Has psychology “found its true path”? Methods,objectivity, and cries of “crisis” in early twentieth-century French psychology

This article explores how French psychologists understood the state of their field during the first quarter of the twentieth century, and whether they thought it was in crisis. The article begins with the Russian-born psychologist Nicolas Kostyleff and his announcement in 1911 that experimental psychology was facing a crisis. After briefly situating Kostyleff, the article examines his analysis of the troubles facing experimental psychology and his proposed solution, as well as the rather muted response his diagnosis received from the French psychological community. The optimism about the field evident in many of the accounts surveying French psychology during the early twentieth century notwithstanding, a few others did join Kostyleff in declaring that all was not well with experimental psychology. Together their pronouncements suggest that under the surface, important unresolved issues faced the French psychological community. Two are singled out: What was the proper methodology for psychology as a positive science? And what kinds of practices could claim to be objective, and in what sense? The article concludes by examining what these anxieties reveal about the type of science that French psychologists hoped to pursue.     

The Problem of Generalization in the Works of L. S. Vygotsky

An aspect of Vygotsky's psychological theory which is still meaningful as a genuine scientific problem today is the treatment he gave to the structure, function, and formation of generalization as a special means of reflecting reality in human consciousness. Many of the central propositions of the theory — concerning such questions as the role of symbols in the establishment of higher mental functions, the hierarchical structure of consciousness, and the connection between instruction and development — were refined, concentrated, and cast in a new light by the concept of generalization which Lev Semyonovich worked on so intensively in the last years of his life. The problem of generalization is the knot that ties together the fundamental strands of the whole conception. By carefully untying it one can avoid misunderstandings in evaluating some of Vygotsky's propositions, and, even more important, one can then correctly understand his fundamental ideas, which he clearly formulated but was not able to develop fully. The significance of these ideas is such that they belong in the arsenal of modern psychology to resolve burning theoretical and practical problems of the day.     

On the epistemology of mental illness.

The most important epistemological problem in psychiatry is the detection of malingering. This is a consequence of the fact that there is no objective way to confirm any psychiatric diagnosis. Psychiatric diagnosis is based on subjective complaints. The discovery of objective markers for psychiatric diagnosis is problematic because it presupposes we can tell valid from faked subjective symptoms. But this is the difficulty. If we use pervasive irrationality as a sign of mental illness, we encounter the problem of identifying pervasive irrationality. To understand someone's behaviour, we have to assume it is largely rational. This precludes us from using behaviour to separate genuine from faked mental illness. There are a number of strategies used to solve any epistemological problem, and the most successful is the hypothetico-deductive method. If we use this, we can solve our epistemological problem. Genuine mental illness can be identified when it is the best explanation of the person's overall behaviour. Consilience of inductions is critical in supporting the validity of such explanations. This implies that it is merely a hypothesis that mental illness exists, and that we might discover that many mental illnesses, perhaps all, do not exist. We must embrace this possibility--only if we take a risk will we gain any knowledge.     

Commentary: The Life And Times Of V. M. Bekhterev

The provocative article that follows has been translated as part of our endeavors to uncover the contributions of V. M. Bekhterev to social psychology. For these introductory comments we rely most heavily on two sources available in English, mainly the work of Alex Kozulin (1984) and V. Gerver (1932), a junior colleague of Bekhterev's. Other valuable material was provided by the work of A. L. Schniermann (1930), another of Bekhterev's junior associates. These and other writings yield a picture of an outstanding Russian scientist who published about six hundred works on anatomy and physiology, nervous and mental diseases, biology and pedology, philosophy and reflexology; who established an astonishing number of research units and laboratories, ranging from the enormous Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg to small laboratories for research on vocational counseling, children's neuropathology, etc.; and who founded several important journals. In time, he should probably become generally acknowledged as one of the founders of social psychology as well.     

Toward the Problem of Stages in the Mental Development of Children

The problem of stages' in the mental development of the child is the fundamental problem of child psychology. Elaboration of this problem has important theoretical significance since it is by determining the stages of mental development and by discovering the patterns of transition from one stage to the next that psychology will eventually solve the problem of the motive forces of mental development. We contend that every conception of the motive forces of mental development must first be tested on the "proving grounds" of the theory of developmental stages.     

Pavlov and psychophysiology in the 21st century]

Psychophysiology, physiological psychology (Sechenov), human physiology of higher nervous activity (Pavlov) is an interdisciplinary field, which appeared at the interface between psychology and neurosciences for exploration of the brain mechanisms of mental functions. The fundamental complementation of subjective and objective, psychological and neurobiological approaches as the facets of investigation of the basically whole process made it possible to fill with a specific content and clearly differentiate the forms of human psyche such as emotion, consciousness, personality, character, and creativity.     

Remembrance and denial. A critical look into correspondence of Adolf Butenandt, MPG president 1960-1972

Adolf Butenandt was one of the great biochemists of the last century. He was also a most successful organiser of science. Which price did he have to pay to be a success in the Third Reich? He persistently avoided seeing or hearing the blatant injustice around him. Injustice he knew nothing about did not exist. So he became the perfect model for the postwar generation of German scientists. Is he still a model today?     

Seventeenth century organic agriculture in China: I. Cropping systems in Jiaxing region

The cropping systems of seventeenth century traditional organic agriculture in the Jiaxing region of eastern China required about 2000 hr of labor per hectare for rice production. Rice and related grain crops were produced employing only human power. The input was about 200 times that for most mechanized grain production today. The charcoal or fossil energy input to produce simple hand tools accounted for only 1–2% total energy in the crop systems. Organic wastes including manures, pond sediments, and green manure crops supplied most of the nutrients. Rice yields, ranging as high as 6700–8400 kg/ha, were similar to some of the highest yields today. The energy output/input ratio ranged from 9 for compost-fertilized rice to 12 for green manure-fertilized rice production. These ratios were 2–10 times higher than most mechanized rice production systems of today. Knowledge of the crop and soil system enabled the early Chinese farms to maintain high crop yields and sustain highly productive soils.     

A new biology for a new century.

Biology today is at a crossroads. The molecular paradigm, which so successfully guided the discipline throughout most of the 20th century, is no longer a reliable guide. Its vision of biology now realized, the molecular paradigm has run its course. Biology, therefore, has a choice to make, between the comfortable path of continuing to follow molecular biology's lead or the more invigorating one of seeking a new and inspiring vision of the living world, one that addresses the major problems in biology that 20th century biology, molecular biology, could not handle and, so, avoided. The former course, though highly productive, is certain to turn biology into an engineering discipline. The latter holds the promise of making biology an even more fundamental science, one that, along with physics, probes and defines the nature of reality. This is a choice between a biology that solely does society's bidding and a biology that is society's teacher.     

Geneticists and Race

SYNOPSIS. During the twentieth century, geneticists have dramaticallychanged their assessments of the biological and social consequencesof human race differences and race crossing. In the first quarterof the century, most geneticists thought that human races differedhereditarily by important mental as well as physical differencesand that wide race crosses were biologically and socially harmful.The period from 1925 to the outbreak of World War II saw nochange in geneticists' views on hereditary mental differencesbetween human races, but a shift to agnosticism on the issueof wide race crosses. By the early 1950s, geneticists generallyargued that wide race crosses were at worst biologically harmless,but still held to earlier beliefs about hereditary mental differencesbetween races. The final period from 1951 to the present haswitnessed the shift to agnosticism on the issue of hereditarymental differences between races. The changes in geneticists'assessments of race differences and race crossing were causedbyincreased understanding of the complex relationship betweengenes and environment and by cultural changes.     

The Fiftieth Anniversary of Soviet Psychophysiology

It must be generally recognized today that areas "contiguous" to a particular science have great theoretical and practical importance, which arises during contact of various sciences in some important objective. This is particularly true with respect to such a complex research objective as the thinking human brain. We find the ancients already beginning to speculate about the question of the relation of the "soul" to the body and about which body organ has the closest relation to psychological activity. Gradually this question became more concrete and was broken down into a group of more particular problems on which many scholars have been working. The early "classical" psychophysiology was primarily concerned with study of the relation of the senses and perception to the physical properties of stimuli and to the anatomical-physiological apparatuses of the peripheral sense organs. Currently, the main emphasis is shifting more and more to a study of the central mechanisms of psychological processes. This fundamental shift in approach to the traditional "psychophysical" problem (now frequently referred to as the psychophysiological problem) first took place in the area of studying the mechanisms of association, and was subsequently spread over studies of perception, emotion, voluntary movements, cognitive processes, and, finally, individual psychological differences.     

The Psychology of the Self-Actualizing Personality in the Work of Abraham Maslow

The second and third quarters of this century saw the appearance of a number of different concepts of personality in foreign psychology. Most of these were spawned by pathopsychology as a result of attempts to understand the personality of the neurotic and as a practical offshoot of psychotherapy. Although these theories were generalizations based on studies of the psychopathological personality, they began to be propagated by their creators as general theories of personality. Material gathered from the investigation of mental patients was used as the foundation for what are now standard personality tests — the Rorschach test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) — used chiefly to discover neurotic tendencies in the individual. An extremely exaggerated evaluation of the significance of the pathopsychological method has been the hallmark of personality theory in foreign psychology. Yet the neurotic and, even more so, the pathological personality are qualitatively, not quantitatively, distinct from the personality of a normal human being. We must therefore concur with Maslow, who shows how the "study of mutilated, sickly, immature and unhealthy subjects will also give rise to a mutilated psychology and philosophy" (9, p. 234).     

精神障碍的神经电生理循证医学证据

寻找客观标记物是精神医学研究最重要的课题之一,近期融合了循证医学的神经电生理研究为此提供了重要的途径,并取得了较为可观的研究成果,然而现有的研究结果仍然存在较多争议,难以取得一致共识.本文全面总结和归纳了结合以元分析(meta-analysis)为代表的循证医学方法和以脑电图(electroencephalography)为代表的神经电生理技术的精神障碍相关脑电研究成果,将事件相关电位划分为早期和晚期成分,并结合定量EEG分析,从感知加工、认知控制、情绪反应和社会认知等不同认知过程出发,系统分析和评述了精神障碍患者及高危人群的神经认知功能异常情况.我们发现:精神分裂症患者存在从早期到晚期的各种感知、情感和社会认知方面的缺陷,注意缺陷/多动障碍(ADHD)患者存在从早期到晚期的认知控制缺陷,焦虑和强迫障碍患者则存在早期的认知控制缺陷,而孤独症谱系障碍(ASD)患者则存在早期的感知加工和社会认知缺陷.此外,反映注意资源分配和认知加工速度的P300异常特征跨越了多个诊断类型,这表明该脑电成分可能反映了精神障碍的一般性认知缺陷.未来研究可利用多中心大样本数据库探寻精神疾病的神经电生理客观标记物...     

Problems in the Psychology of Activity

My purpose today is to sum up a number of the postulates concerning activity as it is used in psychology, without introducing any new ones; and I shall do this with the following in mind. Until now I have used a system of concepts I proposed earlier with respect to an analysis of activity; of course, I should like to work out a position, first and foremost my own, on this system, and to reexamine it. On the other hand, I should like to pose a number of questions, such as: Is this system of concepts of any significance, i.e., is it able to work in psychology? Obviously, this system must be developed, which essentially has not been done in recent years. This system of concepts is frozen, without any movement. I personally was quite alone in this respect. All movement takes place with regard to various problems contiguous with the problem of activity, some more, some less; but in my opinion, the concept of activity has been developed highly unsatisfactorily. That is why I thought I should try, today, to sum up very briefly what I think is important.     

A Point in the Heart: Concepts of Emotional Distress Among Albanian-Speaking Immigrants in Switzerland

Cultural variability regarding concepts of distress for common mental disorders (CMD) has been reported extensively in cultural clinical psychology across the globe. However, little is known about illness narratives in social communities from Southeast Europe. The purpose of this paper is to identify cultural concepts of distress (CCDs) among Albanian-speaking immigrants in Switzerland and to integrate the findings into literature from other parts of the world. Twenty semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted using the Barts Explanatory Model Inventory (BEMI). A set of concepts was described through content analysis and semantic network analysis. The results show complex expressions of distress, which are mainly associated with post-migration living difficulties. Social problems and life-changing events mark the onset of the most common symptoms. Self-management and social support were described as the most important coping behaviors. Participants expressed trust in physical health care but little belief in psychotherapy. There is indication that mental illnesses are stigmatized in this population. It is therefore important to use non-stigmatizing terms in health communication. Moreover, individuals from this community consider suffering to be part of life, and they assume that this suffering must be endured with patience. It is vital to address these beliefs in psychological interventions.

     

The century for cytopathology

By the end of the 19th century, exfoliated cancer cells had been described in all of the types of specimen in which we find them today. However, it was not until Drs. Papanicolaou and Traut published their account of the diagnosis of uterine cancer from exfoliated cells (1941 and 1943) that cytopathology acquired the momentum to develop into the powerful presence that it has in human medicine today. These and the subsequent publications by Papanicolaou stimulated the development and application of cytopathology worldwide, resulting in abundant literature on the subject and a galaxy of outstanding practitioners. The 1980s saw the development and widespread use of aspiration cytology. This was followed in the 1990s by the development of automated screening systems, marking the latest stage in the evolution of cytopathology. These and other events and achievements in cytopathology, from its meager beginnings in the early 20th century to its worldwide use and acceptance today, mark this century as the "century for cytopathology."     

Tomasello,Wittgenstein, and Vygotsky: The Problem of the Intermental

The subject of this article is the early mental development of children in the light of research by two classical scholars from the last century and several of our contemporaries. L.S. Vygotsky contended that before the higher mental functions are mastered by a child, they are in a state distributed between the child and an adult “as an intermental category.” However, he subsequently developed this productive notion in a very narrow sense, and the intermental was concretized as it was expressed in language. L. Wittgenstein persuasively showed that mastery of language is impossible without a practical “demonstration” of the meanings of words as part of “language games” within practical activities. At the same time, he argued that there could be no theory regarding this process. M. Tomasello, in works written already in this century, shows that “language games” are learned by the child long before mastering spoken language, based on gestures that in turn rely on joint intentions and joint attention—i.e. on the intermental in the sense in which one can interpret Vygotsky’s comments. The article clarifies the principal difficulties of exploring the topic of the intermental in psychology. A function distributed between an adult and a child cannot be objectified (it was an attempt to objectify that resulted in a narrowing of Vygotsky’s topic). Moreover, the interpretation of the intersubjective status of some forms of the psychic leads to the notion that any mental function remains intermental throughout one’s lifetime. In the view of the author of the article, such an interpretation is essential, but requires serious advances in the philosophical-methodological development of the subject under study.     

Studies of higher nervous activity in functional phychoses.

Psychiatric illnesses can be conceived of as experiments of nature, providing a variety of pathopsychological mechanisms which may elucidate normal psychological processes. Clinically the reactive psychoses are predominantly psychogenic reaction types. They present disturbances of higher nervous activity, similar to those of the neuroses. The unconditional reflex activity is practically as in normal controls, and the most outstanding finding was the large effect of psychodynamic complex structures. This is a physiological parallel to the clinical manifestations with great concern over experienced mental trauma. In the manic-depressive psychoses the most characteristic feature is a marked disturbance of unconditional reflex activity. This factor may be an important physiological mechanism underlying the more biological than psychodynamic reaction type and partly explain the changes of mood and associated interferences with sleep, body weight, sexual activity, aggression and other instinctual and vegetative functions. Schizophrenic psychoses also present changes of unconditional reflex activity, predominantly in the direction of inhibition of response. In addition there are severe dissociations within and between the three levels of unconditional reflexes and the two signaling systems. It is suggested that schizophrenia represents a functional maladaptation, which can be explained from the principles of autokinesis and schizokinesis established by Gantt in animal experiments. Prognostic models based on experimentally established impairment of performances were shown to predict long-term risks of schizophrenic defects just as well as models based on constellations of clinical symptoms. I would predict that psychophysiology and experimental psychology will become increasingly more important for establishing diagnosis and prognosis in the functional psychoses. The data of this article point toward a basis for a prophylactic psychiatry.