Advances in the History of Psychology

Adrian Brock of University College Dublin has set up a website full of the writings of the noted historian of psychology Kurt Danziger. Though he is now long-retired from York University (Toronto), and is no longer attending conferences, Danziger has continued to write and conduct research. His most recent book, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory was just published in October 2008. Many of his essays and talks, however, have not been easily accessible. Brock, a former student of Danziger’s, has established www.kurtdanziger.com to collect these “lost” writings together and make them available to the general public. Read the rest of this entry »

The Archives of the History of American Psychology (AHAP) is moving to a new, bigger building. The famous research center, the largest of its kind in the world, has for many years been holed up in the basement of the Polsky Building at the University of Akron, in Ohio. But thanks to the efforts of its director, David Baker, and the contributions of many generous donors, the archives will, this weekend, be moving to a new four-storey building near the UA campus that will house not only its collections, but also offer better facilities to its users and staff, as well as meeting space for workshops and conferences. There will also be a gallery to highlight some of AHAP more notable treasures, such as Stanley Milgram’s simulated shock machine, Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll, and a door from Philip Zimbardo’s “prison.”

One can find an interview with Dr. Baker about the new facilities here.

The website behaviortherapist.com has posted an interview with Irving Kirsch (pictured right), the well-known critic of the efficacy of antidepressant pharmaceuticals. Kirsch made a name for himself with a series of studies that showed that most of the effect commonly attributed to antidepressants is actually a placebo effect. Although the difference between the effect of antidepressants and placebo alone attains statistical significance, the size of the difference is, Kirsch says, “vanishingly small.” He also argues that this near-non-effect holds for different levels of depression, and for different classes of antidepressants,such as SSRIs (e.g., Prozac) and  SSRE(nhancer)s. Read the rest of this entry »

I think this counts as an event worthy of breaking AHP’s summer silence.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has come out in favor of stripping James Mitchell of his license to practice. Mitchell (pictured right) is one of the psychologists who worked for the CIA developing and applying controversial “enhanced” interrogation techniques that were used against terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay prison and other “black sites” that the CIA maintains around the world. An Associated Press article about the APA’s actions can be found here.

The is move surprising because the APA has been heavily criticized both from within its membership and without for being evasive in efforts to forbid its members from participating in such activities. First it issued directives with ambiguous wording. When the membership voted overwhelmingly in favor of a more direct statement against torture, the APA Board came under fire for dragging its feet in  implementing the resolution.

We are very pleased to announce that an interview with Jacy Young, the editor of Advances in the History of Psychology, has been published in the British Psychological Society’s Research Digest Blog. The interview is a part of an ongoing series called “The Bloggers Behind the Blogs.”

Other bloggers interviewed in the series include Vaughan Bell of Mind Hacks, Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily, and the reverse-eponymously named “Neuroskeptic,” among others.

The June 2010 issue of Isis, the official journal of the History of Science Society, has just been released online. Included in this issue are a number of articles of interest to historians of psychology, many of them featured as part of a Focus section dedicated to New Perspectives on Science and the Cold War.

In the first section of the issue, Deborah Blythe Doroshow explores how classical conditioning principles were used by psychologists in the 1930s to create a bedwetting alarm. The Focus section includes three articles on social science during the Cold War. These tackle the nature of social science during the Cold Ward, mathematical models of rationality that developed during this period, and the science fiction-esque goals of social science. All the articles featured in the Focus section are currently available online for free. Titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“An Alarming Solution: Bedwetting, Medicine, and Behavioral Conditioning in Mid-Twentieth-Century America,” By Deborah Blythe Doroshow, Program in the History of Science and Medicine, Yale University. The abstract reads:

This article explores the history of the bedwetting alarm, invented in 1938 by two psychologists to cure enuresis, or bedwetting, using the principles of classical conditioning. Infused with the optimism of behaviorism, the bedwetting alarm unexpectedly proved difficult to implement in practice, bearing a multitude of unanticipated complications that hindered its widespread acceptance. Read the rest of this entry »

The June 2010 issue of History of Psychiatry, dedicated to “A Hundred Years of Evolutionary Psychiatry (1872-1972),” has just been released online. This special issue features a number of articles of interest to historians of psychology, including, among others, an article on Harry Harlow (left) and the nature of love by Marga Vicedo of the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology and an article on the work of Lauretta Bender and the African American psyche by Denis Doyle. Titles, authors and abstracts to these and the other articles in the June issue follow below.

“The evolutionary turn in psychiatry: A historical overview,” by Pieter R. Adriaens and Andreas De Block. The abstract reads:

Ever since Darwin, psychiatrists have been tempted to put evolutionary theory to use in their efforts to understand and explain various aspects of mental disorders. Following a number of pivotal developments in the history of evolutionary thought, including degeneration theory, ethology and the modern synthesis, this introductory paper provides an overview of the many trends and schools in the history of ‘psychiatric Darwinism’ and ‘evolutionary psychiatry’. We conclude with an attempt to distinguish three underlying motives in asking evolutionary questions about mental disorders.

“Schizophrenia, evolution and the borders of biology: On Huxley et al.’s 1964 paper in Nature,” by Raf De Bont. The abstract reads: Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a quickie. For full info, go here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/future_histmed

The Future of Medical History

International Conference

15th - 17th July 2010

Goodenough College, Bloomsbury, London

The Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine is hosting a three-day international conference on the future of the history of medicine. Papers are invited on the disciplinary and methodological challenges facing the field in all aspects of research and resourcing, not excluding media technologies and publishing.

Session Themes

‘The Neurological Turn’
‘The Place of Non-Humans in the project of Medical Humanism’
‘Intra AsiaEurope: Technologies of self and substance’
‘Global Health’

Surprise! I’m back already!

APA Monitor has published a great little piece by Larry Stern of Collin College (TX) about James McConnell of U. Michigan and his various attempts to show that memories are encoded by specific molecules in the brain. McConnell tried to demonstrate this by conditioning planaria  (flatworms) to respond to stimuli, and then feeding the trained worms’ nervous systems to other worms, in the hopes that the training would be expressed by the naive worms. In the end, the theory did not stand up, but for a long while there were enough positive results that it was not clear whether or not McConnell had found the elusive key to how memories are stored in the brain.

Stern writes:

The story of “McCannibal and his Mau Mau” hypothesis has become part of the folklore of psychology…. But folklore tends to caricature people and events and is lousy history….  McConnell’s planarian studies spawned a 15-year episode that tells us much about the workings of science when it is confronted — as it always is — with claims that depart in significant ways from prevailing views. Read the rest of this entry »

We at AHP are going to go on a bit of a hiatus for the summer. First of all, I want to thank you, our readers, who have supported the blog over the past year. We now have 700 subscribers on a regular basis. Astonishingly, that is larger than the entire membership of APA’s Society for the History of Psychology!

Second, I want to thank Jacy Young, who has been serving as editor of the blog for the past year, and congratulate her on all the great work she has done. She is currently off to an internship at the Archives of the History of American Psychology.

I  will be heading off to a variety of conferences, and I have some things to write that I have been putting off for the last little while. I may still find the time to post an item now and then over the course of the summer.

We hope to come back stronger than ever in the fall, with some new writers and new things to write about.

Happy summer!