Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
February 1, 2026
Hiroshi Matsui, Kohei Yanagawa
Edward Tolman, an experimental psychologist renowned for his research on the "cognitive map" and "latent learning" in rats, pursued his career within the tradition of behaviorisms. In the history of psychology, he is positioned as a precursor to cognitivism. This is because the concepts he introduced as intervening variables were later interpreted as having a representational nature. On the...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
April 1, 2025
Tal Davidson, Patric Plesa
2 citations
Betty Eisner represents a prominent figure in the "golden age" of psychedelics research, as well as a cautionary tale about questionable therapeutic practices, exercising authority and control, and the misuse of psychedelics during the counterculture of the 1960s and 70s. Situating her work and the consequences of her problematic practices in the counterculture, the Human Potential Movement,...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
April 1, 2025
Lisa Kampen
2 citations
American pragmatism is traditionally described as a logico-philosophical movement that arose in opposition to the theological and metaphysical assumptions of the early American idealists. Mary Whiton Calkins (1863-1930) challenges this narrative in two central ways: she presents pragmatism as encompassing psychological, logical, and metaphysical doctrines, and she characterizes "metaphysical...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
2025
J. Gyimesi
The paper reviews and summarizes the historical research that has been carried out in recent decades to explore the connections between esotericism and psychology while highlighting the typical historical and contemporary ways in which psychology and esotericism are linked. This examination underscores why academic research on esotericism is relevant to psychology, including why a substantive...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
December 25, 2024
Rob Schraff
A kaleidoscopic narrative of the history of not only psychedelic science, but also an extraordinary network of behavioral scientists cultivated by Margaret Mead that had a profound impact on the history of the 20th century, Benjamin Breen's Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War and the Troubled Birth of Psychiatric Science will prove deeply fascinating to historians, behavioral...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
July 1, 2024
Michaël Roelli
Michel Jouvet (1925-2017) is one of the most important figures in the contemporary history of the neuroscience of sleep and dreams, and one of the most awarded French researchers of the last century. Yet this former CNRS gold medalist and winner of the Cino Del Duca World Prize remains little known-not to say unknown-outside the field of sleep medicine, especially in non-French-speaking...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
July 1, 2024
Jan Kornaj
This study investigates the development of concepts of psychosis in the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw, within the context of social and historical processes to which the hospital was the subject and a broader scope of European concepts of psychosis. In the years 1898-1909, the first chief physician of the psychiatric ward, Adam Wizel, focused mainly on hysteria. The interest in psychoses was...
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 influenced by Western European concepts as well as by sociocultural factors of the newly independent state. Few Polish psychiatrists addressed the subject of dreams. They were influenced mainly by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept of dreams, but also by Alferd Adler's, Carl Gustav Jung's, and Wilhelm...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
February 1, 2021
Chris Elcock
2 citations
Abstract Little has been written on the financial support behind Timothy Leary's unorthodox research into mind‐altering drugs like LSD and psilocybin and his subsequent psychedelic movement. Indeed several individuals and organizations helped the psychedelic cause by directly funding Leary's ventures, offering legal and logistic assistance, and organizing fund‐raising campaigns. I argue that...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
October 1, 2020
Yu-Chuan Wu
3 citations
This paper examines Nakamura Kokyō's study of a woman with a split personality who lived in his home as a maid from 1917 until her death in 1940. She was his indispensable muse and assistant in his efforts to promote abnormal psychology and psychotherapy. This paper first explores the central position of multiple personality in Nakamura's theory of the subconscious, which was largely based on...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
November 20, 2012
Andreas Sommer
36 citations
This paper traces the formation of the German "Gesellschaft für psychologische Forschung" ("Society for Psychological Research"), whose constitutive branches in Munich and Berlin were originally founded as inlets for alternatives to Wundtian experimental psychology from France and England, that is, experimental researches into hypnotism and alleged supernormal phenomena. By utilizing the career...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
2012
David C Devonis
4 citations
The psychologist Timothy Leary (1920-1996), an iconic cultural figure in the United States in the 1960s and afterward, has received comparatively scant attention in the history of psychology. This may be due to perceptions that, after a major career shift centering around his experimentation with psychedelic substances and his subsequent dismissal from Harvard in 1963, Leary parted company with...
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
2010
David T Schmit
Contemporary interest in Asian meditation raises questions about when Westerners began investigating these practices. A synopsis of Western-originating scientific meditation research is followed by a brief introduction to mesmerism. Next, the unappreciated ways the mesmerists explored Oriental mind powers is recounted. How the mesmerists' cultural positioning, philosophy, and interest in...