The Summer Issue of Revista de Historia de la Psicología is now online. Full titles, authors, and abstracts follow below:
“Nicolás Achúcarro (1880-1918): First histopathologist of the Goverment Hospital of the Insane in Washington, D.C.”José M. Gondra (Article written in English). Abstract:
On one of his visits to the Munich Psychiatric Clinic in 1908, Smith Elly Jelliffe asked Alois Alzheimer who the best person would be to set up a histopathology laboratory at the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. Alzheimer replied that Achúcarro was the man for the job. Nicolás Achúcarro was a Basque neuropsychiatrist born in the industrial city of Bilbao. He had been trained in some of the best clinics in Europe before travelling to Munich, where he studied brain injuries in rabbits infected with rabies. In September 1908, he moved to Washington, D.C., launched the histopathological laboratory and published several important articles before returning to Spain in May 1910 to work with Santiago Ramón y Cajal in the biological research laboratory at the University of Madrid. Later, in September 1912, he was invited by the Fordham University of New York to teach in the International Extension Course in Medical and Nervous Diseases, together with the English neurologist Sir Henry Head and the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung, among other prominent figures. Drawing on the writings of Achúcarro, letters to his family, and the press of the time, this paper analyzes his work in the United States as well as his contributions to neuroscience before his untimely death in 1918 at the young age of 37.
“Phenomenology, experiments and the autonomy of Psychology: The earlier work of Johannes Linschoten.” René van Hezewijk (Article written in English). Abstract:
Johannes Linschoten was a member of the phenomenologically oriented so-called Utrecht School. He published his Ph.D. Thesis in 1956. In this voluminous work, published in German, he discussed the (then) current theories of binocular spatial perception, reported 130 experiments on the subject, and argued for his own dynamic theory. I discuss some important aspects of this earlier work, the development of his view on the role of phenomenology and experiments in psychology, and the way he used his earlier studies to argue for psychology’s autonomy.
El aprendizaje como contexto determinante de la psicología científica: la Psicología Comparada y la Psicología Funcional. [Learning as a determining context of scientific “psychology: Comparative Psychology and Functional Psychology].” Juan Bautista Fuentes Ortega (Article written in Spanish). Abstract:
In the course of the tradition of reflex physiology and the tradition of comparative animal psychology, a new type of experimental and operative psychology emerges, consisting of the incorporation of temporary associations in the form of “at a distance” links, which establishes a rupture with the corresponding biological methodologies and that entails the construction of the field of learning as the context of scientific psychology. In the light of this historical-epistemological analysis, the limited virtuality that the so-called “biological limits of learning” and the so-called cognitive scientific revolution had for the practice of scientific psychology is analyzed. Finally, it is pointed out the need to distinguish carefully between the scientific practice and the philosophical self-representation that scientists often build around their effective practice.
“La psicotecnia en la URSS: Isaac Spielrein y el VII Congreso Internacional de Psicotecnia de Moscú (1931). [Psychotechnics at the URSS: Isaac Spielrein and the Moscow’s VII International Congress of Psychotechnics (1931)].” Helio Carpintero (Article written in Spanish). Abstract:
This article deals with I. Spielrein’s ideas on psychotechnology. He was a Soviet leading figure in that field, in the days in between the two great wars, and chaired the 7th International Congress of Psychotechnology held in Moscow in 1931.In it he confronted the Marxist doctrine with that maintained by specialist of the democratic European nations. He affirmed the socio-historical character of man, as opposed to the dominant naturalist and biologist conception that dominated in capitalist societies, as well as the use of psychotechnics in those nations as an obstacle to the rise of proletariat to social power, facing the bourgeoisie.