“Idiographic” vis-à-vis “idiodynamic” in the historical perspective of personality theory: Remembering Gordon Allport, 1897–1997

The centenary of Gordon W. Allport provides an occasion for reappraising his special position regarding uniqueness in personality. Allport's theory of personality, as first presented in his 1937 textbook, highlighted the idiographic in conjunction with the nomothetic approach, and the fundamental unit in his formulation was the trait. He described common and unique traits as well as the unique organization of traits. In contradistinction, the idiodynamic orientation, introduced by Saul Rosenzweig in 1951 and, in more detail in 1958, focused on events which over a lifespan constitute an idioverse—a population of phenomenological events. Allport's original emphasis on the idiographic and his later confusion concerning idiodynamics, can, in considerable measure, be understood by recognizing the role of religious spirituality in his conception of the person. That conception, which derived from an early religious indoctrination, asserted itself with renewed vigor in his later years. His scientific conception of personality thus remained unconsummated, subordinated by him to the unsolvable mysteries of ontology which properly belong, he believed, in the domain of faith. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Normalizing the Supernormal: The Formation of the “Gesellschaft Für Psychologische Forschung” (“Society for Psychological Research”), c. 1886–1890

This paper traces the formation of the German “Gesellschaft für psychologische Forschung” (“Society for Psychological Research”), whose constitutive branches in Munich and Berlin were originally founded as inlets for alternatives to Wundtian experimental psychology from France and England, that is, experimental researches into hypnotism and alleged supernormal phenomena. By utilizing the career trajectories of Max Dessoir and Albert von Schrenck‐Notzing as founding members of the “Gesellschaft,” this paper aims to open up novel perspectives regarding extra‐scientific factors involved in historically determining the epistemological and methodological boundaries of nascent psychology in Germany.     

“Monkeys,babies, idiots” and “primitives”: Nature–nurture debates and philanthropic foundation support for American anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s

There has been a long discussion among historians about the impact that foundation policies had on the development of the social sciences during the interwar era. This discussion has centered on the degree to which foundation officers, particularly from the Rockefeller boards, exercised a hegemonic influence on research. In this essay, I argue that the field of American cultural anthropology has been neglected and must be reconsidered as a window into foundation intervention in nature–nurture debates. Despite foundation efforts to craft an anthropology policy that privileged hereditarian explanations, I contend that cultural anthropologists were committed to proving the primacy of “nurture,” even when that commitment cost them valuable research dollars. It was this commitment that provided an essential bulwark for the discipline. Ironically, it was the need to negotiate with foundations about the purpose of their research that helped cultural anthropologists to articulate their unique, and thus intrinsically valuable, approach to nature–nurture debates. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

V. M. BEKHTEREV IN RUSSIAN CHILD SCIENCE, 1900S–1920S: “OBJECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY”/“REFLEXOLOGY” AS A SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT

In the early 20^th century the child population became a major focus of scientific, professional and public interest. This led to the crystallization of a dynamic field of child science, encompassing developmental and educational psychology, child psychiatry and special education, school hygiene and mental testing, juvenile criminology and the anthropology of childhood. This article discusses the role played in child science by the eminent Russian neurologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Mikhailovich Bekhterev. The latter's name is associated with a distinctive program for transforming the human sciences in general and psychology in particular that he in the 1900s labelled “objective psychology” and from the 1910s renamed “reflexology.” The article examines the equivocal place that Bekhterev's “objective psychology” and “reflexology” occupied in Russian/Soviet child science in the first three decades of the 20^th century. While Bekhterev's prominence in this field is beyond doubt, analysis shows that “objective psychology” and “reflexology” had much less success in mobilizing support within it than certain other movements in this arena (for example, “experimental pedagogy” in the pre‐revolutionary era); it also found it difficult to compete with the variety of rival programs that arose within Soviet “pedology” during the 1920s. However, this article also demonstrates that the study of child development played a pivotal role in Bekhterev's program for the transformation of the human sciences: it was especially important to his efforts to ground in empirical phenomena and in concrete research practices a new ontology of the psychological, which, the article argues, underpinned “objective psychology”/“reflexology” as a transformative scientific movement.     

“The tempest in my mind”: Cultural interfaces between psychiatry and literature, 1844–1900

The professional literature of the first generation of American psychiatrists is replete with poetical passages drawn from the imaginative works of such English authors as Shakespeare, Byron, and Scott as well as the writings of residents of the asylums they tended. A close reading of such passages in the American Journal of Insanity (AJI), the central medium through which members of this nascent profession attempted to “popularize the study of insanity,” suggests they were not simply textual ornaments or signs of the underdeveloped state of American psychiatry in the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, literary manifestations of the imaginative minds of patients and renowned writers were scrutinized by psychiatrists seeking to advance their understanding of mental disease. Moreover, the English authors were often elevated to the status of medical experts and their poetry and prose were commended to fellow medical practitioners as sources of psychological insight. Toward the turn of the century psychiatrists' engagement with these literary forms was less pronounced in the AJI, due in large part to the impact of rising asylum populations and the coming of a culture of positivist medicine. Yet literary influences on psychiatric writing are still evident in this period, indicating the complexity of the cultural interfaces between psychiatry and literature and the importance of examining the historical processes that have served to define and distinguish the enterprise of the psychiatrist from that of the poet.