Although naturalists have devoted attention to cetaceans since Antiquity, it was only in the 19th century that cetology underwent a true explosion. Three key cetological works of this period are The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839) by Thomas Beale, The Whaleman's Adventures in the Southern Ocean (1850) by Henry Cheever and The Seals and Whales of the British Seas (1881) by Thomas Southwell. Importantly, these three works did not only represent fundamental compendia of scientific knowledge of cetaceans, but also had a crucial role in awakening a cetacean protection consciousness. Indeed, by describing in detail the behavior and psychology of these animals, these works depicted cetaceans as capable of cognition and emotions, facilitating empathy from the readers and challenging the general audience to consider critical issues connected to whale hunting, such as animal suffering and species extinction. From a behavioral point of view, Beale and Cheever, among the first naturalists that had direct experiences with living whales, refuted the previous dominant view of the whale based on the monothematic stereotype of the "bloodthirsty" "monster of the deep," and described instead a more complete and scientifically accurate ethogram of whales, underscoring how these animals actually express a wide range of complex emotions, including joy, playfulness, maternal affection, filial affection, social affection to non-kins, defensive attitudes towards conspecifics in danger and succorant attitudes towards injured members of their pod. Moreover, these three works are milestones not only in the history of behavioral biology, but also in the history of environmentalism. Indeed, these works innovatively started presenting the whales object of hunting as sentient victims undergoing great sufferings and mass-slaughter, rather than as mere monsters to defeat. This new view of the whale represented the first step of a change of attitude in the public opinion, that, over the course of the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, progressively shifted its sympathy from the whale hunters to the whales, leading to the rise of cetacean protection movements. We here analyze these three works, underlining in particular their contributions to behavioral cetology. The rediscovery of these works will be important not only for cetology and behavioral sciences, but also for history of science, anthropology, ethics, animal rights, and ecocriticism.
The convergence of dance art and therapeutic culture engendered the development of dance-movement therapy in the mid to late 20th century internationally. This article traces the sociopolitical, institutional, and aesthetic influences that coalesced in this process by contrasting histories of dance-movement therapy in Hungary and in the United States. The professionalization dance-movement therapy, through which it established its own theory, practice, and training institutions, occurred first in the United States in the late 1940s. Modern dancers in the United States began to conceptualize their activity as therapeutic, and the dancer as a (secular) healer, a therapist. The influx of therapeutic concepts into the field of dance is viewed as an example of therapeutic discourse permeating various areas of life in the 20th century. The Hungarian case provides a contrasting history of therapeutic culture, one that deviates from the predominant view of the phenomenon as a product of the global spread of Western modernization and the growth of free-market capitalism. Hungarian movement and dance therapy indeed developed independently from its American predecessor. Its history is intimately tied to the sociopolitical context of state-socialist period, particularly to the institutionalization of psychotherapy in public hospitals, and to the adaptation of Western group psychotherapies within the informal setting of the "second public sphere." The legacy of Michael Balint and the British object-relations school provided its theoretical framework. Its methodology was rooted in postmodern dance. The methodological differences between American dance-movement therapy and the Hungarian method reflects the shift in dance aesthetics that occurred internationally between 1940 and 1980s.
The article contains a brief overview of the main metatheoretical and conceptual ideas, as well as empirical data, of the general psychological theory of set developed by Dmitry Uznadze (1886-1950) and his followers. They are considered from the point of view of the systemic approach, the problem of the crisis of psychology and the task of building a comprehensive integrative theoretical system. The theory of set is a holistic system of views on the origin and implementation of mental activity. The article focuses on the ideas contained in this concept around the problem of the unconscious psyche. From the standpoint of the theory of set, an attempt is made to present a certain point of view on the issue of types of the unconscious psyche. Particular attention is paid to the critical assessment of the psychoanalytic understanding of the unconscious given in the works of D. Uznadze. In this regard, a brief overview of the discussions at the Tbilisi symposium on the unconscious in 1979 is presented, at which a remarkable dialog between the followers of psychoanalysis and the theory of set took place.
This study investigates the development of concepts of psychosis in the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw, within the context of social and historical processes to which the hospital was the subject and a broader scope of European concepts of psychosis. In the years 1898-1909, the first chief physician of the psychiatric ward, Adam Wizel, focused mainly on hysteria. The interest in psychoses was initiated by Maurycy Bornsztajn, who started to promote psychoanalytic ideas. The second decade of the functioning of the Jewish Hospital's psychiatric ward was marked by issues concerning the classification of psychoses. In the third decade, after Poland regained independence, psychosis became the main focus of the hospital's staff. Newly appointed psychiatrists, Gustaw Bychowski and Władysław Matecki, contributed substantially to the psychoanalytic understanding of psychosis. Bornsztajn continued to develop his psychoanalytically based concept of psychosis. Wizel changed his attitude toward psychoanalysis and acknowledged the importance of Freud's discoveries. Władysław Sterling contributed to the biological understanding of schizophrenia. In the last period, 1931-1943, the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw struggled with the consequences of the economic crisis in Poland, Wizel's death, and Bychowski's departure, which resulted in the reduced number of publications in the field of psychosis. Nevertheless, Bornsztajn managed to further develop his concept of somatopsychic schizophrenia and Matecki introduced the category of pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia. The psychoanalytic approach developed by Wizel, Bornsztajn, Bychowski, and Matecki was supplemented with other influences, especially phenomenology. Wizel, Bychowski, and Matecki were advocates of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of psychotic patients.
This article focuses on the shift in sensitivities that took place between the 1980s and 2019 toward psychological suffering in Algeria. Promoters of psychotherapy showed an increase in receptivity-via the media, public authorities, and the general population-to their practices and discourses during this period. Based on professional literature, interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts, and newspaper articles and essays, this article considers the following aspects: the use of psychotherapy, the authority of psychoanalytic/psychopathological analyses, and the ethics of relation in politics. Taking a social and cultural history of politics approach, it traces the discontinuous politicization of psychotherapy over the course of events (namely the uprising of 1988, the civil war of the 1990s, and the 2019 popular movement) and examines the interactions between the state, popular mobilizations, and the psychotherapists. The civil war of the 1990s coincided with the normalization of "trauma" on a global scale, and procedures for the prevention of posttraumatic stress disorder were put in place in Algeria from 1997 onwards. In this process of legitimizing psychological suffering and its treatment, the promoters of psychotherapy who belonged to the less visible margins gained authority. The year-long protest movement (2019) against the regime performed the ethics of relation, focusing on human relations, reflexivity, and living together. Promoters of psychotherapy identified consistently with the political subjectivities produced within the 2019 popular movement characterized by massive pacifist marches against the regime.
In 1929, Robert Hutchins became the president of the University of Chicago and one of his first reforms was to build the Committee on Child Development (CCD). The CCD came into existence when the nationwide Child Development Movement started waning. Hutchins and his old associates in the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial were interested in Child Development as a form of interdisciplinary social science, and their ideas greatly shaped the initial design of the Committee. Without wholehearted support from the department chairs, however, the CCD was eventually established as a compromise between the departments and the president. Into the late 1930s, the appointments made by the new divisional dean, Robert Redfield, opened new channels for cross-departmental collaboration. Under the chairmanship of Ralph Tyler, the Committee's name was changed to Human Development (CHD) in 1940. Meanwhile, community studies became the central focus of the Committee, which reflected the societal concerns of restoring social order while war and social dissolution were impinging upon the country. This paper analyzes two modes of interdisciplinarity emerging in two distinct stages of the development of the Committee, which were contingent upon the changing university structure, the shifting interests of the foundations, and the visions of different generations of scholars.
The development of the concept of dreams in interwar Polish psychiatry and psychology was influenced by Western European concepts as well as by sociocultural factors of the newly independent state. Few Polish psychiatrists addressed the subject of dreams. They were influenced mainly by Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic concept of dreams, but also by Alferd Adler's, Carl Gustav Jung's, and Wilhelm Stekel's ideas. Nevertheless, they approached psychoanalysis critically. The most comprehensive concept of dreams in Polish psychiatry was oneiroanalysis by Tadeusz Bilikiewicz. Oneironalysis was a method of dream analysis based on psychoanalysis but it rejected the psychoanalytic method of free associations and challenged psychoanalytic approaches to the interpretation of dream symbols. Polish psychologists were even less interested in dreams than psychiatrists. Problems with dreams, the most elaborate psychological work by Stefan Szuman consisted of an outline of epistemological problems with general theories of dreams and a harsh critique of psychoanalysis. The neglect of the subject of dreams in Polish psychiatric society can be seen as connected with the social and professional reception of psychoanalysis in Poland. Psychoanalysis was met with opposition from conservative scholars and publicists presenting nationalistic and anti-Semitic attitudes. It was also criticized by the biologically oriented majority of psychiatrists of the Polish Psychiatric Association. In the case of psychology, the most influential Polish psychological school, Lvov-Warsaw School, promoted Brentanian intentionalism, introspection, and psychology of consciousness, therefore, leading to psychologists' reluctance to explore unconscious states like dreams.
A keyword search of "sex therapy" in the New York Times shows a rapid rise for articles covering the discipline in the 1970s, an equally rapid reduction in the 1980s, and further decline in the 1990s and into the 2000s. This surprising inflection, given that sex as a marketable construction did not decline in the late 20th century, opens room to examine sex therapy in the contexts in which it could and could not be successful. Sex therapy as a distinct intervention emerged in the 1960s, based on Masters' and Johnson's obstetric-gynecological research focus on satisfying, conjugal sex, and was boundaried by the optics of medical respectability. Sex therapy viewed sex as a bodily, visible, and behavioral phenomenon, with sexual problems conceived as overt and physiological symptoms and syndromes of the body. Correspondingly, sex therapy offered behavioral techniques to white middle-class clients to ameliorate dissatisfying sex. These conceptions were met with success and popularity in the 1970s, with thousands of sex therapy centers opening nationwide in just a few years. However, with the Reagan administration and AIDS crisis in the early 1980s, sex therapy quickly regressed as a respectable source of medical expertise about sex. Simultaneously, biomedical interventions more broadly replaced medicalized solutions for pre-conceived medical problematics. The introduction of Viagra in 1998 was a biomedical replacement of the medicalized sexual problems created by sex therapy, situated on the observable body. When a seemingly even more bodily and behavioral bio-medical solution to its problematics competed with sex therapy for its same white middle-class client base, sex therapy could not maintain public awareness of its disciplinarity.
Karl Kraus was one of the most important and influential personalities in Vienna at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century; he was the founder and life director of the magazine Die Fackel, famous for leading important debates with writers, poets, journalists, and psychoanalysts. At the beginning of the 20th century, Freud wanted to win Kraus's sympathy because he believed that having him on his side was essential for psychoanalysis to penetrate the artistic and cultural circle of Vienna. As will be shown in this article, the alliance between the two was never consummated and, on the contrary, they became antagonists, with Ernst Jones naming Kraus "Freud's greatest enemy." In this paper, mentions of Freud and psychoanalysis in Die Fackel between 1905 and 1930 were identified and subsequently, 26 aphorisms written by Kraus through the post-structural linguistic approach were analyzed. A sample from the digital collection AAC-FACKEL of the Austrian Academy Corpus was used. Early writings reveal that Kraus came to regard psychoanalysis as an ally in his struggle against Austrian sexual morality, yet he was always wary of its invasion of the intimate lives of individuals. Kraus criticized Freud's explanation of female hysteria and instead considered that the root of female suffering was due to their inability to give themselves individuality. It can be concluded that although Kraus was a severe critic of psychoanalysis, at many times he viewed some of its postulates with sympathy, to the point that he considered his aphorisms to be a kind of attenuated psychoanalysis; that is, without the exaggerated presence of sexual elements or interpretations.
In the mid-1940s, Argentine spiritualism faced a crisis in the context of cultural changes where they sought to install parapsychology as a valid area of inquiry within the emerging psychology as a science. The 1950s represented a transformation of the intellectual field for the so-called "conjectural sciences" and a form of psychologization of spiritualism. In fact, the appropriation of J.B. Rhine's test results in the United States proved useful to spiritualists. However, in the late 1940s, enthusiasm emerged among mathematicians to learn about Rhine's statistical procedures and tests. The aims are to analyze the emergence of parapsychology and the controversies surrounding its acceptance/rejection, to examine the emphasis of parapsychology on distancing itself from spiritualism to integrate into the Argentine psychological community, and to evaluate the strategies of Argentine spiritualists to validate their theories based on the works of J.B. Rhine. A historiographic analysis will be conducted through the compilation of relevant documents, books, magazines, and correspondence with authors and researchers from the period between 1945 and 1953. A process of demarcation between psychology and spiritualism in Argentina sought to purify parapsychology towards a position less contaminated by belief systems, in favor of the application of statistical and mathematical procedures of Rhinean orientation.
In clarifying that Spinoza is not the first person to share insights about the necessity of a contrary, strong emotion in transforming an emotion, the present article focuses on expounding this perspective as embedded in the classical texts of Chinese medicine, along with illustrative examples of emotion-focused therapy in the historical case records of Chinese master physicians. Key features of this kind of emotion-focused therapy include (1) designing a new scenario that provides the client with an embodied alternate experience in the real world, thereby eliciting a strong emotion capable of overcoming the previously indulged one, and (2) implementing the scenario through collaboration with a person close to the client, or by securing the client's full trust in the physician. A comparison between the role of emotions in the holistic system of traditional Chinese medicine and the philosophical system of Spinoza, as presented in Ethics, reveals more variability than commonality. Even though the role of emotion in human functioning is recognized in Spinoza's system of thought, his approach to emotion regulation is fundamentally rationalistic. A closer review of contemporary psychological science and psychotherapy further reveals that cognition plays an intriguing role in the regulation and transformation of emotions. Against this background, the contributions and limitations of emotion-focused therapy in traditional Chinese medicine are evaluated, followed by the elucidation of its principles and the consideration of its integration with advancements in contemporary psychotherapy.
Economist Nobelist Thomas C. Schelling (1921-2016) is known for his contribution to the analysis of international conflict and many see him as the Cold Warrior par excellence. At a time of great uncertainties and dangers, Schelling combined a deep understanding of strategic analysis, a detailed knowledge of US commitments around the world and an inimitable talent for dissecting everyday behavior, which made him a think tank all on his own. When he turned to the analysis of bargaining in the mid-1950s, one question dominated policy discussions: "How to demonstrate the US commitment to the 'free world'"? Schelling answered unequivocally: By restricting one's choices so as to shift others' expectations and thereby influence their behavior in the desired direction. By the mid-1970s, after he had broken with the US administration and joined the Committee on Substance Abuse and Habitual Behavior, Schelling transposed the tactics deployed in international conflict to the analysis of individuals trying to achieve self-control. In the process, he reproduced the logic of military conflict at the level of the self. The view of a conflicted self itself comprised of two selves made restricted choice the daily routine of individuals who wish to avoid the negative consequences of their present behavior in the future while it promised those who enjoy unbounded freedom of choice an unsettling future.
Aicardi-Goutières Syndrome (AGS) is a genetic type 1 interferonopathy that causes white matter abnormalities and intracranial calcifications, resulting in varying degrees of neurologic impairment and systemic manifestations. Novel disease-modifying therapies for AGS are forthcoming. The 2022 Food and Drug Administration guidance, "Patient-Focused Drug Development" (PFDD), emphasizes the importance of including patients' voices early in the design of clinical trials. This represents an urgent unmet need in rare disease research. In this study, we propose and pilot a new methodology to identify patient-centered Concepts of Interest (COIs) and suitable Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs) for clinical trials. The study was performed under the Myelin Disease Biorepository Project within the Global Leukodystrophy Initiative Clinical Trial Network. A sequential multicomponent approach, piloted in AGS, was designed to (i) identify COIs, (ii) select COAs capable of measuring the COIs through expert consensus, and (iii) assess the feasibility of COA application. Experts were identified based on relevant scientific publications and expertise in AGS (disease experts for COI) and/or their application of relevant COAs (outcome experts for COA). Expert consensus was achieved using the modified eDelphi approach for COIs, expertise-specific multi-panel focus group discussions, and pre-and post-surveys for COA selection. Consensus was defined as ≥70% agreement among the experts. This was followed by a virtual stakeholder discussion with patients and/or patient representatives to assess the feasibility of the COA application in the context of a clinical trial. Based on the health priorities identified by patient caregivers, the proposed approach revealed a set of fit-for-purpose COIs across the motor, adaptive behavior, and neurologic functional domains. All experts acknowledged the significance of each caregiver-identified priority but expressed differing opinions on the likelihood of observing changes in the functional domain within a 6- to 12-month timeframe. Following this, a consensus-building approach for COA selection for each identified COI resulted in a paired COI-COA panel applicable to future AGS clinical trials. Finally, the discussion on the feasibility of application of the selected COAs with the patients and/or patient representatives elicited critical information to design a patient-centered prospective COA protocol, applicable to clinical trials and natural history studies. The proposed approach marks the first step toward a patient-centered clinical trial design for rare diseases. It establishes a paired COI-COA panel, as well as informs the design of a patient-centered prospective COA protocol for upcoming AGS clinical trials and natural history studies. Additionally, the identified COA panel facilitates the creation of a multicomponent endpoint for clinical trials, which is especially crucial in phenotypically diverse disorders like AGS. This approach is widely applicable across leukodystrophies and rare diseases.
This paper deals with the anthropological conception of the first modern Italian anthropologist, Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910). We will begin by contextualizing the status of anthropology in Italy during the second half of the 19th century. Subsequently, we will delve into some of the inspirations that led the Italians to have such a multifaceted conception of the discipline. Next, we will outline the content of this approach and clarify the meaning of "omnicomprehensive science." From there, we will come to understand the reason for the variety of interests of the anthropologist, who aimed to study the human being in all aspects of life. We will then mention the moral objective present in his professional journey: through an understanding of the complexity of human life, the anthropologist wanted to contribute to the progress and well-being of society; in other words, to "living well."
The existence of a "severe discrepancy" between measured ability and achievement has been the dominant criterion for identifying learning disabilities ("LD") in American education since its codification into federal law in 1977. In this article, I argue that the history of LD is best understood not through the emergence of a diagnostic label, but through the evolution of its methods of identification. By tracing the rise and decline of the IQ-achievement discrepancy model amid shifting legal, psychometric, and policy contexts, I aim to show how declining faith in IQ tests as measures of potential threatened the credibility of LD as a viable construct for identifyin and treating "unexpected" underachievement. Abandoning discrepancy and embracing more pragmatic approaches like response to intervention (RTI) reflected political compromises as much as discrepancy had represented decades before. But it also represented an effort by experts in the LD field to protect the scientific integrity of LD by more effectively targeting its most recognizable characteristic-the failure to learn in comparison to age-level peers. In the era of standards and accountability, this shift reflected the priorities of education reformers and the legislative impetus of No Child Left Behind. But it also represented a profound reorientation of the measurement of unexpected underachievement. By supplanting an increasingly discredited metric of intellectual potential (IQ), RTI and similar methods helped reinterpret LD as a specifically skills-based construct unrelated to perennially ambiguous notions of intelligence.
Between the years 1925 and 1934, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) awarded 198 postdoctoral research fellowships to early-career social scientists, among which 29 were awarded to women. This article, which is based on the SSRC directory and Rockefeller institutions' records, examines the professional paths of these female fellows to shed light on the presence of women in the social sciences and to probe the peculiarities of their professional trajectories. The SSRC fellowships represented a significant professional prospect for brilliant young female graduates who were often denied similar opportunities in other fields. Nonetheless, they did not eradicate all gender discrimination that remained prevalent, not only in the vertical sense by preventing women from progressing in the academic hierarchy, but also in the horizontal sense by retaining them in designated spaces (specific disciplines or institutions) that were underrecognized. Ultimately, the analysis of women's professional paths underscores the importance of examining the private or intimate lives of scientists to gain a more in-depth understanding of the social structure of science and its impact on its protagonists.
Michel Jouvet (1925-2017) is one of the most important figures in the contemporary history of the neuroscience of sleep and dreams, and one of the most awarded French researchers of the last century. Yet this former CNRS gold medalist and winner of the Cino Del Duca World Prize remains little known-not to say unknown-outside the field of sleep medicine, especially in non-French-speaking countries, where the name of his American counterpart, William C. Dement, is more familiar. Often reduced to his experiments on cats and the discovery of what he called "paradoxical sleep," Jouvet left behind a rather unique body of work that includes not only countless publications on sleep and dreams-neurophysiological as well as ethnological and psychological-but also major contributions to clinical medicine, two novels and an impressive collection of personal dream accounts and drawings, which now make it possible to explore the nocturnal side of the last 50 years of his life. This article draws on unpublished archives to illuminate all these little-known and unknown aspects of Jouvet's life and work, highlighting his hidden links with 19th-century scientific oneirology and bringing to light its paradoxes.
This paper examines the pivotal role played by Moritz Wilhelm Drobisch (1802-1896) in the development of mathematical psychology, and his influence on the emergence of Fechner's psychophysics in 19th-century Germany. As a key figure in the Herbartian tradition in Leipzig, Drobisch refined Herbart's initial framework for applying mathematics to psychological phenomena while also addressing the fundamental theoretical challenges inherent in measuring intensive mental magnitudes. The study sheds light on how Drobisch's dual expertise in mathematics and philosophy enabled him to develop innovative methods for quantifying mental representations, most notably through his formulation of the "three-representation problem" as psychology's analog to celestial mechanics, and his mathematical treatment of qualitative color continua. By reconstructing the crucial yet overlooked connection between Drobisch's mathematical psychology and Gustav Theodor Fechner's psychophysics, this study sheds light on a critical chapter in the prehistory of experimental psychology, offering new perspectives on the mathematical foundations of modern behavioral sciences.
This paper explores the origins and development of the "contemplative psychotherapy" project in the United States, emerging around psychoanalyst Edward Podvoll and the intellectual environment at Naropa University during the 1970s and 1980s. It situates Podvoll's work within the broader dialogue between Buddhism and Western psychotherapy, highlighting how his contributions shed light on this dynamic and complex encounter. The paper begins by outlining Podvoll's psychiatric and psychoanalytic background, then examines the establishment of contemplative psychotherapy at Naropa, and finally discusses the creation of the Windhorse community therapy model-while contextualising Podvoll's dialogues with influential figures such as Chögyam Trungpa, Erik Erikson, Manfred Bleuler, and Oliver Sacks. Drawing on published and unpublished material by Podvoll, it argues that his work exemplified a pioneering effort to integrate Buddhist and psychoanalytic perspectives on mental health and recovery. At the same time, the paper reflects on some of the conceptual and therapeutic tensions that arise when spiritual and clinical paradigms converge. By examining contemplative psychotherapy as both a historical case study and a continuing experiment, the paper contributes to ongoing debates about the possibilities-and limits-of East-West intersections in psychological practice.
As the first two decades of the 20th century unfolded, clinical psychologists, who had until then been mainly associated with intelligence testing, attempted to implement a specific psychological method-Carl Gustav Jung's (1875-1961) word-association "test"-in individual personality assessments. As one of the early clinical psychologists who attempted to use the method, Carl Ransom Rogers (1902-1987) is conspicuously absent from the historiography of clinical psychological testing. In fact, historians have recently suggested that we are lacking narratives about Rogers' early ideas and techniques in the context of both the development of clinical psychology and the emergence of psychological testing as clinicians' foremost scholarly activity. In light of the above, this paper pursues two main goals. First, it attempts to reconstruct Rogers' first original research project on emotional adjustment testing in young children in the broader context of the development of word-association tests as carried out by Jung and Whately Smith (1892-1947). Second, it aims to reconstruct Rogers' earliest theoretical ideas as well as his epistemological assumptions regarding test objectivity, validity and reliability. By drawing on unpublished documents and heretofore overlooked primary sources I show that although Rogers initially drew from Jung and Smith's complex and refined tradition, he ultimately rejected it as well as the tests themselves. At first drawn to Smith's quantitative, empiricist and experimental philosophy of psychology, Rogers was deterred when the data gathered through his own research in 1927 suggested that word association tests had no real, effective clinical value when used in children. By showcasing the complex process of test construction and validation undertaken by 1920s clinical psychologists, Rogers' case illustrates the research practices, the methodological problems and the epistemological dilemmas faced by most if not all of his contemporaries.