Why we should be reading Vittorio Benussi.

Reviews the book, Vittorio Benussi in the History of Psychology by Mauro Antonelli (2018). Mauro Antonelli is Professor of the History of Science and Technology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Milano-Bicocca as well as lecturer in Philosophy at the Alexius Meinong Institute of the Karl-Franzens-University of Graz. His new book, Vittorio Benussi in the History of Psychology, treats of the life and work of the Austrian-Italian psychologist Vittorio Benussi. Benussi was a seminal figure in the early days of the Graz school and a founding father of the Italian Gestalt movement. According to Edwin Boring in A History of Experimental Psychology, Benussi was “the most productive and effective experimental psychologist that Austria had” (Boring, 1950, p. 446). Antonelli, in his study, sets out to expand and correct the extant historical record and portrait of Benussi by fleshing out details drawn from the whole of his career, including his ongoing contributions to experimental psychology in the years (after 1919) when Benussi left Graz and settled in Padua, Italy. Benussi begins his book by giving a brief account of how scientific psychology developed in the German speaking world. Presenting his thesis of “Austrian Psychology” (Antonelli, 2018, p. 17), the first chapter of Antonelli’s book, “The Austrian Path toward Gestalt Psychology: From Brentano to Benussi, via Meinong,” also gives a detailed but readable account of some of the important philoso...
Source: History of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research