Motivated historiography: Comments on Wolfgang Schönpflug’s reappraisal of German critical psychology.
Introducing the concept of motivated historiography, we seek to answer the question of what constitutes a good history of psychology and of German Critical Psychology (CP) in particular. It is suggested that one needs to include questions about the purpose of historiography, the background and horizon of the historiographer, the quality and originality of the thesis, the quality of the material, selected and omitted, and the quality of interpretations. We submit that the article by Schönpflug (2021) does not accomplish a realistic account of CP. We conclude that the two original main theses in the article on links of CP t...
Source: History of Psychology - September 13, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Two versions of Marxist concrete psychology: Politzer and Mérei compared.
This article will compare the life and work of two Marxist psychologists of the midtwentieth century, George Politzer (1903–1942) and Ferenc Mérei (1909–1986). Both were Hungarian Jews who were educated at the French Sorbonne. They were both involved in covert activities related to the French Communist movement in the 1920 and 1930s. As young communist intellectuals, they combined Marxist ideology with the need to elaborate a new psychology. I present their work as an alternative to better known versions of Marxist psychology, namely, Freudo-Marxism and Soviet action theories. Unlike these theories, Politzer and Mére...
Source: History of Psychology - July 1, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Society for the History of Psychology news & notes.
This article reviews the news and notes for the Society for the History of Psychology. The editor adds this will be their last issue writing for the News & Notes section. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A useful and reliable guide to Wundt’s entire work.
Reviews the book, 'Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920): Introduction, Quotations, Reception, Commentaries, Attempts at Reconstruction' by Jochen Fahrenberg (2020). Dr. Jochen Fahrenberg—Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Freiburg in Germany—has done great service to Wundt. In his new book, he offers for the first time an overview of Wundt’s entire work, including the three main areas of neurophysiology, psychology, and philosophy. The book is divided in six chapters. The first one displays the author’s objectives and explains his approach to Wundt’s work. In the second, Fahrenberg offers a short but ve...
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Psychology: Early print uses of the term by Pier Nicola Castellani (1525) and Gerhard Synellius (1525).
We identify the putatively earliest extant print source of the neoclassical term psychologia, long presumed to have been a 1575 work, as two 1525 works, one by Pier Nicola Castellani and another by Gerhard Synellius. We provide a history of pertinent etymology and introduce the new sources. The full paragraph containing two uses of the term by Castellani is included in translation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A change of pace: The history of (emotional) experiences.
In this article, I present some of the most interesting attempts to go beyond the natural kinds approach to emotions, paying special attention to the work of Fay Bound Alberti and Rob Boddice, both of whom have been influenced by Lisa Feldman Barrett’s theory of constructed emotions. I propose that some of the flaws detected in the history of the emotions by Bound Alberti and Boddice can be solved relying on social psychology, and specifically I propose Larissa Z. Tiedens and Colin W. Leach’s (2004) The Social Life of Emotions as a useful approach. In conjunction with Barrett’s theory, Tiedens and Leach provide a fra...
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The trouble with affect.
The trouble with affect is the trouble that arises when the emotions are theorized in anti-intentionist terms as discrete, universal affects that depend on evolved “affect programs” in the brain, affect programs that when triggered discharge in an involuntary fashion with characteristic physiological and behavioral manifestations, including especially signature facial expressions. It has been clear for some time that the evidence for this theory is inadequate and that the implications of the position are troubling. The paper briefly explores these issues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (So...
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
What the history of emotions can offer to psychologists, economists, and computer scientists (among others).
Historians of the emotions explore how feelings—and the way they are categorized and conceptualized—have changed over time and across culture. This essay examines some key assumptions about emotion as an historical artifact. It also explores the promise of interdisciplinary research on the emotions. Finally, it looks at particular disciplines, including economics, computer science, and some subfields in psychology, which would be enriched by an historical perspective. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Psychological construction of episodes called emotions.
People witness or experience episodes they explain as due to an emotion. Like ordinary folk, many academic theorists try to understand these obviously important episodes in the same way using the terms emotion, fear, anger, joy, grief, and so on. Yet, each term refers to a heterogeneous cluster of events with unclear boundaries and no single cause—rather than to a prepackaged pancultural bundle of common components (subjective experience, behavior, expression, thought, physiological change). Psychological construction is an alternative approach that treats the concepts of emotion, fear, and so on as the folk concepts the...
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Emotions in the history of emotions.
This brief note explores how emotions have been conceptualized by scholars in the “history of emotions,” particularly attending to approaches that explore emotion as a network of relations between bodies, material culture, ideas, language and environment. Here, practice-based, performance-based, new materialist, and posthumanist ideas offer an opportunity to refigure what we consider important to the production of emotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Emotions: Some historical observations.
This article problematizes the currently popular notion of “basic emotions,” shows how the history of past theories offers new ways to think about the category “emotions” and the items that populate it, and offers a methodology for approaching the emotions through the lens of “emotional communities” (the groups in which people live and feel). It concludes by suggesting how historians and scientists may work together to further our understanding of emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Introduction to the special section on the history of emotions.
In this series of stimulating reflective essays, prominent scholars of emotion and its history address the challenges and rewards of interdisciplinarity, recent work in the field, and the many conceptions of “emotion”—a polyvocality that presents limitations as well as opportunities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - June 3, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
The Snake Pit: Mixing Marx with Freud in Hollywood.
In 1948, the motion picture The Snake Pit was released to popular and critical acclaim. Directed by Anatole Litvak, the film told of the mental illness and recovery of one patient, who survived overcrowding and understaffing and was treated by a neo-Freudian psychiatrist known as Dr. Kik. It was based on a novel of the same title by Mary Jane Ward, who had been treated at Rockland State Hospital in New York. Building upon exposés of horrid hospital conditions in the press, The Snake Pit helped motivate reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill. Via unpublished correspondence and drafts of the film’s screenplay, this ...
Source: History of Psychology - April 22, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Sex and gender norms in marriage: Comparing expert advice in socialist Czechoslovakia and Hungary between the 1950s and 1980s.
First, we argue that sexuality was central to socialist modernization: Sex and gender were reformulated whenever the socialist project was being revised. Expertise was crucial in these reformulations, which harnessed people’s support for the changing regimes. Moreover, the role of the expert in society grew over time, leading to ever expanding and diversified fields of expertise. Second, gender and sexuality stood disjointed in these changes. Whereas in the early 1950s sex was a taboo subject in Hungary, in the last three decades of socialism it was gradually acknowledged and emancipated, along with a discursive push to ...
Source: History of Psychology - March 4, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
A case for a “middle-way career” in the history of psychology: The work of pioneering psychoanalyst Marjorie Brierley in early 20th century Britain.
This article presents an example of such an actor, Marjorie Brierley (1893–1984), one of the first women psychoanalysts in Britain who made unique, yet unresearched, varied contributions—intellectual and non-intellectual—to the famous interwar debate on femininity and to organizational and clinical work. If we are to fully understand the establishment, cultivation, and maintenance of the flourishing field of psychoanalysis in the early 20th century, we must account for the work of women like her. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: History of Psychology)
Source: History of Psychology - March 4, 2021 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
