Rediscovering the ritual technology of the placebo effect in analytical psychology

Technology, viewed more generally, is a collection of skills and methods that are used to accomplish an objective of some kind. Modernity has produced many kinds of ever‐expanding new technologies, but it is also evident that technologies can be lost or fall out of use. A cross‐cultural survey of ritual reveals a rather startling observation: that while developed nations often exceed other cultures in terms of material technology, they often pale by comparison in their use of ritual technology. In this essay we will see how ritual is a powerful sort of technology that developed nations have mostly allowed to drift out of regular, vigorous use, despite its numerous psychological and biological effects. This tendency has left one of the rituals we still have – psychotherapy itself – to be bereft of some of the typical tools for concretizing the symbolic in recurrent patterns around the world. Jung himself could be accused of being somewhat anti‐ritual himself, enmeshed as he was in the post‐Protestant, post‐Enlightenment cultural environment that defines the West in many ways 1 . But these under‐utilized elements of ritual technology may be a natural fit for Jungian therapy due to its use of symbols.     

Indigenization and the history of psychology

This article argues for the development of a historical perspective to help understand the process of indigenization in psychology. The indigenization of psychology in both the United States and India is shown to be part of larger social, economic, and political processes. A center and periphery model of knowledge production and praxes is deployed to show how practices of scientific imperialism are used to maintain the hegemony of the center. It is argued that historical approaches may be useful to challenge and counter such practices. Finally, the authors call for a polycentric history of psychology that will correspond to the emerging polycentrism exemplified in indigenous psychologies.     

Laboratory instruments in the history of psychology

The importance of laboratory instruments as sources for the writing of the history of psychology is stressed, and illustrated through the use of examples where their study has been profitable. Most importantly, the role of the Hipp chronoscope in the reaction-time experiment is discussed, and the importance of various changes introduced into its design by James McKeen Cattell is shown. A photograph, first exhibited by the Department of Psychology of Clark University at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago is included, and further illustrates the importance of these instruments to historians.     

Some history of humanistic psychology

Abstract

This article arose out of a request to say something about humanistic psychology for a conference on positive psychology which was held in England in 2002. I wanted to say that whatever positive psychology had to offer, we got there first. So this is perhaps a quite partisan piece, and of course it says very little about positive psychology.

But now it has a further purpose, which is to tell Americans a bit about Europe and what happened there. Most Americans, as we are all aware, don't know much about Europe, and many do not want to know. Hopefully, humanistic psychologists are not in the latter category. So what we have here is a bit of a mixture, and I hope it is not too incoherent.     

Contributions to the history of psychology: CXVII. Who's who in American psychology: a citation study of introductory psychology textbooks

The author indexes of 15 introductory psychology textbooks were surveyed to identify the authorities cited most frequently. The five names cited most often in descending order were Freud, Bandura, Skinner, Piaget, and James. Differences from earlier comparable citation studies are discussed.