Paul Fraisse & Jean Piaget (Eds.). Experimental Psychology: Its Scope and Method. Vol. I., History and Method. (Translated by Judith Chambers). New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1968, ix + 245 pp. $5.95
✍ Scribed by Frank Wesley
- Book ID
- 101358422
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1970
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 165 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
This is the first book in a nine-volume work on experimental psychology. It was originally published in French by Presses Universitaires de France in 1963. Paul Fraisse has contributed the first chapter of this book entitled "The evolution of experimental psychology." Only this chapter will be reviewed since the remaining chapters are not of historical interest. They were respectively written by Fraisse, Piaget, and Reuchlin and deal with such current problems as experimental procedures and design, explanations and causes, and scales and scaling.
Fraisse's 90-page historical chapter leans heavily on Boring's text, A History of Experimental Psychology, to which the author expresses his indebtedness. An initial discussion of philosophical and physiological developments in the 17th, lSth, and 19th centuries read much like a condensation of the highlights discussed in Boring's text.
The main body of this historical chapter discusses the establishment of experimental psychology from the viewpoint of various national origins. Fechner, Helmholtz, Wundt, Brentano, Ebbinghaus and the Gestalt psychologists are discussed under the German rubric. Under "England" there are the usual subjects of evolution, Galton's work, and statistics. Under "America" we find James, Dewey, Stanley Hall, structuralism, functionalism, and animal psychology. Brief and concrete examples are given to explain some of the major contributions of these men, their schools, and their countries. This makes the discussions readable and realistic.
Most refreshing is the account of the development of experimental psychology in France. Though brief, it gives information about Bourdon's (1860-1943) psychological laboratory founded in Rennes in 1896, about Foucault's (1865Foucault's ( -1947) ) founded in Montpellier in 1906, etc.-information not readily available to the English reader. Furthermore the work of Charcot, Ribot, Janet, Dumas, Binet, and PiBron is brought into proper historical perspective. Almost all of the men contributed to the entire spectrum of psychology and its medical, psychiatric, educational and sociological roots. But since the French psychologists were no "system-builders" the importance of their work may have eluded many other historical accounts. The excellent ten-page treatment of the historical development in France contrasts greatly with the account of Russian psychology to which the author devotes only two pages.
The last two sections of the chapter entitled "The behaviourist revolution" and "Toward the unification of psychology through the diversity of problems" are original contributions to the history of psychology. Fraisse shows that behaviorism has a basis much broader than that given or generally attributed to Watson. He cites PiBron's 190s inaugural lecture in which PiBron defines "le comportment" as being concerned with the complex interplay of sensori-motor activities and their surroundings, as for instance, with an entire sequence of premating and mating behavior generally ignored by physiologists. Having broadened the basis of behaviorism, Fraisse shows that the systems of Tolman, Hunter, Skinner, Hill, Hehb, and others have many common historical roots. He believes that today allpsy-