Last month I shared with you four must-read pieces (and a podcast), which included the history of Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric wing, the surgical procedure known as the lobotomy, the first child diagnosed with autism and the often-neglected group of female psychologists.
This month, I’m sharing five more fascinating links that delve into the history of psychology.
This link from the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychology discusses the various instruments psychologists employed in their labs. (And there are photos, of course!)
There’s everything from an apparatus that was used to detect color blindness to a German-made “spectroscope” that tested threshold determinations to the “ergograph,” which examined muscle contraction, strength, fatigue and endurance.
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Thank you Ms. Tartakovsky for your research and subsequent article.
From your main resource, I noticed:
http://www.socialpsychology.org/history.htm
from which I found Dr. Green’s site, Classics in the History of Psychology.
(http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/)
Although this collection is not yet finished, I found the Suggestions page:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/suggestions.htm
contained a unique assembly of classical documents that were, for me, heretofore unknown.
For example, I was ignorant of Rene Descarte’s final work, Passions of the Soul, in which he presents his thinking on relation between mind and body. (The entire text of “Passions” is available at: http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/descpass.pdf)
I look forward to Dr. Green’s completion of the sections on 19th-century philosophy and psychology, which I hope will provide a professor’s perspective on the role of Freud and Jung, and with luck, help to clarify some of the abundant misconceptions of our pop-psych oriented culture.
Thank you again for your article.
Thank you very much for this article!
The link to the U of T instruments points to an exhibit that was developed several years ago, mainly by students at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
FYI- a new project is underway that will fully catalogue the Psych material. Hopefully, within the next month or so, most of the brass instruments on the old site will have been added to the new catalogue. We will also incorporate the excellent contextual information from the old site into the new one.
Here is a link to the psych material that has currently been added to the new database (only a small fraction of the collection): http://projects.chass.utoronto.ca/utmusi/browse.php?adv_search=1&collection=Psychology
As you can see, it features more recent material as well.
If you or your readers have any comments or suggestions, we would be happy to hear them.
The site for Otto Rank (Viennese-American psychologist, 1884-1939) has much of historical interest.
Just published: The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank: Inside Psychoanalysis by Johns Hopkins University Press.