History of Psychology

Retracing the footsteps of Wilhelm Wundt: Explorations in the disciplinary frontiers of psychology and in Völkerpsychologie.
In 1927, Wilhelm Wundt’s daughter, Eleonore Wundt, compiled and published a comprehensive catalogue of her father’s works and works in translation. We use this catalogue as a starting point for an examination of the breadth of Wundt’s contributions, the reaction to his works from the international psychological community, and the overall trajectory of his academic career. Two areas of particular interest are Wundt’s view on the nature of psychology and its relationship to other disciplines, and his discussion of the nature of Völkerpsychologie and its role in psychology. A close examination of original sources reveals that Wundt anchored psychology in the realm of mental sciences. He regarded “psychology [to be] in relation to natural sciences the supplementary, in relation to the mental sciences the fundamental, and in relation to philosophy the propaedeutic empirical science.” The accomplishments and limitations of Wundtian Völkerpsychologie are viewed stereoscopically through the lenses of its explicated conceptions, goals, and methods, on one hand, and of the contemporary advancements in psychology, on the other. Current implications of Wundt’s works and further developments of his ideas are related to Davidson’s theory of epistemology and to present-day deliberations on the biocultural coconstruction of human development. We conclude by considering the continuing relevance of Wundt’s intellectual legacy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
War, sanity, and the Nazi mind: The last passion of Joseph Jastrow.
The career of Joseph Jastrow (1863–1944) spanned more than 50 years in service to psychology. For 40 years he represented academic psychology at the University of Wisconsin as chair of the psychology department (1886 to 1927), but also was never far from popularizing psychology through books, articles, public lectures, newspaper columns, and finally radio lectures (e.g., Jastrow, 1900, 1935b). Providing a scientific and progressive psychology for the general public was always a strong penchant for Jastrow on several subjects, such as spiritualism (Jastrow, 1911) and effective living (Jastrow, 1935b). About 1939, while he was well into his 70s, his efforts focused on exposing the menace that Adolf Hitler and Nazism posed, so he undertook to enlist prominent editors to publish his work, Hitler: Mask and Myth, as articles or a book. He was not successful in gaining support for the project. His failing can be understood from the perspectives of the American market for Hitler material, the shortcomings of the manuscript, and how he represented psychology to the American public. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
A history of changes to the criminal personality in the DSM.
There is much confusion now surrounding the diagnoses of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Psychopathy. Some individuals still refer to the two as the same diagnosis with different names, even though there is a consensus in the psychology field that the two are distinct disorders. Part of this confusion is likely to be the result of the overlap in the diagnostic criteria: both diagnoses are associated with a history of antisocial behavior. However, it is also very possible that this confusion in the literature is a result of consistent name and criteria changes for the “criminal personality” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. To make sense of the confusion surrounding the two different diagnoses, the evolution of Antisocial Personality Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is examined in this paper. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)
News & notes.
Members may read the latest information about the Society for the History of Psychology on the division’s website. News and Notes welcomes personal and professional news of Division 26 and its membership, as well as items of interest to the history of psychology community. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved)

History of Psychology - Vol 12, Iss 4