Tag Archives: Cattell

New Issue of History of Psychology

SokalA new issue of History of Psychology has just been published. The issue features three all new research articles.

The first article is authored by Kieran McNally, a post-doctoral student in the Theory and History of Psychology program at University College Dublin. The abstract to McNally’s article, “Eugene Bleuler’s As Four,” reads as follows:

One hundred years have passed since Eugene Bleuler first coined the term schizophrenia. In that time, a simple mnemonic, the Four As, has come to distort his complex descriptive pathology. However, at no stage did Bleuler give precedence to the Four As or describe them in such a fashion. The Four As are a caricatured representation of Bleuler’s schizophrenia that distorts the later conceptualization of schizophrenia. Despite historical attempts to signal this error, it remains virulent in the schizophrenia literature, masquerading as historical fact. This article corrects this distortion and clarifies the precise relationship of the Four As to Bleuler’s thinking. It discusses their emergence and persistence, and draws attention to Bleuler’s emphasis of other important symptoms—most notably splitting.

The second article, “Teaching psychology to jurists: Initiatives and reactions prior to World War I,” by Annette Mülberger, explores the relationship between psychology and criminal law in the early twentieth century. Continue reading New Issue of History of Psychology

Anniversary of James McKeen Cattell’s PhD

James McKeen CattellIt was on this day in 1886 James McKeen Cattell passed his doctoral examinations at the University of Leipzig. Cattell was the first American to graduate under Wilhelm Wundt’s supervision. G. Stanley Hall, however, had earlier spent time learning and working in the famed experimental psychology research laboratory — the first of its kind in the world — after earning a PhD at Harvard under William James. Ironically, Cattell had begun his graduate work under Hall’s supervision at Johns Hopkins, but left Baltimore for Leipzig after a dispute with Hall over his fellowship, which had been withdrawn and given to another Johns Hopkins student, John Dewey. Continue reading Anniversary of James McKeen Cattell’s PhD