Search

The duality of attention is explored by turning our focus to the political and cultural conceptions of automatic attention and deliberate attention, with the former being associated with animality and “uncivilized” behavior and the latter with intelligence and self-mastery. In this article, I trace this ongoing dualism of the mind from early race psychology in the late nineteenth century to twentieth century psychological models including those found in psychoanalysis, behaviorism, neo-behaviorism, and behavioral economics. These earlier studies explicitly or implicitly maintained a deficiency model of controlled attention and other mental processes that were thought to differ between racial groups. Such early models of attention included assumptions that Black and Indigenous peoples were less in control of their attention compared to whites. This racialized model of attention, as seen in the law of economy in the nineteenth century, with similar manifestations in psychoanalysis and neo-behaviorism in the twentieth century, can now be seen in present-day dual-process models as used in current psychological research and behavioral policy. These historical connections show that attention is not a value-neutral term and that attention studies do not stand outside of race and structural racism.

The psychologist Isabelle Kendig had two careers before earning her doctorate and rising to the position of chief psychologist at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. She began as a eugenic field worker in 1912, focusing on Shutesbury, Massachusetts, where she administered intelligence tests to the locals, collected gossip about their character, and created genealogical charts. When she presented her research to Charles Davenport and other social scientists concerned with social defect, Kendig dissented from eugenics orthodoxy. She was shunned by Davenport, who, in turn, falsified her findings to fit his beliefs. She was then hired by Massachusetts and New Hampshire to survey intellectual disability in each state. Following her work in eugenics, Kendig was briefly a leading figure in feminist and antimilitarist campaigns, including the National Women's Party and the 1924 presidential campaign of Senator Robert La Follette. In 1933, she earned a PhD in clinical psychology from Radcliffe and went on to help guide the field's post-WWII expansion. True to her feminist ideals and with the help of her husband, she juggled marriage, her three careers, and the parenting of four children. She thus serves as a noteworthy member of the second generation of women in psychology in the United States. Using unpublished correspondence between Kendig, her parents, and her future husband, this article offers a rare glimpse of a young feminist struggling to build a career and a life unconstrained by patriarchal norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

To add to the system of classes already present in the recent historiography of psychology, a new and broader class is proposed, the psychologesque. This class includes, along with a central core of master's- and PhD-level psychologists, surrounding belts of cognate professionals in other fields who are, to a greater or lesser degree, tinged with psychology. Advantages to including this broad class, in some ways similar to the U.S. middle class, in the history of psychology are advanced. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Adolescents use some types of homophobic language (e.g., “that’s so gay”) as a form of banter, while other types are directly targeted as an intentional insult (e.g., calling someone a “fag, dyke, homo”). Little research has investigated adolescents’ use and judgments about these types of homophobic language and whether judgments differ if they are used among friends or directed toward non-friend peers. This study investigated how relationship context and victim’s (N = 477, Mage = 14.7, SD = 1.63) emotional responses related to judgments about anti-gay banter and homophobic name-calling. Adolescents evaluated homophobic name-calling as more wrong than anti-gay banter. While adolescents’ evaluations of homophobic name-calling did not differ based on relationship context, adolescents did differentiate between anti-gay banter perpetrated by a friend vs. a peer. Further, emotional responses mediated these relationships in the anti-gay banter situation. These results suggest that adolescents’ judgments about homophobic language are related to the relationship context and the type of homophobic language used.

This article introduces a collection of articles written in response to a recently published intellectual and cultural history of normality by Peter Cryle and Elizabeth Stephens. It points to the fact that this special issue considerably extends and enriches the topical range of the book. The articles that follow discuss, in order, schooling in France at the time of the Revolution, phrenology in Europe and the US from 1840 to 1940, relations between commercial practice and scientific craniometry in 19th-century Britain and France, psychology in late 19th-century France, case studies in sexology and psychoanalysis in Central Europe, and biotypology in Southern Europe and Latin America.

On the occasion of the centenary of Wilhelm Wundt’s death (1832–1920), we had a conversation with Saulo de Freitas Araujo on the works and influence of the German author. After a brief introduction, the conversation begins with a reflection on the aims and objectives of Araujo’s work on the history and philosophy of Wundt’s psychology. A philosophical approach to the history of science and of psychology is then described. After considering the social and intellectual context of the revival of Wundt scholarship during the 1970s, Wundt’s philosophical and psychological project is discussed. The conversation ends with general reflections on Wundt’s legacy to recent and contemporary psychology.

The main objective of this study is to present a narrative that shows the influence of Cyril Burt’s intelligence test in the creation of the clinical method used Jean Piaget, helping in the composition of knowledge on this subject. Piaget studied in Neuchâtel, Zurich and Paris before joining the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute in Geneva, where he launched his first books that took him to a prominent place in the field of psychology. The present work makes a comparison between the data available in the literature to recompose this trajectory until the turning point in Piaget’s experimental work, which happened in Paris, where he studied the Cyril Burt’s intelligence test. Knowing the elements of the creation of the Clinical Method is important to understand the ontological and epistemological foundations of the data generated by this method and its theoretical consequences. From contact with Cyril Burt’s test, Piaget suffered three determinant impacts on his life and work. The first is linked to the translation of the test, which highlighted questions about the notions of part-whole in the children’s language. The second is the possibility for Piaget to observe dozens of samples of the children’s reasoning explained by themselves, which allowed the introduction of zoology observation techniques in his psychology. Finally, the possibilities of modifying and adapting the test, which is his first original experience in experimental psychology, a technique that he would carry his entire life in the constitution of his Clinical Method.

This article presents a fragment of the history of psychology in Poland, discussing its development in the years 1945–56, which saw sweeping political and geographical transformations. In that maelstrom of history, psychology was particularly affected by the effects of geopolitical changes, which led to its symbolic ‘arrest’ in 1952, when psychological practice was prohibited and all psychology courses were abolished at universities. Amnesty was declared only in 1956, with the demise of the so-called Stalinist ‘cult of personality’ and the onset of a turbulent period when the crimes of the Stalinist era were prosecuted. We have adopted three time frames for our description and analysis of this dramatic period in the development of psychology in Poland. ‘The past’ is a story about the flourishing of Polish psychology before World War Two and the hopes for the discipline’s restoration after the war. ‘The present’, as the core of this narrative, represents the events of 1950–56. ‘The future’ refers to the period when Stalinist abuses were prosecuted during the Thaw, following the collapse of the Stalinist dictatorship, and the resurgence of Polish psychologists’ hopes for resurrecting their discipline. In all these periods, the narrative is interwoven with the story of the Polish psychologist Mieczysław Kreutz, who offers a model example of the hypothesized dependence of scientific research on sociopolitical change.

Recent discussions have revived old claims that hereditarian research on race differences in intelligence has been subject to a long and effective taboo. We argue that given the extensive publications, citations, and discussions of such work since 1969, claims of taboo and suppression are a myth. We critically examine claims that (self-described) hereditarians currently and exclusively experience major misrepresentation in the media, regular physical threats, denouncements, and academic job loss. We document substantial exaggeration and distortion in such claims. The repeated assertions that the negative reception of research asserting average Black inferiority is due to total ideological control over the academy by “environmentalists,” leftists, Marxists, or “thugs” are unwarranted character assassinations on those engaged in legitimate and valuable scholarly criticism.

In this commentary paper I try to make complementarily more discussion on two question. First, the target paper (Zagaria, Ando, & Zennaro, 2020) points out the lack of continuity in the concepts used in psychology. The authors aim for a rigorous definition which is necessary to rebuild mud figures of psychology, but is that the only direction? Second, the evolutionary psychology seems to allow for a diversity of methodologies, but is there any limitations and possibilities of approaching the origin of the mind from biologically based methods? To answer this question, I went back and examined Freud's earlier studies and Vygotsky's theoretical considerations from the history of psychology. As a result, it was pointed out that the shift from the biological world to the psychological world had a fundamental problem of conversion from quantity to quality. As a clue to its elucidation, I considered on the semiotic mediation, the psychological causality, and the work of apperception.

Beset by detection of replication failures and questionable research practices over the last decade, psychology has been deemed by many to be in crisis. The situation is exceptional not only for the many investigative practices being scrutinized but also for the attention given to the undue influence of psychologists' psychology on those practices. Comparative analysis of 2 crises finds that the earlier one focused on the experimenters' activities within the laboratory, whereas the current concerns center on experimenters' postexperimental work. Whereas the previous crisis did include deep concerns about experimenters, the currently offered psychologies of fellow psychologists are distinctive in their frequency, intensity, and considerable reliance upon established knowledge about human thought and behavior. In so utilizing scientific psychology to assess psychology, the current appraisals give richer evidence of the circuitry of psychological knowledge as it travels from the laboratory outward and back. They give considerable attention to the scientists' moral characteristics, whereas the earlier crisis generated concerns about experimenters' conduct in the laboratory and the politics surrounding the application of psychological knowledge. Through their direct discussions of personal and moral conduct, the assessments also resonate with uncertainties about scientists' self-control, normative ethics, and emotions. Taken together, the psychologies and attendant uncertainties illuminate present conditions of psychology's scientific self and invite reflection on the close connections between that self, ethos, and epistemology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In the years from 1895 to 1910, suggestive therapeutics, in its various guises and applications, was the prevailing popular psychotherapeutic treatment featured in print culture and to which large numbers of Americans turned, seeking relief for both physical and psychological disorders. The "Chicago School of Psychology"-a health institution founded by Herbert A. Parkyn offering free treatment and clinical instruction in suggestive therapeutics-along with Hypnotic Magazine, the unofficial organ of the school edited by Sydney B. Flower, reigned supreme in Midwestern psychotherapeutics and "magazine medicine." With his patients reclined on an Allison surgical table, Parkyn's suggestive treatments sought to increase blood flow to afflicted painful areas, while urging upon patients a proper diet, fresh air, and exercise-what he termed "life essentials." Both Parkyn and Flower purposely allied suggestive therapeutics to a host of related reform movements, such as physical culture, psychical research, practical psychology, and the acquisition of heightened occult mental powers often associated with the New Thought. Often mistaken as a form of Christian Science, the Chicago School of Psychology found it difficult to maintain its image as a distinct type of psychotherapy. Its identification with irregular psychological healing sects and its multitude of social and scientific interests placed it at the crossroads of medical and religious pluralism. The closure of the Chicago School of Psychology in 1906 coincided with the spread of the Emmanuel Movement to Chicago, where it became known as "Christian Psychology," marking the final popular years of suggestive therapeutics in Chicago. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893), thanks to his insight as a clinician can be said to be one of the precursors of scientific psychology. Charcot’s 30 years of activity at La Salpêtrière hospital display an intellectual trajectory that decisively changed the idea of human psychology by favouring the emergence of two concepts: the subconscious and the unconscious. It was his collaboration with Pierre Janet (1859–1947), a philosopher turned physician, that led to this evolution, relying on the search for hysteria’s aetiology, using hypnosis as a method of exploration. Focusing on clinical psychology that was experimental and observational, Janet built a theory of psychic automatism, “the involuntary exercise of memory and intelligence” leading to “independence of the faculties, freed from personal power.” From all that came the idea of the subconscious, a functioning as a passive mental mechanism, resulting from a more or less temporary dissociation of previously associated mental content.

A generally forgotten means of observing the developmental stages of scientific psychology is the study of maze devices. Considered in ancient times as a symbol of the process of moving in the direction of knowledge, the labyrinth, or maze, was at the centre of psychologists’ attention from the end of the 19th century. The current paper aims to reconstruct the history of the early years of maze learning, starting from the original interests of the experimenters in brain physiology or in mental evolution, and to examine how the experiments they designed continued to be important in the general theory of learning throughout the 20th century: maze studies helped uncover general principles about learning that can be applied to many species, including humans. At the beginning of the 21st century the question has become: what parts of the brain are used for spatial learning and memory, as shown by the Morris water maze, which is very popular in studies of behavioural neuroscience.

In 2019, Psi Chi celebrates its 90th and 10th birthdays as the National and International Honor Society in Psychology. This review of the glorious history of Psi Chi is in three parts: (1) its current mission, serving over 750000 life members in 1130 college campuses world-wide; (2) its humble but inspiring origins in 1929 at Yale University; (3) four points of impressive courage within the history of Psi Chi - in 1929, 1959, 1981, and 2009; and also includes a bibliography, for international and U.S. readers to access prior histories of Psi Chi.

Inspecting Psychology takes a sleuth’s magnifying glass to the interplay between psychology, psychiatry and detective fiction to provide a unique examination of the history of psychology. As psychology evolved over the centuries, so did crime writing. This book looks at how the psychological movements of the time influenced classic authors from Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle to Dorothy Sayers and Georges Simenon, to reveal an enduring connection between psychology and the human need to solve mysteries. Some key puzzles. Why did Agatha Christie make so many doctors killers in her books? Why did Simenon not become a psychiatrist? Did Lord Peter Wimsey have all the charm, passion and tenderness no lover gave Dorothy Sayers? Beginning with the earliest origins of psychology in Greek literature alongside the Oedipal story and the ideas of Aristotle, the book travels through to the late 18th and 19th centuries and the work of Edgar Allan Poe who wrote the first detective story proper. With the birth of modern psychology in the late 19th century, the growing fascination with understanding behaviour coincided with the popular whodunnit. Readers are whisked through the development of psychology in the 20th century and beyond, from the impact of shell shock in the First World War and the early understanding of mental illness through to the growth of psychoanalysis and the ideas of Freud, behaviourism and attachment theory. At every stop on this original rattle through history, David Cohen reveals the influence these psychological movements had on crime writers and their characters and plots. The result is a highly enjoyable, engaging read for those interested in how the unique pairing of the history of psychology with the history of the detective novel can unveil insights into the human condition. It should appeal to anyone interested in psychology who wants their subject served with a thriller on the side.

This chapter lays out the argument for a psychological humanities, as well as the theoretical framework for ideas developed in the rest of the book. It explains the concept of complicity, which is the term developed in the book to argue against binary thinking as a way of understanding human being and human psychology. The history of psychology as a discipline is outlined, in order to connect it to processes of Western modernity. The chapter defines binary thinking, the notion of self and other, and outlines the relationships between the different branches of psychology.

This paper takes an integrated history and philosophy of science approach to the topic of "simplicity out of complexity". The reflex theory was a framework within early twentieth century psychology and neuroscience which aimed to decompose complex behaviours and neural responses into simple reflexes. It was controversial in its time, and did not live up to its own theoretical and empirical ambitions. Examination of this episode poses important questions about the limitations of simplifying strategies, and the relationship between simplification and the engineering approach to biology.

The beginning of the 20th century is well known as a time of formation of psychology as an independent scientific discipline. One of the students interested in it was Vytautas Civinskis (1887–1910), who attended Wilhelm Wundt’s Psychology lectures during his agriculture (Landwirtschaft) studies at Leipzig University, in 1904–1906, and led a Diary at that time. This article presents analysis of fragments of Civinskis’ Diary related to psychology. Several artefacts found in it, preliminarily interpreted as the diarist’s introspection data related to emotional phenomena, are being discussed. The analysis verified the initial assumption and helped to understand the essence of the diarist’s research design. It was also deduced that Civinskis proceeded with the introspection at least two years after Wundt’s Psychology lectures, trying to elaborate the method. It was found that some other researchers, e. g. Flügel (1925), Viliūnas, Pacevičius and Stončius (1997) applied similar methods much later. The Civinskis’ research on his own emotional states was amateurish but performed consistently and diligently. It can be considered as one of the earliest cases of empirical research in the history of Lithuanian psychology and adds to our still incomplete knowledge of the latter.

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.

Jaan Valsiner has been one of the most important leading figures in constructing psychology as a humanized science. The task of building cultural psychology as generalizing theories while at the same time not giving up the centrality of human lived-through experience with all the richness and uniqueness has not only posed himself a great challenge but also facilitated his creativity and productivity in re-discovering and integrating ideas from different disciplines and cultures and from the long “unseen” history of psychology. In this article, we pick up his work in conceptualizing transition and development as a dynamic process and try to build up on his thinking in the Yin-Yang model by introducing the concepts of Ti and Shi from Chinese philosophy to provide an alternative perspective in understanding development based on the whole system of individual-practical context. Inviting the “real individual” back to psychology requires researchers to be both enthusiastically “hot” and accurately “cold” about human life, and Valsiner has set us a good example.

Comments on the article by T. B. Henley (see record 2020-68859-001). Scholarly attempts to broaden the scope of the historical investigation of psychology are welcome. To the extent that Henley's article seeks to do just that, it provides an important corrective to the traditional approach. The question remains, however, whether the prehistoric developments presented in the article can indeed teach us something about the history of psychology (broadly defined), and more fundamentally, whether they can at all be described as "psychological" in any meaningful way. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The personal papers of the neurophysiologist John C. Lilly at Stanford University hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. The paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of Lilly’s research, then being carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health. Lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. This research, wrote Lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master-slave controls directly of one brain over another’. The paper is an explicit example of Lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards Cold War military aims. It is not, however, the research for which Lilly is best known. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. Lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. This article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. Through an analysis of Lilly’s autobiographical writings, I also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of Lilly’s research.

Leonhard Schwartz’s importance in the history of psychology has probably not been fully appreciated, and this article is dedicated to the life and work of the Basel neurologist. It highlights the triangular relationship he maintained for 20 years with Pierre Janet, of whom he was a disciple, and Henri F. Ellenberger, to whom he passed on his passion for Janet’s oeuvre.

The article provides a comprehensive review of Czech psychology-its history and its current state. It enumerates significant psychologists who were Czech, born in Bohemia or who were instrumental for the development of psychology in the region. The article also enumerates Czech psychological associations along with their main representatives, journals, and academic facilities involved in education and research in psychology. It is pointed out that the origins of psychology as a science are in the Central Europe-the first laboratory of W. Wundt was in Leipzig, Germany; S. Freud was born in Bohemia, in the Moravian city of Příbor and he practiced in Vienna, Austria. The Czech capital Prague will also become the capital of the psychological science in 2020 when it will be hosting the 32nd International Congress of Psychology (ICP 2020).

According to what is now the standard account in the history of psychology, in the 1880s William James and the Danish physician Carl Georg Lange independently developed a strikingly new theory, commonly referred to as the ‘James–Lange’ theory of emotion. In this paper it is argued that this standard account is highly misleading. Lange's views on affect in his (1885) Om Sindsbevægelser were more cautious than James allowed, and not open to criticisms that have often been levelled against the theory of emotion that James claimed he shared with Lange. In fact, Lange argued for distinctions that James did not mention in his discussion of Lange's work. Even with regard to the primary emotions, the two thinkers’ explanatory models diverged significantly. The contrast between James and Lange on affect is especially striking in their respective discussions of topics in aesthetics, as is established with reference to Lange's little-known (1899) Bidrag til Nydelsernes fysiologi som grundlag for en rationel æstetik.

Background. Personality psychology in academia reached its peak in Western psychology in the 1960s and 1970s. Its history usually starts with Freud and ends up with the Big Five. Yet its roots go much deeper, and can be traced back to the early use of the term “psychology”, primarily among Protestant scholastics in the late sixteenth century. This was related to the Christian Reformation, which highlighted the sacrament of penance and emphasized self-examination of the true believer. The background for this study is to bring in a historical perspective on personality. Max Weber, for example, demonstrated that this led to a morality of faithfulness to one’s deeds. This duty, he says, explains the prosperity of the Protestants in Europe and the US in the seventeenth century. Michel Foucault showed in the first volume of The History of Sexuality how the sacrament of penance led to a certain interest in human nature and sexuality. Human nature was at the core of the very early use of psychology. Objective. The objective of this paper is to focus on how these aspects were treated in early psychology by following a design that examines the person, human nature, individual differences, and intellectual abilities. Results. One of the results is that there is a direct connection between the use of the term “personality” in psychology, and the use of the term “psychology” from the very beginning based on the following findings: (a) “Psychology” appears in the wake of the interest in the individual, and (b) “Personality” appears as a specified term with the aim of achieving a scientific understanding of individuality. Conclusion. Thus, one conclusion is that we have definitely not solved the dilemma that Gordon Allport pointed to: that traditional scientific ideals deal with general laws, whereas personality psychology deals with individuality. Another important conclusion is that this dilemma and conflict are not possible to solve within psychology. Open Access. CC-BY-SA

Thomas Verner Moore (1877-1969), a Catholic priest, psychologist, and psychiatrist, developed a Catholic psychiatry in the first half of the 20th century. Following a brief description of Moore's life, this article develops his psychiatric theory, beginning with its grounding in Thomistic philosophical thought. The relationship between reason and faith, the place of the soul in psychological theory, and a central role for Catholic moral teaching were three Thomistic principles vital to Moore's thinking. Defining psychology as the science of personality, and the study of personality as central to psychiatry, Moore articulated a theory and practice of psychotherapy that he contended was scientifically sound. Although his clinical work did not impose religious teachings on patients, if such teachings were meaningful to them, he did discuss them in sessions; moreover, Catholic moral teaching was a compass in his treatment of patients. The article includes a brief history of the psychiatric clinic that Moore first established in 1916 and its successor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

In this article, I critically discuss the philosophy and psychology of science that are put forward by psychologists involved in the reform debates centered on the so-called “replication crisis” of the 2010s. Following the historian of psychology Laurence Smith, I describe the psychologists’ conception of the science system and individual psychology of the scientist as an “indigenous epistemology.” By first describing the indigenous epistemology of the reform movement, my aim is to constructively criticize it by making explicit how psychologists psychologize scientific psychology, and pointing to where such psychologizing needs more conceptual work, especially when it uses the work of philosophers of science. In their writing, the reformers tentatively subscribe to various positions on ways of knowing and functioning of the science system which exhibit fundamental inconsistencies. I suggest some ways for improving and deepening the discussion of epistemological positions that are taken in the replication crisis debates.

This article reconstructs Vittorio Benussi's (1878-1927) research on autonomia funzionale emotiva [emotional functional autonomy], carried out in Padua between 1920 and 1927. Its aim is to demonstrate that Benussi believed-against the intellectualist mainstream of the psychology of his time and even against the Brentanian-Meinongian tradition in which he was educated-in the fundamental independence of emotions from the cognitive functions that usually accompany them. To study this autonomy, Benussi used hypnosis as an experimental tool designed to disassemble the phenomena of mental life from their global functional unity. Benussi thus compared the work of psychologists with that of physicists or chemists. This was a unique undertaking for theoretical ambitions and experimental techniques, which was completely abandoned after his premature death. To conclude, the legacy of Benussi's research on emotions is highlighted, and the resumption of his research model within current studies on the relationships between emotion and cognition is encouraged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Reviewed by PHILIP S. WONGIn the history of psychology and psychiatry, one can identify an enduring tension between biological heritage (animalistic drives, instincts, wishes) and social-developmen...

Those interested in tracking trends in the history of psychology cannot simply trust the numbers produced by inputting terms into search engines like PsycINFO and then constraining by date. This essay is therefore a critical engagement with that longstanding interest to show what it is possible to do, over what period, and why. It concludes that certain projects simply cannot be undertaken without further investment by the American Psychological Association. This is because forgotten changes in the assumptions informing the database make its index terms untrustworthy for use in trend-tracking before 1967. But they can indeed be used, with care, to track more recent trends. The result is then a Distant Reading of psychology, with Digital History presented as enabling a kind of Science Studies that psychologists will find appealing. The present state of the discipline can thus be caricatured as the contemporary scientific study of depressed rats and the drugs used to treat them (as well as of human brains, mice, and myriad other topics). To extend the investigation back further in time, however, the 1967 boundary is also investigated. The author then delves more deeply into the prehistory of the database's creation, and shows in a precis of a further project that the origins of PsycINFO can be traced to interests related to American national security during the Cold War. In short: PsycINFO cannot be treated as a simple bibliographic description of the discipline. It is embedded in its history, and reflects it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

In this article I examine how psychologists, amateurs and actors in the police and in juridical fields positioned themselves in the 1920s and 1930s on the scientific nature of graphology. Graphology, the study of the character from handwriting, was linked with the hope of providing reliable methods for the investigation of psychological states and dispositions. The essay argues that on an epistemic level two different models have been represented to support the scientific nature of graphology: for one thing resorting to the special individual skill, the “genius” of a graphologist; or rather depersonalized techniques predominantly based on statistics. Amateur graphologists used both of these forms.On a methodological level, I argue that in order to historicize the human sciences in general, and psychology in particular, it is useful to examine the translation processes that turn everyday interpretative practices (of facial expressions, dreams, handwriting) into scientific legitimate investigative procedures. In order to investigate precisely this translation process, it is useful to look at what Thomas Gieryn calls “boundary work” at the border between scientific and non-scientific interpretation practices, for which graphology is used here as an example. It is particularly illuminating to examine how representatives of the official sciences distinguish themselves from presumed “charlatans”, which is why the article focuses on court cases and the demarcation strategies used by the police against fraudulent amateur graphologists.