316 Concepts and Categories in Psychology

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316 Concepts and Categories in Psychology

• Dr Geoff Bunn
• bunng_at_hope.ac.uk

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Introduction the history of pseudoscience

• Physiognomy
• Phrenology
• Mesmerism

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Physiognomy The study of the face (1780s-1830s)
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Johann Lavater Physiognomic Fragments for
Furthering the Knowledge and Love of Man (1775)
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Phrenology

• Character delineations through feeling the bumps
  on the head
• Most popular in 1830s but persisted until the
  20th century.
• 40 Mental Faculties located on the skull

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Phrenology
The mental organs
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The Mental Organs

• Amativeness love
• Philoprogentiveness care for offspring
• Inhabitiveness attachment to place
• Destructiveness propensity to violence
• Self-esteem respect for self
• Spirituality belief in the supernatural
• Time succession of events

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• Amativeness 6 you are easily enamoured and
  liable to be lead astray
• Constructiveness 4 you have a fair share of
  mechanical ingenuity

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Specially devoted to the SCIENCE OF MAN
contains phrenology and physiognomy with all the
SIGNS OF CHARACTER, and how to read them
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Phrenology

• Know Thyself
• A place for everyone in the new industrial order
• A tool for self-improvement

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• Reading of character through bumps on the head
• Begins in the radical materialist medical
  schools of the 1830s
• Popular among working classes (self-help)
• Political overtones

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Phrenology and self transformation
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Phrenology Started to decline from 1860s
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The Study of the Brain
Followed from the decline of phrenology
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• In the coming century, Phrenology will
  assuredly attain general importance. It will
  prove itself to be the true science of mind. Its
  practical uses in education, in self-discipline,
  in the reformatory treatment of criminals and in
  the remedial treatment of the insane will give it
  one of the highest places in the hierarchy of the
  sciences.
•  
• - A. R. Wallace, The Wonderful Century (1898)

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Francis Galton (1822-1911)

• Archetypal Victorian Gentleman of Science
• Visited a phrenologist in 1849. Was told he was
  not suited to burning the midnight lamp.

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Mesmerism

• Postulated an impalpable fluid penetrating the
  entire universe
• Vital to the nervous system
• Could cure disease
• Mania of the 1780s

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Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815)

• Induced trance state in patients.
• Attired in mystic robes and wielding an iron
  wand, Mesmer cured a great many people of
  numerous illnesses.

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Mesmer

• Animal magnetism
• Cure transmission of invisible fluid
• Psychological not physical cause

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Mesmerism

• English doctor James Braid renamed Mesmerism
  neuro-hypnotism (nervous sleep) in 1843.
• By the late 19th century, hypnosis was regarded
  as an abnormal state by the Salpetriere School of
  medicine in Paris

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Jean Martin Charcot (1825-93)

• Puzzle of hysteria
• Used hypnosis to treat hysterical symptoms
• Teacher of Sigmund Freud

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Hysteria

• Clinical disorder, multiple symptoms
• Very important category for late C19th
  psychology,
• Predominantly a female malady
• No longer exists!

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How has psychological knowledge made up people?
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Conclusion the history of pseudoscience

• Unhistorical (anachronistic) to dismiss popular
  science as pseudoscience
• Categories had great meaning for people in the
  past
• Categories were lived through by people in the
  past

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Three Big Ideas

• Psychological categories are historical
  artefacts (Danziger)
• Psychological knowledge can change the way people
  act and think about themselves Making up
  People (Hacking)
• Psychological knowledge can govern people in
  accordance with social and political ambitions
  Governing the Soul (Rose)

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• 1 Oct 8 Introduction
• 2 Oct 15 Naming the Mind, Making up People
  Governing the Soul
• 3 Oct 22 1. Intelligence
• 4 Oct 29 2. Personality
• 5 Nov 53 3. Emotion
• 6 Nov 12 4. Behaviour
• 7 Nov 19 5. Hysteria
• 8 Nov 26 6. Shell shock
• 9 Dec 3 7. Sexuality
• 10 Dec 10 Conclusion

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• Choose one of the psychological categories
  discussed on this course.
• How did psychology acquire your chosen category?
• What meanings became attached to it?
• Discuss the role the category played in
  governing the soul. (2500 words)