Tag Archives: Samuel Butler

New JHBS: Ambiverts, Victimization Surveys, Radical Behaviorism in Brazil, and More

Fred Keller

The Autumn 2017 issue of the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences is now available. Articles in this issue explore the history of the ambivert, the emergence of victimization surveys, the influence of Fred Keller’s radical behaviorism in Brazil, and ideas about mental evolution and unconscious memory in Victorian Britain. Full details follow below.

“The ambivert: A failed attempt at a normal personality,” by Ian J. Davidson. Abstract:

Recently, attention has been drawn toward an overlooked and nearly forgotten personality type: the ambivert. This paper presents a genealogy of the ambivert, locating the various contexts it traversed in order to highlight the ways in which these places and times have interacted and changed—ultimately elucidating our current situation. Proposed by Edmund S. Conklin in 1923, the ambivert only was meant for normal persons in between the introvert and extravert extremes. Although the ambivert could have been taken up by early personality psychologists who were transitioning from the study of the abnormal to the normal, it largely failed to gain traction. Whether among psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, or applied and personality psychologists, the ambivert was personality non grata. It was only within the context of Eysenck’s integrative view of types and traits that the ambivert marginally persisted up to the present day and is now the focus of sales management and popular psychology.

“The genesis of victimization surveys and of the realist-constructionist divide,” by Matthieu de Castelbajac. Abstract: Continue reading New JHBS: Ambiverts, Victimization Surveys, Radical Behaviorism in Brazil, and More

New History of Psychiatry: Possession in the DSM, Jung’s Seances, & More

The September 2015 issue of History of Psychiatry is now online.  Among the articles in this issue are ones on Carl Jung (above) and his investigation of his cousin’s mediumship, the epistemological problems of incorporating possession into the DSM, a case study of a museum of mental health care history, and much more. Full titles, authors, and abstract follow below.

“The epistemological significance of possession entering the DSM,” by Craig Stephenson. The abstract reads,

The discourse of the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM reflects the inherently dialogic or contradictory nature of its stated mandate to demonstrate both ‘nosological completeness’ and cultural ‘inclusiveness’. Psychiatry employs the dialogic discourse of the DSM in a one-sided, positivistic manner by identifying what it considers universal mental disease entities stripped of their cultural context. In 1992 the editors of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders proposed to introduce possession into their revisions. A survey of the discussions about introducing ‘possession’ as a dissociative disorder to be listed in the DSM-IV indicates a missed epistemological break. Subsequently the editors of the DSM-5 politically ‘recuperated’ possession into its official discourse, without acknowledging the anarchic challenges that possession presents to psychiatry as a cultural practice.

“‘A vehicle of symbols and nothing more’. George Romanes, theory of mind, information, and Samuel Butler,” by Donald R Forsdyke. The abstract reads, Continue reading New History of Psychiatry: Possession in the DSM, Jung’s Seances, & More