The May 2012 issue of History of Psychology is now online. Included in this issue are a number of all new articles, including pieces on the history of postpartum depression, a late-nineteenth century nerve training controversy, and the use of psychology by American ministers in the mid-twentieth century. Other items in this issue include an interview with Philip Zimbardo on the 40th anniversary of the Stanford Prison Experiment, the incorporation of cross-cultural examples in teaching, and a look back at the Holocaust interviews conducted by psychologist David Boder in the 1940s. Additionally, Frances Cherry, Rhoda Unger, and Andrew Winston comment on an earlier article by William Woodward on Jewish émigré psychologists and Woodward responds. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“Can’t a mother sing the blues? Postpartum depression and the construction of motherhood in late 20th-century America,” by Lisa Held & Alexandra Rutherford. The abstract reads,

Popular depictions of 20th-century American motherhood have typically emphasized the joy and fulfillment that a new mother can expect to experience on her child’s arrival. But starting in the 1950s, discussions of the “baby blues” began to appear in the popular press. How did articles about the baby blues, and then postpartum depression, challenge these rosy depictions? In this article, we examine portrayals of postpartum distress in popular magazines and advice books during the second half of the 20th century to examine how the unsettling pairing of distress and motherhood was culturally negotiated in these decades. We show that these portrayals revealed a persistent reluctance to situate motherhood itself as the cause of serious emotional distress and a consistent focus on changing mothers to adapt to their role rather than changing the parameters of the role itself. Regardless of whether these messages actually helped or hindered new mothers themselves, we suggest that they reflected the rarely challenged assumption that motherhood and distress should not mix.

“Delsartean hypnosis for girls’ bodies and minds: Annie Payson Call and the Lasell Seminary nerve training controversy,” by John M. Andrick. The abstract reads,

In the summer of 1890, news that two students at Lasell Seminary for Young Women in Auburndale, MA had suffered a complete nervous collapse as a result of being hypnotized by an instructor in a nerve training class caused a brief but sharp national sensation regarding hypnotism and nerve training in girls’ education. The instructor, Annie Payson Call, denied practicing hypnotism, and the seminary’s principal defended both Call and the “mind concentration” course she taught at Lasell. Call’s approach to nerve training blended Delsartean relaxation exercises, New Thought psychology, and self-hypnotic techniques into a therapeutic regimen which can be termed “Delsartean hypnosis.” Developed further in her 1891 popular self-help handbook, Power Through Repose, Call’s variety of Delsartean hypnosis was incorporated into the procedures of proponents of suggestive therapeutics, and it served as a model for subsequent relaxation training programs in the early- and mid-20th century.

“‘Be the love of God rather than talk about it’: Ministers study psychology,” by Stephanie Muravchik. The abstract reads,

After World War II, American ministers successfully drew on training in psychology to nurture their spiritual and vocational development. Contrary to what critics of a therapeutic ethos in American culture have asserted, this social history of ministers shows that their adoption of psychological modes of thinking was neither atomizing nor secularizing. Rather, it helped them become better people and better ministers. It nurtured their faith as well as their social connections. Thus, I argue against critics who have feared the civically enervating effects of psychological outlooks in American society.

“Philip G. Zimbardo on his career and the Stanford Prison Experiment’s 40th anniversary,” by Scott Drury, Scott A. Hutchens, Duane E. Shuttlesworth, & Carole L. White. The abstract reads,

We interviewed Philip G. Zimbardo on April 19, 2011, in anticipation of the 40th anniversary of the Stanford Prison Experiment in August 2011. While Zimbardo’s name is mentioned often in tandem with the experiment, he has distinguished himself in many other areas within psychology before and after the experiment, beginning with an accomplished early career at New York University in which he took interest in social psychology research on deindividuation. We discussed the Stanford Prison Experiment in the greater context of his varied and illustrious career, including recent pioneering work on heroism, the establishment of The Shyness Clinic at Stanford University, and the iconic Discovering Psychology series. We also addressed his adroit and candid approach to the experiment itself over the years.

“Visual illusions and ethnocentrism: Exemplars for teaching cross-cultural concepts,” by Kenneth D. Keith. The abstract reads,

This article discusses the origins of cross-cultural interest in two concepts fundamental to psychology students’ views of the world: simple visual illusions and ethnocentrism. Although students encounter these ideas in introductory psychology, textbooks rarely describe the nature or origin of cross-cultural knowledge about them. The article presents a brief account of the history of these concepts and relates them to contemporary notions of psychology and culture. Using visual perception and ethnocentrism as examples, the article suggests the importance of teaching that different people see the world in different ways and the role of that lesson in a future demanding increased cross-cultural understanding.

“The wonder of their voices: The 1946 Holocaust interviews of David Boder (New York: Oxford, 2010),” by Alan C. Rosen. The abstract reads,

Writing a study of psychologist David Boder’s 1946 displaced persons (DP) interview project gave me a chance to further document the substantial early response to the Holocaust. This was clearly one important piece of my study, and one that was eminently straightforward. Yet much of the research on Boder’s project at the point in time that I carried it out was elliptical, partly because the primary interview materials were coming to light at an astonishing pace, partly because the archive collections were virtually untapped, and partly because of the misconception of Boder and his interview project itself.

“Gender, ethnicity, and career trajectories: A comment on Woodward (2010),” by Frances Cherry, Rhoda Unger, & Andrew S. Winston. The abstract reads,

Woodward (2010) argued that Maria Rickers-Ovsiankina, Eugenia Hanfmann, and Tamara Dembo constituted a group of Jewish émigré psychologists who received substantial help in America from a “Jewish network” of patronage. This comment focuses on the historiographic problems and pitfalls of essentialized ethnic identification. There was no evidence that Maria Rickers-Ovsiankina was a Jew or that Eugenia Hanffman, raised Russian Orthodox, identified herself as a Jew, in contrast to Tamara Dembo, who did so. We argue that these women were part of an active network of Gestaltists, topologists, and Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues leaders, and that any help that they received may be explained by the shared theoretical and disciplinary outlook of these groups as opposed to a “Jewish network.”

“Reply to a commentary on gender, ethnicity, and career trajectories,” by William R. Woodward. The abstract reads,

Cherry, Unger, and Winston suggest that a more nuanced way of treating ethnic differences is called for, suggesting that professional groupings are more salient than ethnic backgrounds in understanding the careers of three émigré women. I affirmed a broader thesis, and I explicitly referred to “Russian women émigrés,” because in fact the ethnic and professional as well as scientific identifications were far more complex. I suggest here that the existing literature on Jewish academics may be guilty of essentializing Jews, leading me astray in minor ways, whereas I attempted to demonstrate the complexities of these women’s career trajectories with particular attention to informal networks of Jews and non-Jews. “Informal Jewish networks” exemplified here include Kurt Lewin, David Shakow, Jerome Frank, Thelma Alper, Heinz Werner, Abraham Maslow, the University of Iowa, Brandeis University, and The New School. Consistent with poststructural and postcolonial literatures, ethnic and multiethnic networks offer apt terms that have broad ramifications in psychology and beyond.

Nikolas Rose, “Engineering Selfhood in the 21st Century.”

Dr. Rose discusses the implications for the ways we understand and govern ourselves and the new dilemmas of rights and obligations that confront us taking examples from biomedicine, genomics and neuroscience.

Cornelius Borck, “Mind the Gap: The Neurosciences and Their Determination to Explain the Human.”

Understanding the brain and the biological basis of mind, consciousness and behaviour is the ultimate challenge. It stimulates researchers to look into the brain with ever more sophisticated technology such as functional neuroimaging. This colourful visualization of mental processes in the living human brain enthrals scientists and the public alike.

The British Psychological Society History of Psychology Centre in conjunction with UCL’s Centre for the History of the Psychological Disciplines

Location: UCL Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, Room 544,* 5th Floor, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HJ (map)

Time: 6pm-7.30pm

Thursday 17th May

Speaker: Dr. Fernando Vidal, (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin)

Seminar title:“The Brains of Cinema and the Brains of Science”

Abstract: Cinema has been one of the major cultural spaces for elaborating and staging the belief that the brain is the only organ we need in order to be ourselves – in other words, the notion that the human being is essentially a “cerebral subject.” Since its earliest appearance in the 1930s, filmic embodiments of the cerebral subject have often incorporated scientific information. However, once assimilated into film, this information takes on a new life, and becomes part of specifically cinematographic representations and traditions. The assessment of filmic contents against their scientific accuracy dilutes the significance of cinema as a site where science-related challenges materialize under original forms.

Wednesday 6th June

Speaker: Professor Annette Mülberger, (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Seminar title: “The Dangerous Path of Practical Psychometry”

Abstract:Without instruments scientific research, as we know it today, would be impossible. Many phenomena would not be accessible with our unaided senses, and surely intelligence or the level of mental maturity in form of IQ would be one of them. The story of how the first mental tests emerged is well known. Even more contextualized histories about how the use of the intelligence tests like the Binet-Simon spread within the French and North-American Republics have been produced more recently (see, for example Carson, The Measure of Merit, 2007).

The story of mental measurement is complex and there are still too many open questions. One first question refers to what had happened in other cultural contexts like Spain. When, where and, especially why were mental tests used there? Some work has been done on the role of several institutions which were instrumental in the spread of mental testing in Spain, like the centers for Professional Guidance Institute. Identifying and taking care of the new human category of the “feebleminded” or “mentally abnormal” was generally included into the professional tasks of the school physician. At the same time, Spanish school teachers were experiencing innovative pedagogical tools and ideas, also showed some interest in mental measurement.

In my talk I will take a look on how the interest in registering mental capacity of children arose during the first decades of the 20th centuries in Spain, paying special attention to the initiatives launched by some self-taught teachers before and during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Thereby the following questions will be relevant: why did some Spanish teachers become interested in psychological testing in schools? Which tests did they apply and how? What consequences did the results of the testing have for the children? How did the school-physicians react to these attempts?

The in-depth-study of specific cases where psychological tests were used in Spanish schools evidences different strategies of appropriation of the scientific tool to local needs and reveals interesting shifts in the functionality of the test.

The April 2012 issue of History of the Human Sciences is now online. This month’s issue is a special issue, guest edited by Elizabeth Valentine, on the topic of parapsychology, occultism, and spiritualism. The eight all new articles in the issue explore the history of psychology’s relationship to spiritualism and other occult matters across the globe; most specifically in the Netherlands, the United States of America, Germany, Britain, France, Spain, Hungary, and Japan. (Pictured above is medium Eusapia Palladino, the subject of one of the issues articles, in a seance in 1898.) Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“Psychical research and parapsychology interpreted: Suggestions from the international historiography of psychical research and parapsychology for investigating its history in the Netherlands,” by Ingrid Kloosterman. The abstract reads,

One of the reasons the history of parapsychology and its ancestor psychical research is intriguing is because it addresses a central issue: the boundaries of science. This article provides an overview of the historiography of parapsychology and presents an approach to investigate the Dutch history of parapsychology contributing to the understanding of this central theme. In the first section the historical accounts provided by psychical researchers and parapsychologists themselves are discussed; next those studies of sociologists and historians understanding parapsychology as deviant and even potentially revolutionary are dealt with; third, more contemporary studies are examined whereby enterprises such as parapsychology are understood as central to the culture in which they arose. On the basis of this analysis a new direction in the historiography of the subject is suggested in the fourth section, centred upon the relation between parapsychology and psychology in the Netherlands throughout the 20th century. In the Netherlands not only were pioneering psychologists such as Gerard Heymans (1857–1930) actively involved in experiments into telepathy, the first professor in parapsychology in the world – Wilhelm Tenhaeff (1894–1981) – was appointed in 1953 at Utrecht University and in the 1970s and 1980s parapsychology had its own research laboratory at Utrecht University in the division of psychology. This unique situation in the Netherlands deserves scholarly attention and makes an interesting case to investigate the much-neglected connections between the fields of psychology and parapsychology in the 20th century. The connections between psychology and parapsychology might help us to understand why parapsychology came to be regarded as a pseudoscience.

“Psychical research and the origins of American psychology: Hugo Münsterberg, William James and Eusapia Palladino,” by Andreas Sommer. The abstract reads,

Largely unacknowledged by historians of the human sciences, late-19th-century psychical researchers were actively involved in the making of fledgling academic psychology. Moreover, with few exceptions historians have failed to discuss the wider implications of the fact that the founder of academic psychology in America, William James, considered himself a psychical researcher and sought to integrate the scientific study of mediumship, telepathy and other controversial topics into the nascent discipline. Analysing the celebrated exposure of the medium Eusapia Palladino by German-born Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg as a representative example, this article discusses strategies employed by psychologists in the United States to expel psychical research from the agenda of scientific psychology. It is argued that the traditional historiography of psychical research, dominated by accounts deeply averse to its very subject matter, has been part of an ongoing form of ‘boundary-work’ to bolster the scientific status of psychology.

“Hallucination or materialization? The animism versus spiritism debate in late-19th-century Germany,” by Heather Wolffram. The abstract reads,

This article considers a long-neglected episode in the disciplinary evolution of the border sciences in Germany: the so-called animism versus spiritism debate. While historians have long acknowledged the significance of this dispute, which introduced a range of new hypotheses and nomenclature to the field, there has been little detailed analysis of it. Looking closely at the arguments of the main combatants, this article attempts to highlight not just the complex multi-frontal conflicts that took place during the late 19th century between academic psychologists, spiritists and psychical researchers over the parameters and proper objects of the nascent field of psychology, but also the epistemological and methodological battles between spiritists and psychical researchers over the nature of both psychology and the unconscious. It is concluded that researchers such as Hartmann and Aksakow in their pursuit of a new scientific psychology based on the phenomena of the unconscious were just as representative of contemporary psychology as were Wundt and his colleagues.

“Spooks and spoofs: Relations between psychical research and academic psychology in Britain in the inter-war period,” by Elizabeth R. Valentine. The abstract reads,

This article describes the relations between academic psychology and psychical research in Britain during the inter-war period, in the context of the fluid boundaries between mainstream psychology and both psychical research and popular psychology. Specifically, the involvement with Harry Price of six senior academic psychologists: William McDougall, William Brown, J. C. Flugel, Cyril Burt, C. Alec Mace and Francis Aveling, is described. Personal, metaphysical and socio-historical factors in their collaboration are discussed. It is suggested that the main reason for their mutual attraction was their common engagement in a delicate balancing act between courting popular appeal on the one hand and the assertion of scientific expertise and authority on the other. Their interaction is typical of the boundary work performed at this transitional stage in the development of psychology as a discipline.

“Psychology and psychical research in France around the end of the 19th century,” by Régine Plas. The abstract reads,

During the last third of the 19th century, the ‘new’ French psychology developed within ‘the hypnotic context’ opened up by Charcot. In spite of their claims to the scientific nature of their hypnotic experiments, Charcot and his followers were unable to avoid the miracles that had accompanied mesmerism, the forerunner of hypnosis. The hysterics hypnotized in the Salpêtrière Hospital were expected to have supernormal faculties and these experiments opened the door to psychical research. In 1885 the first French psychology society was founded. The research carried out by this society may seem surprising: its members – Charles Richet in particular – were interested in strange phenomena, like magnetic lucidity, ‘mental suggestion’, thought-reading, etc. Very quickly, psychologists applied themselves to finding rational explanations for these supposedly miraculous gifts. Generally, they ascribed them to unconscious or subconscious perceptual mechanisms. Finally, after a few years, studies of psychical phenomena were excluded from the field of psychology. However, during the 4th International Congress of Psychology, which took place in Paris in 1900, the foundation of an institute devoted to the study of psychical phenomena was announced, but Pierre Janet and Georges Dumas founded within it the Société Française de Psychologie, from which psychical research was excluded. As for Charles Richet, disappointed by the psychologists, he devoted himself to the development of a new ‘science’ which he called ‘Métapsychique’. Several hypotheses have been put forward to account for this early research undertaken by the French psychologists, pertaining as much to parapsychology as to scientific psychology.

“Metapsychics in Spain: Acknowledging or questioning the marvellous?,” by Annette Mülberger and Mónica Balltondre. The abstract reads,

The present article deals with a kind of parapsychology called metapsychics (metapsíquica) as conceived and practised in Spain between 1923 and 1925. First we focus on the reception of a treatise by Richet that evoked both support (Ferrán) and criticism (Mira). Then we examine some experiments on clairvoyance performed at the Marquis of Santa Cara’s home, dealing chiefly with the rise and fall of a case of prodigious vision. The analysis gives special attention to the question of how metapsychics was understood and to which discussions it gave rise. The authors argue that the project of metapsychics must be understood within a frame of two tendencies, namely, the increasing popularization and the demarcation of science that were under way in modern society.

“Sándor Ferenczi and the problem of telepathy,” by Júlia Gyimesi. The abstract reads,

Sándor Ferenczi, the great representative of the Budapest School of Psychoanalysis, had a lifelong interest in psychical phenomena. Although his ideas on the psychoanalytical understanding of spiritualistic phenomena and telepathy were not developed theories, they had a strong influence on some representatives of psychoanalysis, and thus underlay the psychoanalytic interpretation of telepathy. Ferenczi’s ideas on telepathy were interwoven with his most important technical and theoretical innovations. Thus Ferenczi’s thoughts on telepathy say a lot about his psychoanalytical thinking and attitudes, and illuminate the significance of his greatest innovations in the context of psychical research.

“The Fukurai affair: Parapsychology and the history of psychology in Japan,” by Miki Takasuna. The abstract reads,

The history of psychology in Japan from the late 19th century until the first half of the 20th century did not follow a smooth course. After the first psychological laboratory was established at Tokyo Imperial University in 1903, psychology in Japan developed as individual specialties until the Japanese Psychological Association was established in 1927. During that time, Tomokichi Fukurai, an associate professor at Tokyo Imperial University, became involved with psychical research until he was forced out in 1913. The Fukurai affair, as it is sometimes called, was not documented in textbooks on the history of Japanese psychology prior to the late 1990s. Among earlier generations of Japanese psychologists, it has even been taboo for discussion. Today, the affair and its after-effects are considered to have been a major deterrent in the advancement of clinical psychology in Japan during the first half of the 20th century.

“Finding Patrons for Peace Psychology: The Foundations of the Conflict Resolution Movement at the University of Michigan, 1951–1971,” by Teresa Tomás Rangil. No abstract provided.

“Interpreting “Mind-Cure”: William James and the ‘Chief Task…of the Science of Human Nature’,” by Emma Kate Sutton. The abstract reads,

The private papers of the philosopher-psychologist, William James, indicate that he frequented several mental healers during his life, undertaking 100–200 therapeutic sessions concerning a range of symptoms from angina to insomnia. The success of the mind-cure movement constituted for James both a corroboration, and an extension, of the new research into the subconscious self and the psychogenesis of disease. Epistemologically, the experiences of those converts to the “mind-cure religion” exemplified his conviction that positivistic scientific enquiry can only reveal only one part of a wider reality. Metaphysically their reports comprised a powerful body of support for the existence of a “higher consciousness,” a supernatural world of some description. The positing of such a source of “supernormal” healing power was, for James, the best way to reconcile the accounts of those who had been regenerated, via their faith, despite having exhausted all natural reserves of energy and will.

“The Construction of Mind, Self, and Society: The Social Process Behind G. H. Mead’s Social Psychology” by Daniel R. Heubner. The abstract reads,

Mind, Self, and Society, the posthumously published volume by which George Herbert Mead is primarily known, poses acute problems of interpretation so long as scholarship does not consider the actual process of its construction. This paper utilizes extensive archival correspondence and notes in order to analyze this process in depth. The analysis demonstrates that the published form of the book is the result of a consequential interpretive process in which social actors manipulated textual documents within given practical constraints over a course of time. The paper contributes to scholarship on Mead by indicating how this process made possible certain understandings of his social psychology and by relocating the materials that make up the single published text within the disparate contexts from which they were originally drawn.

The May issue of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology is now online. Included in this month’s Time Capsule section is a piece from AHP’s own Arlie Belliveau on the early uses of film in psychology. In particular, Belliveau describes the work of husband and wife team of engineer Frank Gilbreth and industrial psychologist Lillian Moller Gilbreth (both pictured above), who worked in the field of scientific management. The Gilbreths created what were called micromotion films, which aimed to record the minute details of the motions required to perform the highly repetitive work done within factories. (You can view one of their micromotion films online here.) As Belliveau describes,

The first instance of this form of micromotion study occurred in 1912 at the NEBC factory. The Gilbreths set up their camera in a second-floor laboratory in which the walls and floorboards were painted white with a black grid overlay to optimize light reflection and provide a reference to scale. Individual braiding machines and pieces of office equipment were brought upstairs to be filmed under the natural lights of the windows. Factory workers were enlisted to participate as the stars and experts of the films. Each factory task was filmed, and then viewed frame by frame, breaking each motion sequence into individual parts called “Therbligs” (an anagram of “Gilbreths”). The micromotion team (made up of the Gilbreths and cooperating workers) then evaluated the work process to find ways to make it safer, simpler, faster and more ergonomically correct. They developed and filmed these new procedures and used those films to retrain the factory workers.

….Workers reportedly loved seeing themselves projected onto the big screen, and the Gilbreths set up an exhibition room to periodically screen the films. Lillian believed that these screenings improved morale and output while promoting a unification phenomenon she called “happiness minutes.” Happiness minutes were the total amount of time each day that workers felt satisfied with their jobs. Lillian believed this to be an essential element of efficiency, although they only gauged employee happiness through subjective methods (such as their suggestion box system and general impressions obtained from talking to the workers), and never conducted formal psychological surveys. With this in mind, she and Frank adapted later films taken at the Ball Brothers Mason Jar factory in 1918 to include shots of workers smiling at the camera with their names and even nicknames written at the bottom of the screen.

Read the full article, “Psychology’s First Forays into Film,” online here.

When Donald Broadbent died in 1993 he left a legacy which still influences our understanding of how we process the complex information that is all around us and focus on what is salient to us. With his innovative dichotic listening experiments, Broadbent moved from his original filter model of selective attention to an understanding of the ‘cocktail party effect’, whereby significant information, such as our own name, intrudes on our consciousness, even when it’s embedded in auditory information we’re not apparently attending to. In the programme Claudia Hammond illustrates the point with examples of dichotic listening experiments that listeners can try themselves.By applying an information processing model to attention, Broadbent launched the cognitive revolution in psychology in Britain. As Director of the Medical Research Council’s Applied Psychology Unit from 1958 to 1974, Broadbent propagated his belief that psychology should be applied to practical problems, such as optimising human performance by the design of aircraft cockpits or nuclear reactor control rooms. He became a regular expert contributor on radio and TV, promoting psychology to the public.

Meeting psychologists who studied and worked with Broadbent – Professor Susan Gathercole of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Professors Alan Baddeley of York University and Dylan Jones and Andy Smith of Cardiff University – Claudia Hammond builds a picture of the man and his ground-breaking work, learning that noise has a far greater impact on our efficiency at work than we realize.

You can find the full audio catalogue of previous Mind Changers episodes online here and AHP’s previous posts on the series here.

“Musical Hypnosis: Sound and Selfhood from Mesmerism to Brainwashing,” by James Kennaway. The abstract reads,

Music has long been associated with trance states, but very little has been written about the modern western discussion of music as a form of hypnosis or ‘brainwashing’. However, from Mesmer’s use of the glass armonica to the supposed dangers of subliminal messages in heavy metal, the idea that music can overwhelm listeners’ self-control has been a recurrent theme. In particular, the concepts of automatic response and conditioned reflex have been the basis for a model of physiological psychology in which the self has been depicted as vulnerable to external stimuli such as music. This article will examine the discourse of hypnotic music from animal magnetism and the experimental hypnosis of the nineteenth century to the brainwashing panics since the Cold War, looking at the relationship between concerns about hypnotic music and the politics of the self and sexuality.

“Revisiting a ‘Demographic Freak’: Irish Asylums and Hidden Hunger,” by Melinda Grimsley-Smith.The abstract reads,

The Irish Famine of the 1840s has been most commonly understood as a social and political event, as the literature has been oriented toward demographic transformation and the drive toward democratisation in the post-Famine period. In this article, I use anomalies in post-Famine admissions to lunatic asylums and contemporary epidemiological research to argue that our understanding of the demographic transformation should incorporate a reckoning of the Famine as a biological event. Sudden and severe nutritional deprivation has measurable significant and long-lasting biological and psychological consequences that in turn have the capacity to alter the trajectory of a society’s development. This research has broader implications, as it suggests that effects of chronic food scarcity common to struggling regional and national economies should be taken into account when historians tell the tale of how societies develop.

“Alienists, Attendants and the Containment of Suicide in Public Lunatic Asylums, 1845–1890,” by Sarah York. The abstract reads,

Suicidal lunatics were only one patient group among several that alienists and asylum attendants had to care for, but the danger and risk associated with suicide made them one of the more difficult to manage. The task of suicide prevention was a priority for asylum staff as they endeavoured to save life and avoid criticism and investigation from the asylums’ regulating body. This article investigates the contribution alienists and attendants made to the management and prevention of suicide in English public lunatic asylums during the second half of the nineteenth century. It examines the respective contribution alienists and attendants made to the handling of suicidal patients, with varying levels of involvement. In doing so, it argues that the practical application of suicide prevention fell to asylum attendants, as their work determined how, and with what success, alienists’ suicide policy was implemented.

“Diseased, Depraved or just Drunk? The Psychiatric Panic over Alcoholism in Communist Yugoslavia,” by Mat Savelli. The abstract reads,

In the era of Communist rule in Yugoslavia (1945–91), few problems attracted as much psychiatric attention as alcoholism. Conducting widespread epidemiological research, practitioners discovered an alarming trend as rates of the disease were seemingly rising in every territory and segment of the population. Such an upswing of problem drinking seemed to threaten the ideological, economical, and social well-being of the state and its citizens. This widespread panic spurred psychiatric investigations into the aetiology of alcoholism. Much of this work focused on the role of the family, the workplace, class and societal changes as the genesis of problem drinking. Ultimately, these researchers concluded that alcoholism was not merely an affliction of the individual but rather a social disease with cause and consequence extending far beyond the problem drinker.

You can find the full audio catalogue of previous Mind Changers episodes online here and AHP’s previous posts on the series here. Titles and descriptions of the Wolpe and Rotter episodes follow below.

Joseph Wolpe and Systematic Desensitization

When the South African psychiatrist, Joseph Wolpe, took up his post at Temple University in Philadelphia in 1965, he brought with him the treatment he’d developed for patients with phobias. Systematic Desensitization involved a lengthy process of relaxation and gradual exposure to the object of the phobia. It was known as Behaviour Therapy, with its concentration on learning a different response to a stimulus. It paid no attention to the patient’s childhood or underlying psychological experiences and was thus a radical departure from the Freudian, psychoanalytic approach that was the established method of psychiatry in the US at the time. He brought about a sea change, which sees him regularly listed as one of the top twenty most influential psychologists of the 20th century.

Claudia Hammond visits Philadelphia to meet two of Joseph Wolpe’s former colleagues, Michael Ascher and Allan Cristol to hear about the man and his work. At Temple University Medical School Professor William Dubin shows her Wolpe’s portrait and discusses his legacy, while Dr Richard Heimberg, Director of the Adult Anxiety Clinic at Temple, reveals how Wolpe’s form of therapy still influences what he does today.

In the UK, Elaine Caiger gets over her paralyzing fear of spiders at a course run by Anxiety UK which distils Wolpe’s lengthy process into a matter of hours. And Paul Salkovskis, Professor of Clinical Psychology and Applied Science at the University of Bath, reflects on his worldwide impact.

Julian Rotter and Locus of Control

When, as a Psychology student, Claudia Hammond read about Locus of Control in Julian Rotter’s Social Learning Theory she assumed its author, like most great Mind Changers, was no longer alive. Twenty years later she met him in his home near the University of Connecticut. He was happy to reflect on his career.
In 1966 Rotter published his famous IE scale. This measured whether the subject had an Internal Locus of Control – believing that they could affect the course of their life, that their choices would have an impact on what happened to them – or an External Locus of Control, in which case their life was guided by luck or fate and they themselves had little power to change things. The test has been developed in many ways since then, but it is still widely used today and the notion of Locus of Control has been particularly influential in healthcare. Claudia visits Guy’s Hospital in London to hear from health psychologists Dr Nicky Thomas and Professor John Weinman about how it affects their work with patients.

Julian Rotter himself was one of the first clinical psychologists ever to be trained in the US and was to be extremely influential in training those who followed. He was proponent of the scientist-practitioner model and he worked hard to ensure that clinical psychology became a research-based discipline. He was largely responsible for bringing personality theory into the clinical arena.

Claudia also meets his wife, Doffie – a former graduate student of Rotter’s, his friends and former colleagues at UCONN: Professors Charles Lowe, Marianne Barton and Jerome Smith. And hears from Margie Lachman of the Lifespan Developmental Psychology Laboratory at Brandeis University, how Locus of Control can change with age.

“Plasticidad Cerebral y Hábito en William James: un Antecedente para la Neurociencia Social,” (or, “Brain Plasticity and Habit in William James: an Antecedent for Social Neuroscience”) by Carlos María Alcover and Fernando Rodríguez Mazo. The abstract reads,

William James, in the chapter on the habits of “The Principles of Psychology” (1890) introduced as a key concept of plasticity of brain and nervous system. James could not study this phenomenon experimentally, but his proposal was derived from the results of contemporary research in different fields of Biology and Physiology. Plasticity refers to how learning, skill acquisition, interpersonal and social influences and other contextual variables can influence on the physical structure of the brain, modifying and establishing new relationships and neural circuits that in turn can impair their functioning. This concept was studied experimentally in the late Twentieth Century, and it’s a key concept in the current Social Neuroscience, a discipline that seeks to combine and integrate different conceptual and methodological elements from Neuroscience and Social Psychology. This analysis has allowed us, first, to emphasize the meaning and value that James gave to the concept of plasticity in its analysis of habit, and second, to review the meaning of this concept in modern Social Neuroscience, stressing background of the James’ hypotheses in the current concept of brain plasticity.

En el capítulo dedicado al hábito de los Principios de Psicología (1890) William James introducía como concepto clave la plasticidad del sistema nervioso y del cerebro, un fenómeno que experimentalmente él no podía estudiar, pero que era una consecuencia derivada de los resultados de las investigaciones contemporáneas en diversos campos de la Biología y la Fisiología. La plasticidad hace referencia a cómo el aprendizaje, la adquisición de habilidades, las influencias interpersonales y sociales y otras variables del contexto pueden ejercer un efecto en la estructura física del cerebro, modificándolo y estableciendo nuevas relaciones y circuitos neurales que a su vez alteran su funcionamiento. Este concepto, estudiado experimentalmente a finales del siglo XX, es una de las claves en la actual Neurociencia Social, disciplina que trata de combinar e integrar diferentes elementos conceptuales y metodológicos procedentes de las Neurociencias y de la Psicología Social. Este análisis ha permitido, en primer lugar, destacar el significado y el valor que James otorgó al concepto de plasticidad en su análisis del hábito, y en segundo lugar, revisar el significado de este concepto en la Neurociencia Social, subrayando el papel antecedente de las hipótesis de James en la concepción actual de plasticidad cerebral.

“Neuron Doctrine and Conditional Reflexes at the XIV International Medical Congress of Madrid of 1903,” (or, “La Teoría Neuronal y los Reflejos Condicionados en el XIV Congreso Médico Internacional de Madrid de 1903″) by Javier Campos Bueno and Antonio Martín Araguz. The abstract reads,

There is a long tradition of holding meetings to present new ideas or discoveries that help in transforming our world in different areas of science and industry. One of these meetings was the 14th International Medical Congress held in Madrid in 1903. In the Anatomy and Physiology Sections presentations included two important milestones for the development of neuroscience: Cajal’s neuron doctrine and Pavlov’s theory of conditional reflexes. Both discoveries shared some ideas in common: a) both considered that “the organism” should be studied as a whole, b) developed methods to study the phenomena in vivo, thus bypassing the restrictions imposed by the classic anatomy and physiology; and c) searched the elementary unit that allowed an objective study of psychic activity. For Cajal neurons were individual cells and in them were based brain and mental activity therefore, Cajal described them in a poetic way, as the “butterflies of the soul”. Pavlov regarded the conditional reflex as the basic “psychic” (or psychological) phenomenon. These discoveries made by Pavlov and Ramón y Cajal (but also other colleagues such as Golgi or Sherrington) are the result of collective work and individual effort, and behind their studies we find a brilliant intelligence, a strong will and tenacity and the ability to develop technical innovation. The concepts that underlie the neuron doctrine of Cajal and the conditioned reflexes of Pavlov pioneered the study of the nervous system, mental processes and behavior which has guided the further psychological research and the development of neuroscience.

Hay una larga tradición de celebrar reuniones en las que se presentan ideas o descubrimientos que ayudan a transformar nuestro mundo en distintas áreas de la ciencia y la industria. Una de estas reuniones fue el 14º Congreso Internacional de Medicina celebrado en Madrid en 1903. En las Secciones de Anatomía y Fisiología se presentaron dos importantes logros para el desarrollo de la neurociencia: el fenómeno de los reflejos condicionales (de Pavlov) y la teoría neuronal (de Ramón y Cajal). Ambos descubrimientos compartían algunas ideas en común: a) consideraban el organismo debía estudiarse como un todo, y por ello b) desarrollaron métodos para estudiar el fenómeno en vivo, saltándose las restricciones impuestas por la anatomía y la fisiología clásicas desarrollando métodos para estudiar el fenómeno en vivo y c) buscaban la unidad elemental que permitiera un estudio objetivo de la actividad psíquica. Para Cajal las neuronas eran células individuales y de ellas dependía la actividad mental y cerebral y por ello las describió, de una manera poética, como las “mariposas del alma”. Para Pavlov el reflejo condicionado era el fenómeno “psíquico” o psicológico elemental. Estos descubrimientos de Pavlov y Ramón y Cajal (en los que también tuvieron un importante papel otros autores como Golgi o Sherrington) son el resultado del trabajo colectivo y el esfuerzo individual; detrás de estos trabajos se encuentra una inteligencia brillante, una gran fuerza de voluntad y tenacidad unida a la capacidad de desarrollar innovaciones técnicas. Los conceptos que subyacen en la teoría neuronal de Cajal y en la de los reflejos condicionados de Pavlov han contribuido al estudio del sistema nervioso, de los procesos mentales y de la conducta impulsando la investigación psicológica y el desarrollo de la neurociencia.

“Historia de la Psicología Interamericana: Sociedad Interamericana de Psicología (1951),” (or, “History of the Interamerican Psychology: The Interamerican Society of Psychology (1951)”) by Miguel Gallegos. The abstract reads,

The purpose of the present article is to justify the history of the Interamerican Psychology regarding the foundation of the Interamerican Society of Psychology (ISP), in 1951. Although other studies had addressed the development of the Interamerican Psychology, none of them had justified its history. In that sense, the present work addresses the following issues: 1) the foundation of the ISP; 2) the historical context of this foundation; 3) the more important outcomes of this foundation; 4) the factors that justify the history of the Interamerican Psychology. In sum, the present work suggests that the history of the Interamenrican Psychology is the history of the connections and the creation of the ISP was the key element that promoted those connections.

Este trabajo se plantea justificar la historia de la psicología interamericana a partir de establecer como dato histórico la constitución de la Sociedad Interamericana de Psicología (SIP), en diciembre de 1951. Si bien otros trabajos ya se han referido a la psicología interamericana, no obstante, aun no se ha justificado su sentido histórico. En base a esta premisa, el trabajo se propone desarrollar: 1) la fundación de la SIP; 2) el contexto de fundación de la SIP; 3) los desarrollos más importantes de la SIP; 4) las razones que justifican la historia de la psicología interamericana. En su conjunto, el trabajo abona a la idea de que la historia de la psicología interamericana es la historia de las conexiones y la creación de la SIP es el dato histórico que permite esas conexiones. Palabras clave: Sociedad Interamericana de Psicología,

“Revisión Crítica de la Metodología Freudiana: Los “Cambios de Vía”, un Concepto Olvidado,” (or, “A critical review of the Freudian methodology: The “track switcht”, a forgotten concept”) by Ignacio Iglesias Colillas. The abstract reads,

This paper proposes a critical review of some aspects of Freudian methodology, especially those concerning how the analyst exchanges words with the patient. It also intends to retrieve the fundamental Freudian concept of “track switch”. A critical epistemological review to some Freudian texts is used to explore the concept of “track switch”, carrying out a rigorous analysis of fragments of the Dora case, as it is a widely read and commented piece of clinical material. However, not many studies centre on an analysis of these characteristics. Throughout this study, some essential concepts for the psychoanalytic approach of hysteria, including brief contributions from J. Lacan that allow for a more thorough understanding of the methodological aspects of psychoanalysis are revealed..

El presente trabajo propone una revisión crítica de algunos aspectos de la metodología freudiana, especialmente los concernientes al cómo el analista interviene en el intercambio de palabras con el paciente, y pretende rescatar un concepto fundamental de los textos freudianos denominado “cambio de vía”. Se abordan algunos de los textos de Freud desde una perspectiva epistemológica crítica, y para realizar dicha tarea y explorar el concepto “cambio de vía” abrevaremos en un riguroso análisis de algunos fragmentos del caso Dora ya que se trata de un material clínico habitualmente muy leído y comentado. Sin embargo, no abundan trabajos que se detengan en un análisis de estas características. En el recorrido del ensayo se relevan al mismo tiempo algunos de los conceptos fundamentales para el abordaje psicoanalítico de la histeria y se incluyen algunos aportes de J. Lacan que permiten comprender mejor los aspectos metodológicos del psicoanálisis.