R. W. Rieber and Kurt Salzinger, eds. psychology: Theoretical-Historical Perspectives. New York: Academic Press, 1980. xiv + 364 pp. R. W. Rieber, ed. Body and Mind: Past, Present and Future. New York: Academic Press, 1980. xiv + 261 pp. Richard L. Gregory. Mind in Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. xi + 641 pp
✍ Scribed by Daniel N. Robinson
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1982
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 561 KB
- Volume
- 18
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0022-5061
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Perspectives initially took shape at a New York Academy of Sciences conference entitled "The Roots of American Psychology." The present volume contains essays prepared for that conference as well as some freshly written. On the whole, however, it is American psychology that is in focus here and, to this extent, the title of the collection is somewhat misleading.
Seventeen contributors provide sixteen chapters partitioned into three broad parts: psychology's emergence as a science; social and political sources of American psychology's development; and three contemporary psychologies and their implications. In their introduction the editors simply summarize the chief points developed by the contributors but provide no conceptual bridges by which the reader might move from chapter to chapter and part to part. They conclude their introduction with the observation that "enough time has passed that we can laugh at the history of psychology instead of becoming upset." A third possibility-that of understanding the history of psychology-is not explored by the editors and animates less than half of the subsequent chapters. The latter are varied in content and in quality and are held together by no more than the binding. What we have, then, is more a proceedings than either a text or an anthology, but there are not even the thematic links one ordinarily finds in proceedings.
There are, however, a number of contributions that tend to redeem the volume. Solomon Diamond addresses the importance of Francis Galton not only to James McKeen Cattell's scientific evolution but to a wider assortment of issues that would command the attention of American psychologists. He carefully and usefully separates Galton's eugenics from the rank racism of Galton's own time and from those later variants that would defy the facts in claiming Galton as a patron. Helmut Adler provides an interesting account of the shifting fortunes of Fechnerian psychology in the New World, and Mary Henle again implores her contemporaries to understand Gestalt psychology before deciding to embrace or reject it. Arthur Blumenthal's essay on Wilhelm Wundt examines the Leibnizian-Lockean tension with which Wundt contended and relates this to the American intellectual context that would sit in judgment of Wundt's psychology. In addition to these four illuminating and well-conceived essays, there are two chapters of a broad perspectival and critical nature that will repay the reader's attention: one by Howard Gruber on Darwin's scientific thought and one by David Bakan on politics and American psychology. By examining Darwin's flights of imagination, his model building and metaphorical flourishes, his intellectual courage and integrity, Gruber brings to light not only the achievement of the man but an object lesson for any aspiring science. He notes how far from this lesson modern psychology has strayed and how heavy a price it continues to pay. In a more personal and strident way, Bakan makes 3 70