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vi Contents
̈
Wundt’s Volkerpsychologie 46
Wundt’s Students 47
Hermann Ebbinghaus and the Study of Memory 48
Franz Brentano’s Act Psychology 51
Carl Stumpf and the Psychology of Music 52
Georg Elias M̈uller and Memory 54
Oswald K̈ulpe and Thinking 55
7 Psychoanalysis 118
Freud’s Early Training 119
Josef Breuer and the Case of Anna O. 121
Psychoanalysis as a Theory of the Normal Mind 123
Psychoanalysis as a Theory of the Neuroses 124
Anxiety and Defense Mechanisms 124
Childhood Sexuality 125
Psychoanalysis as Method 127
Psychoanalysis in America 129
The Neo-Freudians 133
Alfred Adler’s Individual Psychology 133
Carl Jung’s Analytical Psychology 135
Karen Horney: A Feminist View of Psychoanalysis 136
The Continued Popularity of Psychoanalysis 138
8 Behaviorism 139
John Watson and the Founding of Behaviorism 140
Beginnings of Comparative Psychology 141
Watson’s Behaviorism 145
Conditioned Emotions: Little Albert 146
Watson at Johns Hopkins University 147
Watson as Behaviorism’s Founder 149
The Growth of Behaviorism 149
Neobehaviorism 150
Tolman’s Cognitive Behaviorism 150
Hull’s Hypothetico-Deductive Behaviorism 152
Skinner’s Radical Behaviorism 155
Behaviorism: A Final Note 159
Epilogue 224
References 229
Index 244
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Illustrations
Preface
Preface xi
xii Preface
Preface xiii
1
Pre-Scientific Psychology
2 Pre-Scientific Psychology
their tribes, they could lose that social standing, and indeed their very
lives, if they were judged incompetent or ineffective in their healing
arts. With the passage of centuries, specialization occurred leading to
separate professions of medicine, religion, and psychology, although it
can be easily argued that these three remain linked in various ways in
modern practice. Thus, the practice of psychology dates to thousands
of years ago, but, as we will describe in this book, the science of
psychology is a nineteenth-century invention.
As the title of this book indicates, this is an account of modern
psychology, which means that the story recounted here is a mostly
recent one. So having acknowledged that the practice of psychology
is thousands of years old, we will fast forward to the era of concern
for this chapter, which is the nineteenth century. The term “modern
psychology” has come to be synonymous with scientific psychology.
Indeed, there is consensus that the dating of modern psychology
begins with the establishment of a research laboratory by Wilhelm
Wundt at the University of Leipzig in Germany in 1879. The historical
significance and salience of that occurrence is underscored by historian
James Capshew (1992) who wrote, “the enduring motif in the story of
modern psychology is neither a person nor an event but a place – the
experimental laboratory” (p. 132).
The new psychological laboratories began their appearance in North
America in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, first at Johns
Hopkins University in 1883, then at Indiana University in 1887, at
the University of Wisconsin in 1888, and at Clark University and the
universities of Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Nebraska in 1889. The first
of the new laboratories in Canada was established at the University of
Toronto in 1891 (Baldwin, 1892). By 1900 there were more than 40 such
laboratories in North America (Benjamin, 2000), all seeking to apply
the new scientific methods, borrowed largely from physiology and
psychophysics, to questions of the basic human processes of seeing
and knowing and feeling.
When this new psychology arrived on American soil, there was
already a psychology in place. In fact, there were two other psycholo-
gies extant in the nineteenth century, the practice of psychology, which,
as argued, had been around since the dawn of human history, and
another psychology that existed largely within colleges and universities
known as mental philosophy.
The practitioners of psychology offered their services under a variety
of labels. There were phrenologists who measured the shape of the
skull of their clients, looking for bumps and indentations that signified
talents or deficiencies. There were physiognomists who studied the
contours and features of their clients’ faces, making determinations of
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Pre-Scientific Psychology 3
4 Pre-Scientific Psychology
A Public Psychology
The public fascination with behavior today existed in the nineteenth
century as well, although the media sources in that century were
far more limited. Still, people were exposed to psychology through
books, newspaper and magazine stories, and advertisements and
signs announcing psychological services, for example, “Sister Helen,
Palm Reader.” People wanted the assistance that they believed could
come from those whose special knowledge or talents could help them
identify their strengths and improve their personal weaknesses, help
them choose a career wisely, help them find a suitable partner for
life, help them overcome specific fears, cure them of their depression,
help them communicate with dearly departed friends or relatives, or
predict their future. There were many of these pre-scientific public
psychologies, too many to cover in this account. In order to understand
the landscape that scientific psychology faced when it arrived in North
America it is important to understand something about these various
psychologies. We will focus on a select few that achieved the greatest
followings: phrenology, physiognomy, mesmerism, spiritualism, and
mental healing.
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Pre-Scientific Psychology 5
Phrenology
In the nineteenth century, “having your head examined” did not refer
to suspected mental illness, but meant instead a visit to a phrenolo-
gist who would examine the shape of the client’s head and, based on
various cranial measurements, would make pronouncements about the
individual’s personality, abilities, and intelligence. It began in the work
of German anatomist, Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828), who believed that
different parts of the brain were responsible for different intellectual,
emotional, and behavioral functions. Some parts of the brain would
be overdeveloped, creating a bump on the skull, whereas others parts
might be underdeveloped creating a skull indentation. The location of
these various functions was specific to a particular area of the skull.
Thus, a person’s propensity for being destructive was measured imme-
diately above the left ear, whereas the area above the right ear indicated
a person’s degree of selfishness. Spirituality and benevolence were mea-
sured at the top of the head, whereas parental love, friendship, and love
of animals were measured at the back of the head.
Gall’s phrenological ideas were spread in North America by Johann
Spurzheim (1777–1832) and particularly by George Combe (1788–1858)
who lectured widely in the United States and Canada on phrenology,
promoting his book, System of Phrenology (first published in 1825), and
establishing phrenological clinics in the cities where he traveled. Combe
subscribed to the system of categorization of 35 faculties as originally
described by Spurzheim. Combe (1835) wrote:
What the phrenologist provided was not only the cranial measurements
that identified the talents and dispositions, but of greater importance,
a plan of action designed to strengthen the weaker faculties and thus
provide greater happiness and success in life for the client. As John van
Wyhe (2004) has written, “The phrenologist claimed to have an almost
mystical power to reveal invisible traits and tendencies.… Phrenology
was knowing about others and revealing their secrets” (p. 58).
In the United States, the phrenological market had been cornered
by the Fowler brothers, Orson (1809–1887) and Lorenzo (1811–1896),
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6 Pre-Scientific Psychology
who opened clinics in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia in the late
1830s. They created their own phrenological industry that included
books, magazines, phrenology heads, measuring instruments, and
phrenological charts. They franchised their business to other cities
where they trained examiners and, of course, supplied them with all
the necessities to run their clinics. To be trained in the Fowler System
was a marketing device, a kind of credential that examiners could use
to argue their credibility.
Phrenologists provided examinations or “readings” as they were
often called. There were itinerant phrenologists who traveled the coun-
try offering their services and carrying the tools of their trade in the
carrying cases manufactured by the Fowler brothers for just such pur-
poses. Others operated from their clinics where clients made appoint-
ments for their examinations. Some clinics were tied to businesses,
serving as a kind of personnel office, testing prospective employees,
and sending the results of their examinations to the employer.
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Pre-Scientific Psychology 7
After all, they had great opportunities to practice these powers on the
individuals they examined. They spent a fair amount of time with
their subjects, often in close physical contact. They spoke with these
clients – and, especially, listened to them – as they introduced themselves
and took in their accents and use of words. They shook their hands
and felt their calluses. They observed their dress, and noted its style,
cleanliness, and usage. They observed their subjects’ carriage as they
entered and walked about the examining room and read their “body
language.” They stood over and behind them as they moved their hands
about their heads. And in a less clean age, they especially noted their
subjects’ odor. (pp. 38–39)
8 Pre-Scientific Psychology
Physiognomy
Noses which are much turned downward are never truly good, truly
cheerful, noble, or great. Their thoughts and inclinations always tend to
earth. They are close, cold, heartless, incommunicative; often maliciously
sarcastic, ill-humored, or extremely hypochondriac or melancholic.
When arched in the upper part they are fearful and voluptuous. (p. 36)
Pre-Scientific Psychology 9
Figure 1.3 A physiognomy face map from Samuel Wells (1866) showing
location of various characteristics such as kindness (2), eloquence (32), sym-
pathy (71), and patriotism (136)
their brains smaller in size, their ears were larger and more protruding,
their eyebrows were bushy, and their chins were receding or flat (see
Lombroso, 1911; Lombroso & Ferrero, 1899).
Like the field of phrenology, the credibility of physiognomy was seri-
ously diminished at the beginning of the twentieth century; however,
it did not disappear and even found its way into employee selection in
America in the 1910s through the characterological system of Katherine
Blackford. We will discuss her work in Chapter 9, work that proved to
be a considerable irritant to psychologists who were trying to establish
the legitimacy of their science in the world of business at that time.
Mesmerism