Category Archives: News

John Philippe Rushton (1943-2012)

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Controversial psychologist John Philippe Rushton (above), best known for his views on the relationship between race and intelligence, has died. Rushton passed away after a battle with cancer on October 2nd. He was 68.

Rushton was born in Bournemouth, England, in 1943. While still a child, he emigrated first to South Africa and then to Canada. He went on to receive his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1977. Prior to receiving his PhD, he taught for a time at York University (1974-76) in Toronto and then at the University of Toronto (1977). He joined the faculty at the University of Western Ontario (UWO, now Western University) in 1978 and became a full professor at the university in 1985. In addition to his work on race and intelligence, Rushton also produced controversial research on the relationship between race and crime, and race and penis size.

In the late 1980s, Rushton’s views on race-based differences in intelligence sparked vehement protest at UWO. (More photographs from these protests can be seen here.) Despite calls for Rushton to be fired – by UWO students and Ontario’s premier – and although he was relieved of teaching duties during the height of these protests, he remained on the faculty of UWO for 25 years. The attention Rushton received for his controversial views on race and intelligence also led to a prominent debate between Rushton and geneticist, and environmentalist, David Suzuki on the subject in February, 1989 (the full debate can be viewed below).

 

 

Notice of Rushton’s death can be found here. Further discussion of Rushton’s passing can be found here, here, and here.

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Sept 1: Grad student grant deadline for $2,500

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THEN/HiER, the first pan-Canadian organization devoted to promoting and improving history teaching and learning, will give up to $2,500 to support a collaborative project bringing together some of the multiple and varied constituencies involved in history education.

Our goal is to stimulate an active, participatory dialogue among these various communities of history educators, a dialogue that explores how best to improve history education in all its forms through more research-informed practice (from kindergarten to graduate school) and more practice-informed research.

Their aim is to fund knowledge mobilization and dissemination, rather than new research. The next deadline is September 1. (And, after that, November 1.)

Details regarding graduate student projects can be found here; regarding open small grants, which require matching funds or in-kind contributions, here.

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Mapping Phineas Gage’s Brain (150+ Years Later)

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The Guardian‘s Science Section has a fascinating piece on a recent attempt by researchers to reconstruct the damage done to Phineas Gage’s brain, who famously survived an 1848 accident in which a tamping iron was shot through his head. As the article describes, research on the damage done to Gage’s brain is part of the larger Human Connectome Project that aims to map all the connections in the human brain.

But how does one reconstruct the connectome of someone who died more than 150 years ago, and whose brain no longer even exists? Van Horn and his colleagues used high-resolution CT scans of Gage’s skull, from a 2004 study that digitally reconstructed the trajectory of the iron rod as it passed through his brain, and examined the data again to re-estimate its path as accurately as possible.

They then selected structural MRI and DTI data from 110 healthy people from the LONI Image Data Archive. All of these data came from men aged between 25 (Gage’s age at the time of his accident) and 36 (the age at which he died). The researchers combined these data to produce a generalized map of the long-range connections in the human brain, and used computational modelling to project the passage of the tamping iron onto it.

The computation model of the passage of the tamping iron through Gage’s brain is shown in the video above. While this model shows severe, widespread damage to Gage’s brain, it has been known for a number of years that there is little evidence in the historical record of the purported profound personality changes Gage experienced post-accident. Ultimately, what this kind of research tells us about Gage’s experience after the accident is unclear. (Find out more about Gage’s accident and his life afterward in an interview with Gage’s biographer Malcolm Macmillan on the This Week in the History of Psychology Podcast series.)

Read the full Guardian article online here and the original PLoS ONE article whose research is described in the Guardian piece here.

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Early American Psychoanalysis in…Baltimore?

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The early history of psychoanalysis in Baltimore is chronicled in a piece from a rather unlikely source: Baltimore Style Magazine. In addition to detailing some of the early work on psychoanalysis conducted in Baltimore, the article describes how the American Psychoanalytic Association began in Baltimore and only moved to New York City in the 1930s. As the piece describes,

In the United States, New York is the city perhaps most frequently associated with the practice— it is home to more psychoanalysts than any other U.S. city, as any Woody Allen fan knows. Yet Baltimore, too, played a major role in the early days of psychoanalysis. Many of the field’s first luminaries lived here, and the city witnessed the development of several groundbreaking psychological treatments. In fact, the very first meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, on May 9, 1911, was held in the Stafford Hotel in Mount Vernon.

When Freud, along with Carl Jung, visited America in 1909, it was at the invitation of the pioneering psychologist G. Stanley Hall, president of Clark University in Massachusetts, where Freud gave a lecture on his controversial new method of treatment. His talk was attended by a group of prominent U.S. physicians who were so vitalized by the new ideas that they gathered together to form an American branch of the Psychoanalytic Association, which was established, with Freud’s blessing, two years later here in Baltimore.

The piece goes on to say:

The early records of the American Psychoanalytic Association have been lost, but we know that 15 eminent psychiatrists were present at the Baltimore meeting, including Hall; Freud’s close colleague and biographer Ernest Jones; and the Austrian-born psychiatrist Abraham Brill, who went on to translate a number of Freud’s works and introduce them to the American public. Also present was the influential New York neurologist Smith Ely Jelliffe, who counted among his patients the playwright Eugene O’Neill. (“Just consulted Jelliffe, famous specialist here, on Mama’s case,” O’Neill wrote to his eldest brother Jamie in 1924. “He says hopeless.”)

The association’s charter members also included a number of Baltimore-based physicians such as Adolf Meyer, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. Meyer had attended seminars conducted by Jung, and later became known as the first psychiatrist to make a habit of collecting detailed case histories of his patients, and to insist they could best be understood through consideration of their past in the context of their family lives.

Read the full article online here.

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SRCD Oral Histories Go Online

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The Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) has just posted online a number of transcripts from its Oral History Project. Over the course of its 25 year history, the SRCD Oral History Project has interviewed 135 important scholars in the field of child development. Now online are 16 interviews with individuals such as Mary Ainsworth, Eleanor Gibson, and Jerome Kagan (left). A full list of the available oral history transcripts is provided below and efforts are underway to post transcripts of further SRCD oral histories. For those interested in the history of developmental psychology, these interviews will undoubtedly prove an invaluable window into the field.

As described on the SRCD website,

Launched 25 years ago, the Oral History Project of SRCD is now available on this website to members of the Society as well as other interested scholars.  Interviews of 135 major figures in the fields of child development and child psychology, as well as other related fields, are included in the collection.  Sixteen of some of the earliest obtained oral histories are posted here and others will be incorporated in the near future.  Each person was interviewed by someone whom he/she selected, and the recordings were then transcribed, edited for accuracy, and approved before inclusion in the collection.  Some scholars in this project are now deceased, while others are alive and well; many played key roles in the governance or service of SRCD.  Approximately 50 more interviews are now in progress.

The transcripts in this project should be of interest for a variety of reasons, including instruction both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Scholars interested in historical roots and trends in the field and those concerned about the emergence of research, policy, and practice concerning children and families will find a wealth of informative history in these interview transcripts.  An example of how the transcripts may be used is the article by Claire E. Cameron and John W. Hagen (2005), “Women in child development: Themes from the SRCD Oral History Project” (History of Psychology, 8, 289-314, 2005), in which quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted on 47 early oral histories of women who became leading scholars and spokespersons in child development.

Transcripts of interviews with the following individuals are currently available on the SRCD Oral History Project webpage.

Mary Ainsworth
Gerald Patterson
Jack Block
Julius Richmond
Urie Bronfenbrenner
Sir Michael Rutter
Norman Garmezy
Sandra Scarr
Eleanor Gibson
Harold W. Stevenson
E. Mavis Hetherington
Ann Streissguth
Jerome Kagan
Emmy Werner
Eleanor Maccoby
Edward Zigler

Tip’o the hat to Cathy Faye for bringing this to AHP’s attention.

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2012: The Year of Alan Turing

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In recognition of the 100th anniversary of Alan Turing‘s birth, 2012 has been declared Alan Turing Year. Centenary celebrations of Turing’s life and work are well underway and will continue throughout 2012 at locations around the world. Turing, a mathematician, logician, and early computer scientist, is probably best known within the history of psychology for his proposal of what has come to be known as the Turing Test. The test proposes that a machine may only be considered truly intelligent if, in the course of a conversation, a human judge can not tell it apart from another human being. It has become a something of a standard within the field of artificial intelligence, in which Turing was a pioneer.

The tragic end of Turing’s life is also well-known. After serving as a codebreaker for the British military in World War Two, Turing was prosecuted by the British government for engaging in homosexual acts and submitted to chemical castration. In 1954, at the age of 41, he died from cyanide poisoning in what was apparently suicide. In 2009, British government issued an official apology for the treatment Turing received.

Full details on the various events to be held in 2012 in celebration of Turing’s life and work can be found here.

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Köhler’s Anthropoid Research Station, Circa 2011

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In 1913, Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler moved from Germany to the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. In Puerto de la Cruz on the island of Tenerife, Köhler assumed the directorship of the Prussian Academy of Science Anthropoid Research Station where he conducted important early work on tool use in apes. Famous images from Köhler’s ape research include that of apes stacking wooden crates to reach bananas hanging out of research. His research with apes led him to argue that it was insight rather than trial-and-error that allowed apes to problem solve. In 1917 he published his findings as the book, The Mentality of Apes.

Today the Tenerife research station still exists, but in a state of disrepair. The station has been classified as a cultural interest site by the Spanish government and the Wolfgang Köhler Association is working toward the site’s restoration. The videos above show the site as it exists today, interspersed with film clips from Köhler’s original research and is it part of an ongoing documentary project, INSIGHT. Though the film’s audio is in Spanish, the images are striking.

Tip ‘o the hat to Gabriel Ruiz for bringing these videos to AHP’s attention during a recent discussion on the Cheiron (the International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences) and Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of the American Psychological Association) listserves.

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Back issues of Histoire de l’éducation now online

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Back issues of Histoire de l’éducation have been made freely available at Persée, going back to its founding. This makes an additional 22 years of full-text available for use.

Founded in 1978, Histoire de l’éducation is an historical review devoted to teaching and education in France and abroad. Through articles, scientific notes, critical notes, and book reviews – in two issues of varia and two annual special issues – the journal aims to publish the best research in the discipline, report on historiographical debates, contribute to the dynamism of the scientific milieu [contribuer à l’animation de son milieu scientifique], and advance a view of the history of education that is consistent with the methods and requirements of disciplinary history. Histoire de l’éducation is also aimed at historians and at researchers from other disciplines in the field of education, as well as at teachers, trainers, and anyone else who looks to education’s past as a key to understanding its current problems.

Material published after 2000 can still be found here.

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Milgram Once More: How Evil Are You?

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This Sunday October 30th, just in time for Halloween, the Discovery Channel is airing a special episode of their series Curiosity. The series itself is described on Discovery’s website as

an adventure of discovery, an expedition to uncover the truths behind life’s most challenging questions. With an insatiable thirst for answers and experiences, we’re prepared to do anything, go anywhere and ask anyone to get to the heart of the matter. Whether it’s jumping out of an airplane to confront fear, having neuroscientists implant false memories, or donating tissue to test the possibility of regeneration, there is nothing stopping us as we embark on a global journey of learning and surprises.

Curiosity asks and answers the most fundamental questions facing the world today. Each episode of Curiosity will focus on a single enduring question in science, technology, and society. As is always the case, one single question cascades into several more, making each episode of Curiosity a rich and textured experience. From the micro to the macro, we tackle provocative and insightful questions. Is there a Creator? Is it likely there’s an alternate universe? Could you find out exactly how you are going to die and would you want to know? Are some people genetically prone to violence? Is time travel really possible? Why is it that we dream? What don’t we know about gravity and does it hold the secret for exploring the universe?

Sunday’s episode tackles the question of evil. How Evil Are You?, hosted by horror film director Eli Roth, explores the nature of evil. And, of course, the Milgram obedience to authority experiments are front and center. As has been done a number of times in the last several years, the program attempts to replicate Milgram’s experiment to see if his finding – that ordinary people can be pushed to do horrible things – still holds. The episode is described as follows

Actor/Director Eli Roth is no stranger to exploring the nature of evil. As a master of horror with films like Inglorious Basterds and Hostel, Roth turns his lens to research possibly the most horrifying monster of them all – the average American. In CURIOSITY’s “How Evil are You?”, Roth sets out to recreate the infamous Milgram experiment to see how, or if, the results have changed. Roth himself even undergoes tests and scans to see if he carries what researchers dub “the evil gene.” So does Hollywood’s famous horror director have a little extra ‘edge’ in his craft?…

The video above offers a brief introduction to the program, much of which is focused on the Milgram replication, while the clip below is specifically of the show’s obedience to authority segment. Tune in Sunday at 9pm EST to see what you think of this latest recreation of Milgram’s now infamous experiments.

You can find AHP’s previous coverage of Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments here.

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Psychology’s Feminist Voices Now on Facebook!

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Psychology’s Feminist Voices (PFV), the fantastic multimedia internet archive devoted both to women’s contributions to the early discipline and to highlighting the work of contemporary feminist researchers, is now on Facebook! The group’s page is well underway, with posts highlighting some of the fascinating material available on the PFV site. For instance, check out a great image of Psyche Cattell climbing a tree and the documentary on her work featured on the site. Other items that have been highlighted on PFV‘s Facebook page include video clips from interviews conducted by Don Dewsbury with pioneering clinical psychologist Molly Harrower where she discusses, among other things, her work with Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Harrower was the psychologist under the surgical tent during Penfield’s neural stimulation procedures! (For those unfamiliar with Penfield check out the now classic Canadian Heritage Minute on his work below.)

More great content is sure to be up on the PFV Facebook page in the weeks ahead!

In other social media news, AHP has now added a Twitter widget to our website where you can find our most recent tweets. Click the AHPblog link on the right to go directly to our Twitter feed and follow all of our 140 character or less posts there as well.

Full disclosure: I am also one of the contributors to PFV.

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