Four Periods of Historiographic Bloom in Psychology
Paul F. Ballantyne
November 2002
Back in 1990, Mikhail Yaroshevsky's History of Psychology provided the following statement regarding "three" 20th century periods of historiographic bloom in psychology:
"Psychological knowledge has traveled a long and complicated road as it developed. The thinking that aims to reconstruct that road has, in its turn, a history of its own, which we call 'historiography'… A heightened interest in the past of psychology has been characteristic of …three periods within the [20th] century: for a few years after 1910; the late '20s and early '30s; and the early '60s. At these periods there have been important changes in prevailing ideas and theories" (Yaroshevsky, 1990, p. 15).
I have already used his encapsulation to produce a brief list of central texts for each of those periods (shown below) along with an associated paper on Early historians of psychology and their texts (1870s-1921). It can be argued, however, that we have just passed through another period of historiographic bloom (roughly stretching from the late-1980s up to the present). The list below has therefore been extended and I will follow it with brief summery comments on the disciplinary contexts for each of the "four" periods covered.
Ribot, T. (1892). English Psychology. (3rd ed.). [J.M. Baldwin, Trans.]. New York: Appleton. [Originally published 1870 and translated 1874].
Hall, G.S. (1912). Founders of Modern Psychology. New York: Appleton.
Rand, B. (Ed.). (1912). Classical Psychologists: Selections form Anaxagoras to Wundt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Baldwin, J.M. (1913). History of Psychology: A sketch. New York: Putnam.
Klemm, O. (1914). A History of Psychology. New York: Charles Scribners.
Dessoir, M. (1912). Outlines of the History of Psychology. (Trans. D. Fisher). New York: Macmillan.
Brett, G.S. (1912-21). A History of Psychology. Vols. 1-3. London: George Allen. (Abridged ed., by Peters, 1953).
Warren, H.C. (1921). A History of the Association Psychology. New York: Scribners.
Late 20s-Early 30s
Boring, E.G. (1929). A History of Experimental Psychology. New York: Century. (2nd. Ed. 1950).
Murchison, C. (Ed.). (1926). Psychologies of 1925. : Worcester, Mass. : Clark University Press.
Murphy, G. (1929). Historical Introduction to Modern Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace. (2nd. Ed. 1949).
Murchison, (Ed.) (1930). Psychologies of 1930. Worcester, Mass. : Clark University Press.
Woodworth, R.S. (1931). Contemporary Schools of Psychology. New York: Ronald Press.
Flugel, J. (1933). A Hundred Years of Psychology (1833-1933). New York: Macmillan. (2nd ed., Flugel & West, 1964).
Heidbreder, E. (1933). Seven Psychologies. Toronto: Prentice-Hall.
Müller-Freienfels, R. (1935). The Evolution of Modern Psychology. (W. Beran Wolfe, Trans.). New Haven: Yale University Press.
3. Early 1960s-1970s
Dennis, W. (1948). Readings in the History of Psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. [used extensively during this period].
Koch, S. (Ed.). (1959-1963). Psychology: A study of a science. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Boring, E.G. (1963). History, Psychology, and Science: Selected Papers. New York: John Wiley.
Watson, R.I. (1963). The Great Psychologists: Aristotle to Freud. Philadelphia: Lippincott.
Hearnshaw, L.S. (1964). A Short History of British Psychology. New York: Barnest Noble.
Herrnstein, R.J. & Boring, E.G. (Eds.). (1965). A Source Book in the History of Psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Young, R.M. (1968). Mind, Brain, and adaptation in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sexton, V., & Misiak, H. (1971). Historical Perspectives in Psychology: Readings. Belmont: Brooks/Cole.
Marx, M. & Hillix, W. (1973). Systems and Theories in Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kamin, L. (1974). The Science and Politics of IQ. Potomac, MD: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Diamond, S. (Ed.). (1974). The Roots of Psychology: A sourcebook in the history of ideas. New York: Basic Books.
Chaplin, J. & Krawiec, T. (1974). Systems and Theories of Psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Robinson, D.N. (1978). The Mind Unfolded. New York: University Pub.
Hilgard, E. (Ed.). (1978). American Psychology in Historical Perspective:Addresses of the Presidents of the American Psychological Association, 1892-1977. Washington: APA.
Watson, R.I. (Ed.). (1979). Basic Writings in the History of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fancher, R. (1979). Pioneers of Psychology. [1990, 1996]. New York: Norton.
4. 1980s-onward
Gould, S. (1981). The Mismeasure of Man. [Rev. ed. 1996]. New York: Norton.
Lowry, R. (1982). The Evolution of psychological Theory. New York: Atherton Press.
Murray, D.J. (1983). A History of Western Psychology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Hillner, K. (1984). History and systems of modern psychology: a conceptual approach.
New York: Gardner Press.Koch, S. & Leary, D. (Eds.) (1985). A Century of Psychology as Science. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Leahey, T.H. (1983). A History of Psychology: Main currents in psychological thought. [2nd ed. 1987]. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lewontin, R., Rose, S., & Kamin, L. (1984). Not In Our Genes: Biology, ideology, and human nature. New York: Pantheon.
Fancher, R. (1985). The Intelligence Men: Makers of the IQ controversy. New York: Norton.
Hilgard, E. (1987). Psychology in America. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Hearnshaw, L. (1987). The Shaping of Modern Psychology. London: Routledge & Kagan.
Richards, R.J. (1987). Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kline, P. (1988). Psychology Exposed: Or the emperor's new clothes. New York: Routledge.
Yaroshevsky, M. (1990). A History of Psychology. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Danziger, K. (1990). Constructing the Subject: Historical origins of psychological research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leary, D. (Ed.). (1990). Metaphors in the History of Psychology. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press.
Leahey, T.H. (1991). A History of Modern Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Watson, R. & Evans, R. (1991). The Great Psychologists: A history of psychological thought. (5th ed.). [Expanded and improved in most respects]. New York: Harper Collins.
Lubek, I., et al. (Eds.). (1995). Recent Trends in Theoretical Psychology. New York: Springer.
Bringmann et al. (Eds.). (1997). Pictorial History of Psychology. Chicago: Quintessence.
Benjafield, J. (1996). A History of Psychology. Toronto: Allyn & Bacon.
Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the Mind: How psychology found its language. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Richards, G. (1997). Race, Racism and Psychology: Towards a reflexive history. London: Routledge.
Kukla, A. (2001). Methods of Theoretical Psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Social and Disciplinary changes during these four periods
While Yaroshevsky emphasizes successive movements in psychological theory (and I agree with him), there were also easily tracked socio-historical and disciplinary changes which either lead up to or were concurrent with these four periods of historiographic bloom.
The first period, for instance, was part of the ongoing professionalization of the discipline as a science (see Ash, 1983). The main texts of the period are Rand (1912), Dessoir (1912), Baldwin (1913), Klemm (1914) and Brett (1912-21). To understand more about the disciplinary lead-up and professional reception of these early history of psychology works, see my paper on that topic. I argue there that an important series of critical reviews of these early texts (by figures such as Woodbridge Riley, and Harry P. Weld, and Coleman Griffith) served to highlight their progressive aspects or possible disciplinary uses as counter-arguments to the era's "reigning paradigmatic ideology" of narrow physiological psychology. In other words, they were not as self-serving or as non-reflective as later reviews of the period have made them out to be.
In the second better known period, covering the 1930s, there was a growing emphasis on eclectic approaches to both psychological methodology (i.e., basic assumptions) and to the empirical methods (i.e., techniques) utilized in psychological investigation. In fact the two listed volumes edited by Carl Murchison called the "Psychologies" of 1925 and 1930 respectively were criticized for overemphasizing the actual differences between the positions they covered (see Griffith, 1932).
Woodworth's Contemporary Schools of Psychology (1931) was a highly influential contribution from this eclectic period which suggested that (given the existing inadequacies of any one school), the "middle-of-the-road" approach to psychological discourse would likely be the most productive to follow. I have stated elsewhere, however, that this assessment was a direct result of the inadequate carry-over of the functional psychology approach (i.e., from Dewey to Angell and Carr) to the actual practice and definition of early general psychology (see also Tolman, 1989, 1990). In my view, some of the comments made in Boring's "psychology for eclectics" (1930) come far closer to the mark on this issue of the prospects of eventually defining the proper subject matter for psychological science. That is, Boring's article emphasized that "the fact that these schools... claim to be psychology... means that there must be some unitary account of them... which underlies the apparent incompatibility" (p. 126).
The disciplinary aspects of the second period were most certainly shaped considerably by both the historical context of the great depression and W.W.II. The consolidation of American psychologists under an expanded APA between 1938-1945 was just one tangible result of the war effort. As Hilgard (1987) points out, many of the new divisions were originally part of the American Association of Applied Psychology and the former balance of academic to applied psychologists in the APA was forever changed.
Immediately after the war, however, there was an important symposium on "Operationism" published in the Psyc Review (1945) which addressed the possible disciplinary implications of P.W. Bridgman's (1927, 1936) books regarding the future status of traditional concepts and use of evidence in psychology (Boring et al., 1945). This symposium ushered in an extended period in which experimental psychological proof (verifiability) was equated with the use of so-called operational definitions (i.e., with externally referential, numerically measurable aspects of research situations). The intent of this operationist reformation was to promote the use of empirical hypotheses as a remedy for unfruitful prewar debates over the proper subject matter of psychology -where the use of abstract (i.e., nonspecific, unverifiable) concepts abounded. Operational definitions where to be used as replacements for the metaphysical concepts of the past (see Green, 1992).
This de facto constricting move on the part of experimental psychologists, however, served to split the cohesive wartime discipline along academic/experimental versus clinical/applied lines. This was the intellectual and disciplinary climate into which the second editions of the "second generation" history texts by Murphy (1949) and Boring (1950) entered; and of which they were both very much a part. With respect to the growth of the post-W.W.II applied versus clinical split, Boring's History of Experimental Psychology (1950) along with S.S. Steven's Handbook of Experimental Psychology (1951) were unquestionably great contributors. It should be added, however, that more inclusive works by Woodworth (1938) and Cronbach (1957) made timely and significant attempts to heal these developing disciplinary rifts (i.e., between experimental, correlational, and introspective research) with at least a modicum of success.
The third "1960s period" of historiographic bloom was predicated on the eve of the wider youth counterculture and mainstream reassessment of conservative values in America. The considerable number of basic readings texts which date from this period can be viewed as successive efforts to at least take stock of a field which had basically run off the rails of its original pre-counterculture and late-1970s malaise track. One might encapsulate the latter part of these efforts as an attempted remedy for a crisis of relevance of general academic experimental psychology during the period between 1967-1979. For a review of central texts between 1971-1980 see Littman (1981).
It was at this time, for instance, that the clinical applications of psychology (as popularized in modern culture) became a wacky affair indeed; very much out of step with most reputable developments in other aspects of the discipline. The blame, however, can not be leveled solely at the clinical fields because both the ongoing so-called "meritocratic" applications of psychometric testing techniques (1947-1979) and the popularization of biofeedback or "A.I." computer technologies during this era also stepped well beyond what can reasonably be called psychological science (see the latter part of my paper on Popularizing the New Psychology in the Americas).
Reactionary (i.e., counter traditional) accounts in both the philosophy of science (e.g., Kuhn) and within psychological metatheory in particular (e.g., Koch) which took a neo-Kantian rather than an historically naturalist realism as their starting-point were also given far too much play in both the media and in departmental hiring decisions during the 1970s. The early appeal of these reactionary approaches was that they were attempting to counter the operationist version of logical empiricism as expressed in psychology between 1945-1964 (see Gergen, 1984).
By the latter part of the 1970s, however, one of the more positive historiographic developments was a strong theme of repudiation of past biogenic accounts of ability testing practices. Kamin (1974), Lawler (1978), Gould (1981); and Lewontin, et al. (1983) were all part of this trend. Fancher's The Intelligence Men: Makers of the IQ controversy (1985) can also be viewed as a later extension of this positive trend.
As the generalized late-1970s cultural malaise turned into 1980s fatalism (and more specifically tactical eclecticism within departments of psychology), both highly critical works such as Paul Kline's Psychology Exposed (1988) and a resurgence of what can be termed muted neo-Kantian epistemology became a prominent aspect of the most recent historiographic bloom. This latter period can not, therefore, be considered as a cohesive whole except in that its varied expressions were all "disciplinary echoes" of the prior era of historical upheavals (see Hilgard, Leary, & McGuire, 1991).
The albeit muted neo-Kantian expressions of this latter period peaked in 1990 when both David Leary's edited volume called Metaphors in the History of Psychology and Kurt Danziger's Constructing the Subject were published. It then ebbed considerably, however, as this latter work was itself "deconstructed" (see Stam, 1992). More evidence of the rise and fall of neo-Kantian historiography can be gained by noting the successively asserted alternatives to it in any of the International Society of Theoretical Psychology (ISTP) proceedings publications between 1987-1999 (e.g., Baker et al., 1987; Lubek et al., 1995). Indeed it can be argued that a return to a realist and yet non-positivist historical naturalism (Leahey 1991; Bakhurst, 1991; Blitz, 1992; Costall, 1993; Wozniak, 1993; Tolman, 1993, 1994; Wozniak, & Iverson, 1995; Benjafield, 1996) has been a persistent, progressive theme in the growth of the subdiscipline now called "history & theory of psychology."
You read the book, you turn the page. You change your life in a thousand ways. The dawn of reason lights your eyes with the key you realize... the kingdom of the wise (Alan Parsons Project: Turn of a Friendly Card, 1980).
References
Ash, M. (1983). Self-presentation of a Discipline. In L. Graham, W. Lepenies, & P. Weingart, (Eds.). Functions and uses of Disciplinary History. Vol. 7, 143-189.
Baker, Wm; Hyland, M.W.; Van Rappard, H.; Staats, A.W. (Eds.). (1987). Current Issues in Theoretical Psychology. North-Holland: Elsevier Science Publishers.
Bakhurst, D. (1991). Consciousness and Revolution in Soviet Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Blitz, D. (1992). Emergent Evolution: Qualitative Novelty and the Levels of Reality. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Pub.
Boring, E.G. (1930). Psychology for eclectics. In C. Murchison (Ed.). Psychologies of 1930. Worchester, MA: Clark University Press.
Boring, E.G., Bridgman, P., Feigl, H., Israel, H., Pratt, C. & Skinner, B. (1945). Symposium on operationism. Psyc. Rev., 52, 241-294.
Bridgman, P. W. (1927). The logic of modern physics. New York: Macmillan.
Bridgman, P. W. (1936). The Nature of Physical Theory. New York : Dover Publications.
Costall, A. (1993). How Lloyd Morgan's canon backfired. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 29, 113-122.
Cronbach, L. (1957). The two disciplines of scientific psychology. (285-308). In E. Hilgard, E. (Ed.). (1978). Amer. Psyc. in Historical Perspective. Washington: APA.
Gergen, K. (1981). The meagre voice of empiricist affirmation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 7, 333-337.
Gergen, K. (1984). Experimentation and the Myth of the Incorrigible. In V. Sarris, A. Parducci (Eds.). Perspectives in Psychological Experimentation: Toward the year 2000. New Jersey: Erlbaum.
Green, C. (1992). Of Immortal Mythological Beasts: Operationism in Psychology. Theory & Psychology, 2, 291-320.
Griffith, Coleman R. (1921). Some neglected aspects of a history of psychology. Psyc. Monographs, 30, 17-29.
Griffith, C.R. (1922). Contributions to the history of psychology -- 1916-1921. Psyc. Bull., 19, 411-428.
Griffith, C.R. (1932). Review of Psychologies of 1930. Psyc. Bull., 29, 401-424.
Hilgard, E.R.,
Leary, D., & McGuire, G. (1991). The History of Psychology: A Survey and
Critical Assessment. Annual Review of Psychology, 42, 79-107.
Kimble, G.A. &
Wertheimer, M. (Eds.) (1991-2003).
Portraits of pioneers in psychology. Vols. 1-5. Hillsdale, NJ:
APA & Erlbaum.
Koch, S. (1981). The nature and limits of psychological knowledge. American Psychologist, 36, 257-269.
Kuhn, T.S. (1977). Objectivity, value judgment, and theory choice. From The Essential Tension (pp. 253-255). In J. Kourany (Ed.). Scientific Knowledge: Basic issues in the philosophy of science. Bolmont: Wadsworth.
Lawler, J. (1978). I.Q. Heritability, and Racism. New York: International.
Lewontin, R., Rose, S., & Kamin, L. (1984). Not In Our Genes: Biology, ideology, and human nature. New York: Pantheon.
Littman, R.A. (1981). Psychology's histories: Some new ones and a bit about their predecessors. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 17, 516-532.
Mueller, C.G. (1979). Some origins of psychology as science. Ann. Rev. Psyc., 30, 9-29.
Roback, A.A. (1952). History of American Psychology. New York: Library Publishers.
Stevens, S.S. (1951). Handbook of Experimental Psychology. New York: John Wiley.
Stam, H. (1992). Deconstructing the Subject: Banishing the Ghost of Boring. Contemporary Psychology, 37, 629-632.
Tolman, C.W. (1989). Pluralistic Monism: William James as Closet Heraclitean. Psychological Record, 39, 177-194.
Tolman, C.W. (1990). Continuity/discontinuity in the evolutionary thinking of the Chicago functionalists. Storia Della Psicologia, 2, 64-72.
Tolman, C.W. (Ed.). (1993). Positivism in Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Problems New York: Springer-Verlag.
Tolman, C.W. (1994). Psychology, Society, and Subjectivity: An Introduction to German Critical Psychology. London: Routledge.
Vande Kemp, H. (November 2001). History of Psychology Texts: Historical Overview.
Vygotsky, L. & Luria, A. (1930/1992). Ape, Primitive Man and Child: Essays in the History of Behavior. (Trans. E. Rossiter). Orlando: Paul M. Deutsch.
Vygotsky, L. & Luria, A. (1930/1993). Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child. (Trans. V. Golod & J. Knox). Hillsdale: LEA.
Woodworth, R.S. (1938). Experimental Psychology. New York: Holt.
Wozniak, R.H. (1993). Conwy Lloyd Morgan, Mental Evolution, and the Introduction to Comparative Psychology. In C.L. Morgan (1903/1993). An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. (2nd edition, revised). London: Routledge/Thoemmes.
Wozniak, R.H. & Iverson, J. M. (1995). Something borrowed, something new: The comparative developmental method, cultural-historical theory, and Vygotsky's use of sources (Review of L.S. Vygotsky & A.R. Luria, Studies on the History of Behavior: Ape, Primitive, and Child). Contemporary Psychology, 40, 207-209.