The first issue of the Journal of The History of the Behavioral Sciences is now available (Vol. 53, 1). It features four articles, the topics of which span the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries: early social surveying in Denmark; the replacement of Richard Avenarius’ work in the established history of the theoretical disagreement between Wundt and Külpe; the hybrid investigative research by Bowlby et al. at the Tavistock Clinic 1948-1956; and not least, the work by Gordon Gallop Jr. in the 1960s and 1970s on animal self-recognition as a lens to consider the often precluded compatibility between behaviorism and cognitive science. The abstracts for each follow after the jump.
Dr. Shaul Bar-Heim (Birbeck): “‘The apostolic function’: Michael Balint and the postwar GP”
What started in the early 1950s as a small informal peer-group of GPs, based in the Tavistock Clinic, became by the 1960s one of the most influential medical movements of the postwar era: the Balint movement. Named after the British-Hungarian psychoanalyst, Michael Balint, the theoretical assumption behind Balint Groups was that many doctors – and especially family doctors – do not know yet how to use one of the most important medical tools, namely, what Balint described as the ‘drug doctor.’. This was particularly true, he believed, in psychosomatic illnesses and medical cases with a clear psychosocial nature.
This paper will contextualize the emergence of the Balint movement within the heyday of welfarist ideology, where GPs were encouraged to take a parental role in running the emotional economy of domestic lives in their communities. Thus, patients and doctors were invited to adopt a psychoanalytical language which focuses on internal feelings, emotions, and unconscious behavior of the individual. At the same time, however, a new kind of medical authority emerged – one which played a crucial role as a social and ethical guidance in the postwar British welfare society.
Organiser: Professor Sonu Shamdasani (UCL)
Time: 6pm to 7.30 pm.
Location: Arts and Humanities Common Room (G24), Foster Court, Malet Place, University College London.
From the Torrington Place entrance to UCL, enter the campus on Malet Place. After fifty metres, you will find Foser court on the right hand side. Turn right under the underpass, and enter via the second door on the right. The common room is straight ahead.
The May 2011 issue of History of Psychology, the official journal of the Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26 of the American Psychological Association), has just been released online. Included in this issue are a number of all new articles on topics including: the nature of coverage of the new psychology in the pages New York Times, the colonization of childhood via developmental psychology, William James on space perception and the history of the concept of regression.
Also included in this issue is a teaching article on using history to illuminate the scientist-practitioner gap within clinical psychology, as well as pieces on the new Center for the History of Psychology, Roderick Buchanan’s reflections on writing a biography of Hans Eysenck, and news from the American Psychological Association’s Council of Representatives. Titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.
“Press coverage of the new psychology by the New York Times during the Progressive Era,” by Paul M. Dennis. The abstract reads,
Press coverage of psychology by the New York Times was examined for the Progressive Era. Following a period in which psychology was associated with spiritualism, psychoanalysis, and the Emmanuel movement, the Times gave editorial preference to reports about psychology’s applications. Reaching an audience that was both affluent and influential, the topics emphasized by the Times included the lie detector, psychological applications in the work place, mental tests, and child psychology. These areas reflected issues of social concern to Progressives, publicized the rise of the psychologist as expert, and aided psychology in its challenge to common sense.
The April 2011 issue of History of the Human Sciences has just been released online. Included in this issue are eight all new articles as well as three book reviews. Among the topics addressed in these articles are the history of qualitative research in the social sciences, character types and space in early statistical writings, a history of bedwetting and its regulation, a history of therapeutic work, Quakerism and the Tavistock Clinic’s development, alienation theory, the work of Hannah Arendt, and the con man origins of Erving Goffman’s (left) dramaturgical self. Full title, authors, and abstracts follow below.
“Toward a social history of qualitative research,” by Gordana Jovanovic. The abstract reads,
There are plausible academic as well as social indicators that qualitative research has become an indispensable part of the methodological repertoire of the social sciences. Relying upon the tenets of the qualitative approach which require a priority of subject matter over method and a necessary socio-historical contextualization, I reconstruct some aspects of a social history that have shaped the quantitative—qualitative dichotomy and the quantitative imperative; these include modern individualism, monological rationality, manufacture operating on the grounds of common human labour, mechanics as the first science, quantification as a technology of distanced objectivity and a search for certainty realized at the expense of qualitative attributes. The so-called renaissance of the qualitative approach starting in 1960s, understood as a kind of a return of repressed qualities, is also socio-culturally contextualized. Both anthropogenetic and sociogenetic reconstructions as well as a microgenetic analysis of the research process demonstrate that choices of subject matter and of methodology are socially and culturally embedded and necessarily linked to broader interests and beliefs. Continue reading New Issue: History of the Human Sciences→
The first issue of the Journal of The History of the Behavioral Sciences is now available (Vol. 53, 1). It features four articles, the topics of which span the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries: early social surveying in Denmark; the replacement of Richard Avenarius’ work in the established history of the theoretical disagreement between Wundt and Külpe; the hybrid investigative research by Bowlby et al. at the Tavistock Clinic 1948-1956; and not least, the work by Gordon Gallop Jr. in the 1960s and 1970s on animal self-recognition as a lens to consider the often precluded compatibility between behaviorism and cognitive science. The abstracts for each follow after the jump.
The May 2011 issue of 
The April 2011 issue of