Klaus Holzkamp smiled: Soviet psychology in the Federal Republic of Germany in the Cold War era.
This article understands the reception of Soviet psychology in the Federal Republic of Germany as a contribution to a transnational Soviet psychology that is closely linked to a “Western Communist culture,” broadly understood, and further elaborates on this term, which is borrowed from Luciano Nicolás García. Critical Psychology (Kritische Psychologie) was developed at the Free University of Berlin starting in the late 1960s by the Marxist psychologist Klaus Holzkamp and others and represents a central focus of this form of appropriating the writings of Soviet psychologists. However, there has also been intense inter...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
“Mere guesswork”: Clarifying the role of intelligence, mentality, and psychometric testing in the diagnosis of “mental defectives” for sterilization in Alberta from 1929 to 1972.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(4), Nov 2023, 283-313; doi:10.1037/hop0000236From 1929 until 1972, the Alberta Eugenics Board (the Board) recommended that 4,739 individuals be sterilized. The original 1928 act that legalized eugenic sterilization stipulated that the surgery itself required the consent of the individual or their caregiver; however, in 1937, the Alberta government removed the consent requirement for such cases where the Board determined individual patients to be “mental defectives.” By analyzing published reports, case histories, medical journals, and primary sources from the Board, we situate the concept ...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Addendum.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 282; doi:10.1037/h0101919In the last issue of this journal, Ben Harris authored a research note on Margaret Floy Washburn and her cats (see record 2023-67784-001). What was not included with that piece was an image Washburn’s bookplate, which shows an image of a cat (quite possibly a likeness of her most acclaimed cat, “Hiram”) with an accompanying Biblical verse in Greek, taken from 1 Thessalonians 5:21, which translated reads as “Test all things; hold fast what is good (NKJV).” It is reproduced in this article. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserv...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Archival oddities: Rosalie Rayner’s application to take graduate classes.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 279-281; doi:10.1037/h0101918In the history of psychology, Rosalie Rayner is known as a research assistant to behaviorist John B. Watson in the study of a baby named Albert, coauthor of articles describing that research, and coauthor of Psychological Care of Infant and Child. Rayner also wrote two magazine articles about her experience as a mother and the wife of Watson (Harris, 2014). Thanks to archivist James Stimpert, the author discovered that she was never a candidate for a graduate degree. In fall of 1919, she applied to take graduate classes at Hopkins and was accepted (Fi...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Cheiron 2023 Book Prize.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 278-279; doi:10.1037/h0101917The winner of the Cheiron 2023 Book Prize is Christina Ramos for the book Bedlam in the New World: A Mexican Madhouse in the Age of Enlightenment, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2022. Dr. Ramos is an assistant professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Reconstruction of Wilhelm Wundt’s last residence in Saxony and the search for subsequent use as a research institute, fellowship house, or museum of psychotechnics.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 277-278; doi:10.1037/h0101916The German physiologist Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) is now recognized worldwide as the founding figure of academic psychology. He founded the first Institute for Experimental Psychology in Leipzig in 1879 and gained recognition during his lifetime. The scientist’s last home in the small village of Großbothen in East Germany, about 100 miles (160 km) south of Berlin, was left to decay after German reunification in 1989/1990. Wundt’s other homes in Leipzig were destroyed during World War II. During the GDR period, when the house was owned by the pu...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
New archival digital exhibit.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 276-277; doi:10.1037/h0101915Innovations in Language, Emotion, and Empathy Research is a digital exhibit which celebrates the forgotten contributions to psychology by Prof. Vincent V. Herr, S. J. (1901–1970) and his colleagues in the mid-20th century. It draws on the substantial unpublished material in the Herr Papers at the Loyola University Chicago Archives and Special Collections. The online exhibition showcases over 40 archival documents, images, and photographs. These are elaborated with detailed text presenting Herr’s research achievements and impactful collaborations. ...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Glimpses from the past: Michael Wertheimer dead at 95.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 274-276; doi:10.1037/hop0000239Michael was a historian by choice and calling, well-known for his Brief History of Psychology, which appeared in six editions. He also edited with Gregory Kimble a seven-volume series of Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, an essential resource describing many of the illustrious ancestors of contemporary psychology. He was known for his long service to various professional associations, especially the APA. He was president of four APA divisions: 1 (General Psychology), 2 (Teaching of Psychology), 24 (Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology), and 2...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
“Why should other people be the judge”: The codification of assessment criteria for gender-affirming care, 1970s–1990s.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(3), Aug 2023, 210-246; doi:10.1037/hop0000238In order to access gender-affirming care, transgender individuals were historically required by international guidelines to undergo mental health provider assessment (Coleman et al., 2012). This requirement for universal mental health provider involvement, initially formulated via professional expert opinion, has not been retained in the most recent World Professional Association for Transgender Health Standards of Care (WPATH SOC 8; Coleman et al., 2022). In the present analysis, I sought to examine the historical and cultural contexts of these exp...
Source: History of Psychology - August 10, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The origins and development of Leopold Blaustein’s descriptive psychology: An essay in the heritage of the Lvov-Warsaw School.
This article critically analyzes the concept of descriptive psychology, which was used by Blaustein as part of his struggles with the Brentanian heritage which shaped the Lvov-Warsaw School. It is argued that because of his studies under the Gestaltists and Husserl, Blaustein was able to redefine the basics of Brentano’s and Twardowski’s projects of empirical and descriptive psychology. To show the divergent motives present in Blaustein’s psychology, the article presents a biography of Blaustein in the context of psychology in the Poland and Europe of his times. Next, it analyzes references to Brentano and to Twardow...
Source: History of Psychology - July 20, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The long origins of the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning style typology, 1921–2001.
This study traces the long early history of the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic (VAK) learning style typology. The VAK distinction and vocabulary originated with the psychology of mental imagery and word recall in the 1910s. It was further developed by researchers on remedial reading instruction for students with learning disabilities between the 1920s and 1950s, the teaching of urban youth in the 1960s, and culminated with the construction of formal learning style assessment instruments in the 1970s. By the 1980s, the VAK learning style typology began to get covered in the mainstream media, despite the objections of cri...
Source: History of Psychology - July 20, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
From middle-class American women to French managers: The transatlantic trajectory of assertiveness training, c. 1950s–1980s.
This article explores the contribution of behavior therapy to the extension of psychotherapeutic notions and techniques into everyday life, focusing on the transatlantic trajectory of assertiveness training. It traces the history of this behavioral intervention into interindividual relations from its emergence as a treatment for anxiety in postwar United States to its importation into the French field of continuing professional training at the turn of the 1980s. To understand what traveled between countries and practical fields, I first consider the definition of assertiveness as a skill sitting halfway between passivity a...
Source: History of Psychology - June 29, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Recent publications by paul croce.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(2), May 2023, 186; doi:10.1037/h0101912Lists recent publications by Paul Croce. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - May 11, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Giving the history of psychology away in behavior analysis.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(2), May 2023, 185-186; doi:10.1037/h0101911Based on a symposium at the 2018 meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI; E. K. Morris, 2018), the December 2022 issue of Perspectives on Behavior Science (PoBS)—ABAI’s house journal—published a special section on teaching the history of behavior analysis. It was inspired by George Miller’s (1969) urging that psychologists promote human welfare by discovering how “to give psychology away” (p. 1074). The special section of PoBS urged readers to promote the history of behavior analysis by giving it away. (PsycInf...
Source: History of Psychology - May 11, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Notes from the archives: Margaret Floy Washburn and her cats.
History of Psychology, Vol 26(2), May 2023, 183-185; doi:10.1037/hop0000235Margaret Floy Washburn was one of the leading psychologists of her generation, whose most important work was The Animal Mind (Goodman, 1980). As E. G. Boring noted, that text “reflected her own love of animals and her intense interest in their behavior” (1971, p. 547). What about the role of animals in Washburn’s personal life? (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - May 11, 2023 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
