Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T14:04:16.443Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Of What is History of Psychology a History?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Graham Richards
Graham Richards
Affiliation:
North East London Polytechnic, Romford Road, London E15, U.K.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The British Psychological Society having established a ‘Philosophy and History’ section, a fresh look at the nature of the History of Psychology is called for. In this paper, I would like to make a contribution to this by raising some conundrums which have yet to be adequately addressed. First, though, what has happened in the History of Psychology so far? Psychologists have been writing histories of their discipline since the turn of the century; Baldwin's History of Psychology appeared in 1913, for example, and the first volume of G. S. Brett's trilogy of the same title in 1912, a year which also saw Dessoir's Outlines of the History of Psychology translated into English. This early work was clearly aimed at providing a respectable genealogy for the nascent discipline; only about a fifth of Baldwin's work actually deals with experimental or empirical Psychology dating from later than the mid-nineteenth century, while Brett treats scientific approaches virtually as a coda to a survey of the history of the philosophy of mind. Psychology is presented as the legitimate heir to the main western philosophical tradition, sired on it, so to speak, by physiologists such as Helmholtz, Muller and Broca. In 1929, E. G. Boring published the first edition of his A History of Experimental Psychology, which dominated the field for decades along with Gardner Murphy's Historical Introduction of Modern Psychology of 1928, a lighter weight work but with a somewhat broader range, which served as an introductory text. Both went into subsequent editions, the latter as recently as 1972 (much enlarged). The series The History of Psychology in Autobiography, begun in 1930 and now in its seventh volume (1980), contains professional autobiographies by the ageing eminent of varying levels of self-disclosure, wit and informative value. It is not, however, until the 1960s that a self-conscious sub-discipline calling itself ‘History of Psychology’ emerges within Psychology, being pioneered by the late R. I. Watson in the United States. New histories begin appearing, including Kantor's very positivistic The Scientific Evolution of Psychology Vol. 1 of 1963 and Hearnshaw's A Short History of British Psychology of 1964. In 1965, the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences was started, formally signalling the arrival of the new sub-discipline on the scene. Subsequent events warrant a more critical appraisal.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 201 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1987

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Baldwin, James Mark, History of Psychology: A Sketch and an Interpretation. London, n.d. (Preface date: 1913).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Brett, G.S., History of Psychology, 3 vols, London, 1912–1921.Google Scholar

3 Dessoir, M., Outlines of the History of Psychology, (tr. Fisher, D.), New York, 1912CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other early histories of Psychology in English include: Klemm, O., History of Psychology (tr. Wilm, E.C. and Pinter, R.), New York, 1914CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pillsbury, W.B., History of Psychology, New York, 1929Google Scholar; Rand, B., Classical Psychologists, Boston, 1912Google Scholar; Warren, H.C., History of the Association of Psychology, New York, 1921CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hall, G.S., Founders of Modern Psychology, New York, 1912.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Boring, Edwin Garrigues, A History of Experimental Psychology, New York, 1929 (2nd edn. 1957)Google Scholar; Boring's other principal contribution to the area was Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology, New York, 1942.Google Scholar

5 Murphy, Gardner, An Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology, London, 1928 (6th edn. with Joseph K. Kovach, 1972).Google Scholar

6 Murchison, C. (ed.), The History of Psychology in Autobiography, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1930, 1932, 1936CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boring, E.G. (ed.), New York, 1952Google Scholar; Boring, E.G. and Lindzey, Gardner (eds), New Jersey, 1967Google Scholar; Lindzey, Gardner (ed.), New Jersey, 1974, San Francisco, 1980.Google Scholar

7 Kantor, J.R., The Scientific Evolution of Psychology Vol. 1. Chicago and Granville, Ohio, 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Hearnshaw, L.S., A Short History of British Psychology 1840–1940, London, 1964.Google Scholar

9 This is conventionally dated from Watson, J.B., ‘Psychology as the behaviorist views it’, Psychological Review, (1913), 20, pp. 158–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Watson, R.I., Eminent Contributors to Psychology, Volume 1: A Bibliography of Primary References, New York, 1974Google Scholar; Volume 2: A Bibliography of Secondary References, New York, 1976.Google Scholar

R.I. Watson died in 1980, having been Professor of Psychology at the University of New Hampshire since 1967 [see Ross, Barbara, ‘In memoriam: Robert I. Watson Snr. 1909–1980’, Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences (J.H.B.S. hereafter), (1981), 17, pp. 1–2]3.0.CO;2-K>CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the methodology used in compiling this work see Watson, R.I. and Merrifield, Maralyn, ‘Eminent psychologists: correction and additions’, J.H.B.S. (1970), 6, pp. 261–262Google Scholar; ditto, ‘Characteristics of individuals eminent in psychology in temporal perspective I.’ J.H.B.S. (1973), 9, pp. 339–368, as well as pp. ix–xxiGoogle Scholar of the introduction to Vol. 1. In addition to the observations of this work which follow in the main text, might be noted that bibliographic details are often only provided for the most recent, not the first, editions of books!

11 Watson, R.I., The Great Psychologists: Aristotle to Freud, Philadelphia and New York, 1963.Google Scholar

12 Meijer, Onno, ‘De Vries on the Perfecting of Man’. Unpublished paper read at the B.S.H.S. meeting, History of the Life Sciences. Ilkley, 10 07 1984.Google Scholar

13 James, William, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols, New York and London, 1890, Vol. 1, p. 121.Google Scholar

14 Boring, , op. cit., p. xiiiGoogle Scholar. That Boring conceives of the Zeitgeist as an external factor is evident in the following passage:

Again and again it seems as if the crucial insight either does not come until the Zeitgeist has prepared for its inception, or, if it comes too soon for the Zeitgeist, then it does not register and is lost until it is unearthed later when the culture is ready to accept it. p. 4.

See also pp. 3–5, 743–744.

15 Desmond, A., Archetypes and Ancestors, London, 1982.Google Scholar

16 Asch, Solomon E., Social Psychology, New Jersey, 1952, chapter 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also his ‘Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment’. In: Guetzkow, H. (ed.), Groups, Leadership and Men, Pittsburg, 1951.Google Scholar

17 Perrin, S. and Spencer, C., ‘Independence or conformity in the Asch experiment as a reflection of cultural and situational factors’, British Journal of Social Psychology, (1981), 20, pp. 205–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Things have now been given a further twist by a reported finding of a post-Falklands War increase in British conformity; Nicholson, Nigel, Cole, Steven G. and Rocklin, Thomas, ‘Conformity in the Asch situation: a comparison between contemporary British and US university students’Google Scholar, ibid., (1985), 24, pp. 59–63.

18 Koffka, Kurt, The Principles of Gestalt Psychology, London, 1935, pp. 26–27.Google Scholar

19 Watson, J.B., Behaviorism, 1924, rep. New York, 1970 (7th edn.), pp. 303–304.Google Scholar

20 Ehrenreich, B. and English, D., For Her Oum Good—A Century of the Experts Advice to Mothers, New York, 1979.Google Scholar

21 Stern, Wiliam, Psychology of Early Childhood up to the Sixth Year of Age, (tr. Harwell, Anna of 3rd edn.), London, 1924, chapter 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Montessori, Maria, Pedagogical Anthropology, (tr. Cooper, Federick Taber), London, 1913.Google Scholar

23 Galton, Francis, Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, London, 1883, pp. 107–108 (Everyman's Library edition, 1907).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Jaensch, E.R., Der Gegentypus, Leipzig, 1938Google Scholar; see Brown, Roger: Social Psychology, New York and London, 1965, pp. 477–478.Google Scholar

25 Danziger, Kurt, ‘Origins of the schema of stimulated motion: towards a pre-history of modern psychology’. History of Science, (1983), xxi, pp. 183–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Kassler, Jamie C., ‘Man—a musical instrument: models of the brain and mental functioning before the computer’, History of Science, (1984), xxii, pp. 59–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Riesmann, David, The Lonely Crowd; A Study of the Changing American Character, New Haven, CT, 1969.Google Scholar