This article describes the relations between academic psychology and psychical research in Britain during the inter-war period, in the context of the fluid boundaries between mainstream psychology and both psychical research and popular psychology. Specifically, the involvement with Harry Price of six senior academic psychologists: William McDougall, William Brown, J. C. Flugel, Cyril Burt, C. Alec Mace and Francis Aveling, is described. Personal, metaphysical and socio-historical factors in their collaboration are discussed. It is suggested that the main reason for their (...) mutual attraction was their common engagement in a delicate balancing act between courting popular appeal on the one hand and the assertion of scientific expertise and authority on the other. Their interaction is typical of the boundary work performed at this transitional stage in the development of psychology as a discipline. (shrink)

The British Psychological Society having established a ‘Philosophy and History’ section, a fresh look at the nature of the History of Psychology is called for. In this paper, I would like to make a contribution to this by raising some conundrums which have yet to be adequately addressed. First, though, what has happened in the History of Psychology so far? Psychologists have been writing histories of their discipline since the turn of the century; Baldwin's History of Psychology appeared in 1913, (...) for example, and the first volume of G. S. Brett's trilogy of the same title in 1912, a year which also saw Dessoir's Outlines of the History of Psychology translated into English. This early work was clearly aimed at providing a respectable genealogy for the nascent discipline; only about a fifth of Baldwin's work actually deals with experimental or empirical Psychology dating from later than the mid-nineteenth century, while Brett treats scientific approaches virtually as a coda to a survey of the history of the philosophy of mind. Psychology is presented as the legitimate heir to the main western philosophical tradition, sired on it, so to speak, by physiologists such as Helmholtz, Muller and Broca. In 1929, E. G. Boring published the first edition of his A History of Experimental Psychology, which dominated the field for decades along with Gardner Murphy's Historical Introduction of Modern Psychology of 1928, a lighter weight work but with a somewhat broader range, which served as an introductory text. Both went into subsequent editions, the latter as recently as 1972 . The series The History of Psychology in Autobiography, begun in 1930 and now in its seventh volume , contains professional autobiographies by the ageing eminent of varying levels of self-disclosure, wit and informative value. It is not, however, until the 1960s that a self-conscious sub-discipline calling itself ‘History of Psychology’ emerges within Psychology, being pioneered by the late R. I. Watson in the United States. New histories begin appearing, including Kantor's very positivistic The Scientific Evolution of Psychology Vol. 1 of 1963 and Hearnshaw's A Short History of British Psychology of 1964. In 1965, the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences was started, formally signalling the arrival of the new sub-discipline on the scene. Subsequent events warrant a more critical appraisal. (shrink)

The encounter between the Christian Churches and Psychology has, for all its evident cultural importance, received little attention from disciplinary historians. During the period between the two world wars in Britain this encounter was particularly visible and, as it turned out, for the most part relatively amicable. Given their ostensive rivalry this is, on the face of it, somewhat surprising. Closer examination, however, reveals a substantial convergence and congruence of interests between them within the prevailing cultural climate, and considerable overlapping (...) of membership. The character of their meeting was, it is argued, determined more by these factors than by fundamental divergences in intellectual and theoretical orientation. Such divergences were diplomatically sidelined, on the religious side, by viewing Psychology as having certain ‘blind spots’ and, on the Psychology side, by invoking the argument that ‘science’ is concerned only with ‘facts’, not ‘values’. Only some hard-line psychoanalysts adopted an explicitly anti-religious stance. Religion’s concessions ultimately proved too high a price, and following this period the Churches began distancing themselves from Psychology. Their current relationship is very different from that which prevailed from 1918 to 1939. A fuller historical picture of the relationship between Psychology and religion awaits consideration of other sites and periods. (shrink)

The ArgumentDespite the enormous historical attention psychoanalysis has attracted, its popularization in Britain (as opposed to the United States) in the wake of the Great War has been largely overlooked. The present paper explores the sources and fate of the sudden “craze” for psychoanalysis after 1918, examining the content of the books through which the doctrine became widely known, along with the roles played by religious interests and the popular press. The percolation of Freudian and related language into everyday English (...) was effectively complete by the 1930s. Crucially, it is argued that in Britain the character of psychoanalytic theory itself demonstrably converged with the psychological needs of the British population in the postwar period. The situation in Britain was clearly different in many respects from that in the United States. This episode bears on numerous questions about scientific popularization, the distinctiveness of British psychoanalysis, and though it is treated here only peripherally the epistemological status or nature of psychoanalysis. More generally the present paper may be read as an exercise in reflexive disciplinary historiography, in which the levels of discipline (“Psychology”) and subject matter (“psychology”) are viewed as interpenetrating and mutually constitutive. (shrink)