Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
November 20, 2012
Andreas Sommer
36 citations
The paper traces the formation of the German 'Society for Psychological Research,' whose branches in Munich and Berlin were originally founded to introduce alternatives to Wundtian experimental psychology from France and England—specifically, experimental research into hypnotism and alleged supernormal phenomena. By examining the career trajectories of founding members Max Dessoir and Albert von Schrenck-Notzing, the paper opens up novel perspectives on extra-scientific factors that historically determined the epistemological and methodological boundaries of nascent psychology in Germany.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
January 1, 2012
David C Devonis
4 citations
Timothy Leary, a cultural icon of the 1960s, has been largely overlooked in the history of psychology, partly because his career shift toward psychedelic experimentation and dismissal from Harvard in 1963 made him seem to have left the field. However, examining his full career and intellectual influences reveals unacknowledged continuities with psychology, suggesting he deserves a more prominent place in the discipline's history and that his work poses important challenges.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
October 1, 2020
Yu-Chuan Wu
3 citations
Nakamura Kokyō studied a woman with a split personality who lived as his maid from 1917 until her death in 1940, serving as his muse and assistant in promoting abnormal psychology. Multiple personality was central to Nakamura's theory of the subconscious, based on dissociation. It also became a flashpoint in his disputes with religious groups, who invoked Western psychical research to modernize their doctrines of spirit possession. Nakamura distinguished his psychological view from spiritual understandings by emphasizing individual memories—especially traumatic ones—and hysteria. His views on memory and hysteria conflicted with both academic mainstream and cultural beliefs, which may partly explain the limited success of his campaigns.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
April 1, 2025
Lisa Kampen
2 citations
Mary Whiton Calkins challenged the traditional view that American pragmatism was purely a logico-philosophical movement opposed to idealism. She argued that pragmatism includes psychological, logical, and metaphysical doctrines, and she characterized "metaphysical pragmatism" as a form of idealism. Calkins held that psychology should study reality as experienced through introspection, while philosophy should address the metaphysical nature of that reality. She understood pragmatism's pluralism as a "pluralistic personalism," where reality consists of a plurality of conscious selves. She rejected metaphysical pragmatism because she believed pluralism could not account for absolute truth, but she supported psychological pragmatism as metaphysically neutral.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
April 1, 2025
Tal Davidson, Patric Plesa
2 citations
Betty Eisner was a key figure in the early era of psychedelics research, but her career also serves as a cautionary example of problematic therapeutic practices, including the misuse of authority and control during the 1960s and 70s counterculture. Her work, set against the backdrop of the Human Potential Movement and integrative experiences, helps explain the decline of the first wave of psychedelic research. The dangers associated with figures like Eisner may account for the slower adoption of group therapy approaches and the limited inclusion of social context in the more cautious second wave of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
February 1, 2021
Chris Elcock
2 citations
Wealthy patrons and philanthropic attitudes provided crucial financial, legal, and logistical support for Timothy Leary's early research into LSD and psilocybin, as well as his subsequent psychedelic movement. Leary's shift from academic researcher to LSD guru during the 1960s was accompanied by changes in the patterns of this support. His legal troubles later in the decade are linked to the emerging movement to legalize cannabis. The paper also draws historical continuity to contemporary efforts to fund psychedelic research.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
June 27, 2023
Jan Kornaj
1 citation
The development of the concept of dreams in interwar Polish psychiatry and psychology was shaped by Western European ideas and the sociocultural context of the newly independent state. Few Polish psychiatrists addressed dreams, and they were influenced mainly by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept, along with Alfred Adler's, Carl Gustav Jung's, and Wilhelm Stekel's ideas, though they approached psychoanalysis critically. The most comprehensive concept was Tadeusz Bilikiewicz's oneiroanalysis, a method based on psychoanalysis that rejected free association and challenged psychoanalytic dream symbol interpretation. Polish psychologists showed even less interest; Stefan Szuman's work critiqued psychoanalysis harshly. The neglect of dreams reflected opposition from conservative, nationalistic, and anti-Semitic scholars, and from biologically oriented psychiatrists. The Lvov-Warsaw School promoted Brentanian intentionalism and consciousness, discouraging exploration of unconscious states.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
February 1, 2026
Hiroshi Matsui, Kohei Yanagawa
Edward Tolman, known for cognitive maps and latent learning in rats, is usually seen as a forerunner of cognitivism because his intervening variables were later treated as mental representations. Yet the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty drew on Tolman's sign-Gestalt concept, interpreting it as non-representational and using it in his relational account of behavior. Merleau-Ponty recast Tolman's ideas into a view of behavior as structured, embodied interaction between organism and environment. These reformulated insights later helped found enactivist cognitive science, which emphasizes perception-action co-constitution and dynamic agent-environment coupling. Tolman's own framework remained ontologically ambiguous, allowing his work to influence both cognitivism and its opponent, enactivism.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
December 25, 2024
Rob Schraff
Margaret Mead cultivated a network of anthropologists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who explored psychedelics as tools to reshape human consciousness and build a utopian culture beyond the terrors of modernity and atomic warfare. Benjamin Breen's book traces this network from Mead's early fieldwork with peyote-using Native Americans through the Macy Foundation's 1954 Conference on the Problems of Consciousness, wartime OSS work, and postwar LSD research by figures like Humphry Osmond and Allen Ginsberg. The narrative also covers the turn to dystopia with MK Ultra, Timothy Leary's self-serving promotion of LSD, and the rise of Scientology, arguing that 1945–1960 was one of the most radical eras of social experimentation in history.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
July 1, 2024
Jan Kornaj
The development of concepts of psychosis at the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw evolved through several phases from 1898 to 1943, shaped by European psychiatric ideas and local social and historical changes. Initially, first chief physician Adam Wizel focused on hysteria, while Maurycy Bornsztajn later introduced psychoanalytic perspectives. In the second decade, classification of psychoses became central; after Poland regained independence, psychosis became the main focus. Gustaw Bychowski and Władysław Matecki advanced psychoanalytic understanding, Bornsztajn developed his concept of psychosis, and Władysław Sterling contributed to biological views of schizophrenia. In the final period, economic crisis and staff departures reduced publications, but Bornsztajn refined his concept of somatopsychic schizophrenia and Matecki introduced pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia. The psychoanalytic approach was supplemented by phenomenology, and several physicians advocated psychoanalytic psychotherapy for psychotic patients.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
July 1, 2024
Michaël Roelli
Michel Jouvet (1925-2017), a pioneering French neuroscientist of sleep and dreams, remains largely unknown outside sleep medicine despite major awards. Often reduced to his cat experiments and discovery of paradoxical sleep, his broader work includes neurophysiological, ethnological, and psychological studies of sleep and dreams, clinical contributions, two novels, and a collection of personal dream accounts and drawings. This article uses unpublished archives to illuminate these little-known aspects, revealing his hidden links with 19th-century scientific oneirology and the paradoxes within his legacy.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
January 1, 2010
David T Schmit
Before modern scientific research on meditation, Western mesmerists in the 18th and 19th centuries investigated Asian contemplative practices and Oriental medicine. These mesmerists, influenced by their philosophy and interest in mind-body connections, explored Hindu meditative techniques in ways that challenged Western cultural imperialism of the era. Their inquiries were unique for the time and subverted dominant colonial attitudes. The article traces historical continuities and discontinuities between these early mesmerist investigations and twentieth-century meditation research, arguing that the mesmerists' work represents an overlooked precursor to contemporary scientific interest in Asian meditation practices.