Contexts and experimentalism in the psychology of Gabriele Buccola (1875-1885)

Gabriele Buccola, since his untimely death, often has been mentioned as the first Italian psychologist who developed a strict program of laboratory research. Buccola, a Sicilian of Albanian ancestry, is a "case" in the history of Italian psychology. A self-taught positivist, he established a relation with the major representatives of the European positivism. Kraepelin mentions him as one of the precursors of his project of applying experimental psychology to psychopathology. Buccola actually carried out research on the psychological, chemical-biological, and psychopathological "modifiers" of reaction times, following an experimental program dealing mainly with the differential study both of basic and superior psychological processes, with mental hygiene ends. Historians of psychology agree in considering Buccola the first Italian laboratory psychologist to plan a program of research that was close to European psychological experimentalism.The present article, starting from an outline of Buccola's role in the rising Italian scientific psychology, recontextualizes his experimentalism in an international sphere. This operation, which is carried out through a careful survey of Buccola's entire production-both theoretical and more properly scientific-is based on the search of the Darwinian, Spencerian, and Haeckelian evolutionist themes emerging from Buccola's program of research-a program that was influenced by the variegated European experimental panorama and characterized by the vision of science as a knowledge capable of transforming the nature of man and of society.     

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005)

Presents an obituary for Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005). Before Urie Bronfenbrenner, child psychologists studied the child, sociologists the family, anthropologists the society, economists the economic framework, and political scientists the structure. As the result of Urie's extension of the concept of the ecology of human development, these environments--from the family to economic and political structures--are viewed as part of the life course, embracing both childhood and adulthood. Bronfenbrenner, widely regarded as one of the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology, child rearing, and human ecology--the interdisciplinary domain he helped popularize--died at his home in Ithaca, New York, on September 25, 2005, at the age of 88. He was the Jacob Gould Sherman Professor Emeritus of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell University, where he spent most of his professional career. A brief biography of Bronfenbrenner is followed by an overview of his published work, his theories and other influential accomplishments.     

James hillman (1926-2011)

Presents an obituary for James Hillman. James Hillman, the third child of Madeline and Julian Hillman, died of metastatic bone cancer at his home in Thompson, Connecticut, on October 27, 2011. The parent of "archetypal psychology," he was born on April 12, 1926, at the Breakers, a then-opulent hotel founded by his family that overlooked the boardwalk and beach in Atlantic City, New Jersey. With an extensive footing in the classics and classical humanism, Jim established the foundations for his emerging archetypal psychology. With archetypal psychology, he was to move away from a dependence on the concept of a personal ego in favor of larger sources that relied on his notion of variegated identity. He proposed a profusion of mythical images that emerge under the rubric of "soul." Soul stands as an appellation indicating a deepening of psychic events, such as when dreams, chaos, and "pathologizing" (the struggles of imagination) are most experienced. For Hillman, psychology could not be taken as a separate discipline isolated from mythology, literature, art, philosophy, politics, religion, natural science, and the ordinary affairs of individuals. Hillman envisioned archetypes as processes that bear evidence to personal suffering and, in so doing, prompt the expansion of compassion. In 1975, Jim was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his book Re-Visioning Psychology (Harper & Row). In addition to many other citations, Jim had the high honor in 2001 of receiving the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).