze their historical subjects? That is the essential question explored in this methodological reflection on the relationship between psychology and biography. To answer it, this paper offers a historical, historiographical, and theoretical analysis of life writing in the history of psychology. It touches down in the genres of autobiography, psychobiography, and cultural history to assess how other historians and psychologists have answered this question. And it offers a more detailed analysis of one particularly useful text, Kerry Buckley's (1989) Mechanical Man, to illuminate specific ways in which historians can simultaneously employ, historicize, and critically analyze the theories of the psychologists they study. Although ostensibly about writing biographies of eminent psychologists, this article speaks to a methodological issue facing any historian contemplating the role psychological theories should play in their historical narratives., (© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

This section offers news briefs pertaining to the International Society for the History of the Social and Behavior Sciences (Cheiron) as of October 1, 2020. Topics discussed include the virtual Forum for the History of the Human Sciences (FHHS), the winners of the FHHS prizes for the year, and the Cheiron and the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences' virtual meeting held July 9 to 11 which included Susan Lanzoni who reflected on her work "Empathy: A History."

The first law providing for the permanent, involuntary institutionalization of "feeble-minded" individuals was passed in Illinois in 1915. This bill represented the first eugenic commitment law in the United States. Focusing on the consequences of this 1915 commitment law within the context of intelligence testing, eugenics, and the progressive movement, this paper will argue that the then newly devised Binet-Simon intelligence test facilitated the definition and classification of feeble-mindedness that validated feeble-mindedness theory, enabled the state to legitimize the eugenic diagnosis and institutionalization of feeble-minded individuals, and especially empowered psychologists to carve out a niche for themselves in the courtroom as "experts" when testifying as to the feeble-mindedness of individuals., (© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

In 1986, David Rumelhart and James McClelland published their two-volume work, Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in microcognition, Volume 1: Foundations and Volume 2: Psychological and biological models. These volumes soon become classic texts in both connectionism, specifically, and in the cognitive science field more generally. Drawing on oral histories, book reviews, translations, citation records, and close textual analysis, this paper analyzes how and why they attained landmark status. It argues that McClelland and Rumelhart's volumes became classics largely as a result of a confluence of rhetorical factors. Specifically, the PDP Volumes appeared at a kairotic moment in the history of connectionism, publishing dynamics that facilitated their circulation played an important role, and the volumes were ambiguous about the relationship between model and brain in a manner that enabled them to address an expansive audience. In so doing, this paper offers insight into both the history of cognitive science and rhetoric's role in establishing classic texts., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

What are unconscious inferences in psychology? This article investigates their journey from the early philosophical psychology of Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) to the experimental psychology of the American pragmatist Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914). Peirce's reception of Wundt's early works situates him in an international web of 19th‐century experimental psychologists and its reconstruction opens new perspectives on the relation between philosophy, psychology, and epistemology. Moreover, this reception testifies to a heretofore overlooked strand of influence of Wundt on North American experimental psychology. The notion of unconscious inferences, of which Hermann von Helmholtz is usually considered the chief exponent, becomes the backbone of Peirce's theory of perception mostly because of the affinity between Wundt's early philosophy of mind and Peirce's logic‐mediated approach to psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific career of eminent experimentalist and psychological tester James McKeen Cattell (1860-1944) began at the Johns Hopkins University during the year (1882-1883) he held the university's Fellowship in Philosophy. This article opens by sketching the scope of Cattell's lifetime achievement and then briefly reviews the historical attention that his life and career has attracted during the past few decades. It then outlines the origins and evolution of Cattell's 'scientific ideology,' traces the course of events that led to his fellowship, reviews his earliest studies at Johns Hopkins, and analyzes in some detail his initial laboratory successes. These laid the groundwork for his later distinguished work as a psychological experimentalist, both in Europe and America. It concludes, however, that even as Cattell's early experimental achievements impressed others, the personal arrogance he exhibited during his year in Baltimore served to alienate him from his colleagues and teachers. Over the long run, this arrogance and his often-antagonistic approach to others continued to color (and even shape) his otherwise distinguished more than 50-year scientific career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a historical analysis of the genesis, context, and function of "Operative Psychology," a little-known branch of applied psychology developed by employees of the Ministry of State Security in the German Democratic Republic. For 25 years, theories and practices of Operative Psychology were taught to elite agents at the Juridical Academy in Potsdam, introducing them to various "silent" psychological techniques of persuasion, interrogation, and repression. After highlighting the economic and political context that increased the need for "silent" techniques of observation and repression, an overview of the topics that were taught and researched at the chair for Operative Psychology is given. Examples of how these techniques were put into practice are provided and the consequences for the victims of Operative Psychology are discussed. Furthermore, commonalities and differences between Operative Psychology and the use of psychological torture by the CIA during the "war on terror" are discussed and questions regarding the relation between methodological and moral strategies of justification are addressed., (© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

In this interview with historian of psychology Saulo de Freitas Araujo, we discuss the aims, challenges, and functions of a new book series in which classic psychological works are translated into Portuguese. The interview highlights the importance of the accessibility of primary source documents to psychology education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magda Arnold (1903-2002), best known for her pioneering appraisal theory of emotion, belonged to the second generation of women in psychology who frequently experienced institutional sexism and career barriers. Following her religious conversion, Arnold had to contend with the additional challenge of being an openly Catholic woman in psychology at a time when Catholic academics were stigmatized. This paper announces the discovery of and relies upon a number of previously unknown primary sources on Magda Arnold, including approximately 150 letters exchanged by Arnold and Father John Gasson. This correspondence illuminates both the development of Arnold's thought and her navigation of the career challenges posed by her conversion. I argue that Gasson's emotional and intellectual support be considered as resources that helped Arnold succeed despite the discrimination she experienced. Given the romantic content of the correspondence, I also consider Arnold and Gasson in the context of other academic couples in psychology in this period and argue that religious belief ought to be further explored as a potential contributor to the resilience of women in psychology's history., (© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The first sample surveys in the latter parts of the 19th century were an intellectual social movement. They were motivated by the intention to improve the economic and political conditions of workers. The quantitative survey was considered an ideal because it would present data about the workers as facts, i.e. establish a scientific authoritative truth. In a case study from Denmark, the paper shows how the first survey - a study of seamstresses - was carried out by bringing several cognitive and organizational elements together: a network of researchers, a method for sampling, the construction of a questionnaire, a procedure for coding, and analyzing the data. It was a trial and error process where the researchers lacked relevant concepts and methods but relied on their intuition and on inspiration from abroad., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

This essay provides a fresh account of the break between Oswald Külpe and his master Wilhelm Wundt. Kurt Danziger's reconstruction of the "repudiation" of Wundt, which has become the canon for this significant episode of history of psychology, focused on the supposed influence of Ernst Mach on this set of events, overshadowing the other exponent of Empiriocriticism: Richard Avenarius. Analyzing archival documents and examining anew the primary sources, the paper shows that Avenarius was himself a member of Wundt's circle, and that his "repudiation" of the master paved the way for Külpe. The essay points out the original anti-Wundtian aspects of Avenarius' notion of psychology, thus showing how they were then adopted by Külpe., (© 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The article offers information on a joint conference of the European Society for the History of Human Sciences and the International Society for the History of Behavioural and Social Sciences, which will be held in Barcelona, Spain from June 27 to July 1, 2016.

Recently, attention has been drawn toward an overlooked and nearly forgotten personality type: the ambivert. This paper presents a genealogy of the ambivert, locating the various contexts it traversed in order to highlight the ways in which these places and times have interacted and changed-ultimately elucidating our current situation. Proposed by Edmund S. Conklin in 1923, the ambivert only was meant for normal persons in between the introvert and extravert extremes. Although the ambivert could have been taken up by early personality psychologists who were transitioning from the study of the abnormal to the normal, it largely failed to gain traction. Whether among psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, or applied and personality psychologists, the ambivert was personality non grata. It was only within the context of Eysenck's integrative view of types and traits that the ambivert marginally persisted up to the present day and is now the focus of sales management and popular psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is the mind–body problem in mainstream modern psychology examined from a decolonial perspective. The construction of the idea of the separation of mind and body is a seminal point of division of labor in the history of modern capitalism. This division perpetuated by the mind–body dualism idea was necessary to justify the enslavement of some and employment to others. Colonization processes have had profound importance on the mind, feelings, behaviors, and political settings. Throughout its history, the subject treated in EuroAmerican psychology has sought to deal with the mind–body problem as an individual, a separate entity, not as part of the psyche as a whole. A new perspective where the mind and body play an intertwined role is necessary considering subjectivity in a cultural‐historical approach. The subjective level is defined by the unification between symbolical and emotional cultural processes. The body (emotions) operates in conjunction with the culture and, when amalgamated, constitutes what we entitle as subjectivity. An ontology defines the assumptions that lie under a cosmovision and sustains a way of seeing, feeling, thinking, and acting with oneself, others, and the whole living world. It is what defines the real. The trajectory of this paper is an invitation to shed light from a decolonial perspective on social inequality concerning the present crises of humanity. The consequences of social inequality expressed today indicate the difficulties created by the dichotomy of mind and body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chicago Committee on the Behavioral Sciences occupies a special place in the eponymous movement. Involving prominent figures such as psychologist James G. Miller and neurophysiologist Ralph W. Gerard, this committee embodied the common belief among behavioral scientists that a cross-disciplinary approach using natural science methods was key to understanding major issues facing mid-century American society. This interdivisional committee fell under the jurisdiction of both the natural and social sciences. As such, its flagship project, an institute of mental sciences, had to face the reluctance both of natural scientists who thought it inadequately scientific and of social scientists who regard its efforts as too narrow in scope and too biological in orientation. Though it failed in its main objective to create an institute, the committee was a formidable instrument of intellectual stimulation and socialization for its members. It provided them with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with each other's scientific backgrounds, practices and jargons, realize the significance of academic cultural differences and learn ways to accommodate them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, historians of psychology have largely ignored the role of academic publishing and the editorial policies of the late nineteenth century. This paper analyzes the role played by academic publishing in the history of psychology in the specific case of France, a country that provides a very interesting and unique model. Up until the middle of the 1890s, there was no collection specifically dedicated to psychology. Alfred Binet was the first to found, in 1897, a collection of works specifically dedicated to scientific psychology. He chose to work with Reinwald-Schleicher. However, Binet was soon confronted with (1) competition from other French publishing houses, and (2) Schleicher's management and editorial problems that were to sound the death knell for Binet's emerging editorial ambitions. The intention of this paper is to encourage the efforts of the pioneers of modern psychology to have their work published and disseminated., (© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

This paper revisits the 1962 splitting of the South African Psychological Association (SAPA), when disaffected Afrikaner psychologists broke away to form the whites-only Psychological Institute of the Republic of South Africa (PIRSA). It presents an analysis of the rhetorical justification for forming a new professional association on principles at odds with prevailing international norms, demonstrating how the episode involved more than the question of admitting black psychologists to the association. In particular, the paper argues that the SAPA-PIRSA separation resulted from an Afrikaner nationalist reading of the goals of psychological science. PIRSA, that is, insisted on promoting a discipline committed to the ethnic-national vision of the apartheid state. For its part, SAPA's racial integration was of a nominal order only, ostensibly to protect itself from international sanction. The paper concludes that, in a racist society, it is difficult to produce anything other than a racist psychology., (© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The American-Canadian psychologist Mary Ainsworth (1913-1999) developed the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) to measure mother-child attachment and attachment theorists have used it ever since. When Ainsworth published the first results of the SSP in 1969, it seemed a completely novel and unique instrument. However, in this paper we will show that the SSP had many precursors and that the road to such an instrument was long and winding. Our analysis of hitherto little-known studies on children in strange situations allowed us to compare these earlier attempts with the SSP. We argue that it was the combination of Ainsworth's working experience with William Blatz and John Bowlby, her own research in Uganda and Baltimore, and the strong connection of the SSP with attachment theory, that made the SSP differ enough from the other strange situation studies to become one of the most widely used instruments in developmental psychology today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the shift in sensitivities that took place between the 1980s and 2019 toward psychological suffering in Algeria. Promoters of psychotherapy showed an increase in receptivity—via the media, public authorities, and the general population—to their practices and discourses during this period. Based on professional literature, interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts, and newspaper articles and essays, this article considers the following aspects: the use of psychotherapy, the authority of psychoanalytic/psychopathological analyses, and the ethics of relation in politics. Taking a social and cultural history of politics approach, it traces the discontinuous politicization of psychotherapy over the course of events (namely the uprising of 1988, the civil war of the 1990s, and the 2019 popular movement) and examines the interactions between the state, popular mobilizations, and the psychotherapists. The civil war of the 1990s coincided with the normalization of "trauma" on a global scale, and procedures for the prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder were put in place in Algeria from 1997 onwards. In this process of legitimizing psychological suffering and its treatment, the promoters of psychotherapy who belonged to the less visible margins gained authority. The year‐long protest movement (2019) against the regime performed the ethics of relation, focusing on human relations, reflexivity, and living together. Promoters of psychotherapy identified consistently with the political subjectivities produced within the 2019 popular movement characterized by massive pacifist marches against the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article calls for abstracts on topics related to the history of the human, behavioral, and social sciences for the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences' Seminar for the History of Science to be held on July 12 to 14, 2017 at the University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy. The conference will reportedly focus on several topics including the history of ESHHS, history and new trends in human sciences' historiography, and laboratory science and professionalization.

The article offers information on several behavioral science conferences worldwide as of April 2017 including one on the exploration Yucatan, Mexico to be held in Yucatan, another on the impact of computers on the society in Pennsylvania, and one on medical history in Scotland.

This article analyzes the development of the National Anthropological Film Center as an outgrowth of the Smithsonian's efforts to promote a multidisciplinary program in 'urgent anthropology' during the 1960s and 1970s. It considers how film came to be seen as an ideal tool for the documentation and preservation of a wide range of human data applicable to both the behavioral and life sciences. In doing so, it argues that the intellectual and institutional climate facilitated by the Smithsonian's museum structure during this period contributed to the Center's initial establishment as well its eventual decline. Additionally, this piece speaks to the continued relevance of ethnographic film archives for future scientific investigations within and beyond the human sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the duality of the Black psychology movement in the United States as both a distinctly American and a postcolonial approach to mental health. The Westside Community Mental Health Center in San Francisco served as the organizational hub for the Association for Black Psychologists (ABPsi) in the 1970s. The Westside clinicians understood forensic psychology as a kind of preventative care as California, more so than any other state, was seduced by the eugenic dream of human improvement through therapeutic interventions in schools and prisons intended to correct the wayward deviant. Their community's mental wellbeing required dismantling the interlinked disciplinary apparatus which disproportionately surveyed, tracked, and confined young Black men. These psychologists mounted a legal challenge to the use of intelligence testing to sort Black children in schools, seeking to replace standardized tests with "dynamic assessments" inspired by Israeli psychologist Reuven Feuerstein's work with refugee children. They consulted on the voir dire process in the highly politicized Angela Davis trial to minimize the presence of racially prejudiced jurors. They offered expert testimony on the psychological damage of solitary confinement on behalf of prison activists. The Westside team artfully developed and deployed the psychological concept of "bias" in their confrontations with local manifestations of the American carceral state. In their theoretical writings, these psychologists reflected upon their historical positionality, understanding themselves as products of the decolonial moment. Bay Area encounters with Third World internationalism, the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Nation of Islam, and community‐led substance abuse programs shaped clinical care at Westside and inspired the Afrocentric consciousness many came to espouse. ABPsi initially had a significant impact on the historically white American Psychological Association's training practices. However, the two organizations split over the IQ controversy at a moment when psychologists became increasingly enmeshed in the criminal justice system [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To clarify the historical origins of theoretical and methodological problems faced by Argentinian psychology today, this article describes the philosophical and epistemological ideas held by psychoanalytically oriented professors and transmitted to undergraduate students during the institutionalization and professionalization of psychology at Argentinian universities between 1962 and 1983. Drawing from primary sources such as official publications and undergraduate syllabi, we analyze the systematic and normative perspective of those psychoanalysts on issues such as the nature of science, the scientific method, and the legitimate ways to do research. We argue that the philosophical approach they defended within psychology programs was markedly relativistic, solipsistic, and often recursive, leading them to conceive of psychoanalysis both as a meta‐theory and a self‐sufficient science. The fact that this "theory‐laden" philosophy of science was gradually adopted by psychology graduates (or undergraduates) throughout their education could thus help explain several epistemological beliefs currently held by a majority of Argentinian psychologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines epistemic logics in 18th‐century German empirical psychology and distinguishes three basic patterns at play throughout the century. First, as empirical psychology was introduced in the 1720s, it relied on the Aristotelian‐scholastic conception of experience as universal and evidently true propositions of how things typically behave in nature. Empirical psychology was here a matter of defining and demonstrating the general nature, structure, and functions of the soul by referring to experiences that most people could recognize as universally and evidently true. Second, around midcentury this logic was challenged as a new generation of philosopher‐physicians launched an empirical psychology based on extraordinary medical cases. Rather than focusing on the general and universal, this new strand of case‐based empirical psychology charted the individual, unique and often abnormal. Third, from the early 1770s, the interest in the individual was complemented by a new discourse on psychological method. Adopting the epistemic techniques developed within natural and experimental philosophy, empirical knowledge of the soul was seen as the result of rigorously conducted singular observations that were frequently repeated and carefully documented and analyzed. Rather than replacing one another sequentially, these three epistemic logics should be understood as cumulative. That is, despite sometimes profound differences, each new logic was layered on top of the existing ones, thereby broadening and increasing the epistemic complexity of empirical psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of linear perspective in the early 15th century and the discovery of the retinal image two centuries later became cornerstones of an approach to visual perception theory that eventually took shape primarily in the hands of British Empiricist philosophers. Even as this approach has dominated perceptual theory to the present day, the perspectivist influence on pictorial representation within the visual arts steadily diminished over time. Its decisive break with perspectivism came in the early 20th century with transformative 19th century changes in the sciences and technology. Collectively, these events elevated process and change over fixity and stasis, and ultimately led to the collapse of the distinction between space and time in the physical sciences. Even so, approaches to visual perception in psychology remained remarkably untouched by these occurrences until the 1960s when the experimental psychologist James Gibson drew upon them to challenge the legacy of perspectivism and the visual image and their effect on perceptual theory. His ecological approach to perception recognizes animacy as the essential functional property of living things, and in doing so, conceptualizes seeing as a perception–action process. From this stance, Gibson like the visual artists earlier in the century rejected the assumption that visual perception is best characterized as the capturing of static images. Jointly and yet independently, both efforts loosened the grip that perspectivism and the visual image have maintained on the arts and on visual perception theory, respectively, bringing 19th century scientific advances into 20th century psychological thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on several international behavioral science-related conferences in 2019, including The Pharmacist and Quality Medicines, 44th International Congress for the History of Pharmacy in Washington, D.C., the 16th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology in Prague, Czech Republic and the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology in Oslo, Norway.

The article offers information on conferences in the field of psychology from October 2018 to April 2019, including the 2019 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) in Chicago, Illinois, and the 26th Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (PSA) in Seattle, Washington.

Information on the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences annual conference held at the University of Bari Aldi Moro in Bari, Italy on July 12-14, 2017 is presented. Topics discussed include the use of psychological tests in Spain before and after the Civil War, the use of wax models in anatomical teaching during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and surgical practices applied to women in the late 19th century.

Information about professional bodies International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences and European Society for the History of Human Sciences' joint meeting held on June 27 to July 1, 2016 in Barcelona, Spain is presented. The meeting featured numerous activities which include lectures, business meetings, a jam session, a book auction, and a film showing. Lecturers include Matei Iagher, Miguel Forcada, and Saulo de Freitas Araujo.

Ellen Langer's mindfulness construct is presented as "indigenous" to disciplinary psychology. Langer's early work laid the foundations for the research program she would come to call the psychology of possibility. Studying inattentive behavior (mindlessness) and intentionally reflective cognition (mindfulness) placed her work directly in line with the theoretical priorities of the 1970s and influenced the direction of research in several subdisciplines related to social cognition. Positioning Langer's work at an intersection crossed by various discourse communities in psychology explains much of its influence within the discipline. However, its relevance is additionally related to a broader field of research and application also employing the terminology of mindfulness. While superficially synonymous, the majority of mindfulness research is distinguished from Langer's due to differences in origination, definition, and goals. Comparative assessments are used as a lens through which to interrogate the social politics of mindfulness theories' burgeoning success over the past half century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Born in 1871, the psychologist William Stern died on March 27, 1938, while on the faculty of Duke University, an exile from Nazi Germany. In an obituary appearing shortly thereafter, R. B. Macleod (1938) opined that "[w]ith the publication in 1935 of [Stern's] I Allgemeine Psychologie auf personalisticher Grundlage i [ I General Psychology from the Personalist Perspective i ], [his] system of personalistic psychology finally received a formulation which will place it among the other great systems of modern psychology. [Extracted from the article]

There are many different ways to assess the significance of historical figures. Often we look at the influence of their writings, or at the important offices they held with disciplinary institutions such as universities, journals, and scholarly societies. In this study, however, we took a novel approach: we took the complete memberships, ca. 1900, of four organizations-the American Psychological Association, the Western Philosophical Association, the American Philosophical Association, and the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology-and visualized them as a network. We then identified individuals who 'bridged' between two or more of these groups and considered what might be termed their 'centrality' to the psychological-philosophical community of their time. First, we examined these figures qualitatively, briefly describing their lives and careers. Then we approached the problem mathematically, considering several alternative technical realizations of 'centrality' and then explaining our reasons for choosing eigenvector centrality as the best for our purposes. We found a great deal of overlap among the results of the qualitative and quantitative approaches, but also some telling differences. J. Mark Baldwin, Edward Buchner, Christine Ladd Franklin, and Frank Thilly consistently emerged as highly central figures. Some more marginal figures such as Max Meyer, and Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Edward A. Pace, Edward H. Griffin played interesting roles as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the easily recognizable nature of the Rorschach ink blot test very little is known about the history of the test in Britain. We attend to the oft-ignored history of the Rorschach test in Britain and compare it to its history in the US. Prior to the Second World War, Rorschach testing in Britain had attracted advocates and critiques. Afterward, the British Rorschach Forum, a network with a high proportion of women, developed around the Tavistock Institute in London and The Rorschach Newsletter. In 1968, the International Rorschach Congress was held in London but soon after the group became less exclusive, and fell into decline. A comparative account of the Rorschach in Britain demonstrates how different national institutions invested in the 'projective hypothesis' according to the influence of psychoanalysis, the adoption of a nationalized health system, and the social positioning of 'others' throughout the twentieth century. In comparing and contrasting the history of the Rorschach in Britain and the US, we decentralize and particularize the history of North American Psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Carnegie Corporation's role as a patron of the behavioral sciences has been overlooked; its support for the behavioral sciences not only began earlier than the Ford Foundation's but was also at least equally important to their success. I show how the close postwar collaboration between the Carnegie Corporation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to promote the behavioral sciences emerged after a strugglebetween Carnegie and the Rockefeller Foundation over the direction and leadership of the SSRC. I then focus on three postwar projects Carnegie helped conceive and fund that were publicized as the work of the SSRC: Chase's The Proper Study of Mankind (1948), Stouffer et al.'s The American Soldier (), and the Michigan's Survey Research Center 1952 election study. In each of these projects, Carnegie deliberately muted its own role and promoted the remade SSRC as a major advocate for the behavioral sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1880s France, hypnotism enjoyed unique medico-scientific legitimacy. This was in striking contrast to preceding decades when its precursor, magnétisme animal, was rejected by the medical/academic establishment as a disreputable, supernaturally tinged practice. Did the legitimation of hypnotism result from researchers repudiating any reference to the wondrous? Or did strands of magnetic thinking persist? This article interrogates the relations among hypnotism, magnétisme, and the domain of the wondrous through close analysis of scientific texts on hypnotism. In question is the notion that somnambulist subjects possessed hyperacute senses, enabling them to perceive usually imperceptible signs, and thus inadvertently to denature researchers' experiments (a phenomenon known as unconscious suggestion). The article explores researchers' uncritical and unanimous acceptance of these ideas, arguing that they originate in a holdover from magnétisme. This complicates our understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between science and a precursor 'pseudo-science,' and, more narrowly, of the notorious Salpêtrière-Nancy 'battle' over hypnotism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing accusations about weak military discipline following the supposedly poor behavior of American soldiers held captive during the Korean War, President Dwight Eisenhower instituted a Code of Conduct for the Armed Services in 1955. In response, military leaders hired numerous social and behavioral scientists to investigate the nature of the prisoner-of-war (POW) experience. These researchers not only challenged official government accounts of POW activities but opened up a new field of study-stress research. They also changed military training policy, which soon focused more on stress inoculation training, and, in so doing, helped lead the shift in psychology away from behaviorism to ego and cognitive psychology. In this sense, my article ties shifts within the social and behavioral sciences in the 1950s to the military history of the early Cold War, a connection generally missing from most accounts of this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]