Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences最新文献

This paper analyzes medical-sexological and sexual-psychological public discourse in Hungary between the Second World War and the regime change, through counseling and science communication books. It engages with works on the history of Hungarian socialist sexual discourse. It differs from such works in two main respects. One is the method of selection of analyzed content: for this study, I systematically included in the database all of the books of two Budapest libraries. The second one is the framing: compared to previous work, I place more emphasis on the political embeddedness of the discourse and how the changing geopolitical situation of Hungary affected the discourse. I argue that discourse trends, initially responding to negative demographic trends the high number of divorces, evolved due to Hungary's “Westernization” and market logic, and the promotion of female sexual pleasure and socialist romanticism becoming increasingly pornified and technical between the 1970s and the regime change.

Although naturalists have devoted attention to cetaceans since Antiquity, it was only in the 19th century that cetology underwent a true explosion. Three key cetological works of this period are The Natural History of the Sperm Whale (1839) by Thomas Beale, The Whaleman's Adventures in the Southern Ocean (1850) by Henry Cheever and The Seals and Whales of the British Seas (1881) by Thomas Southwell. Importantly, these three works did not only represent fundamental compendia of scientific knowledge of cetaceans, but also had a crucial role in awakening a cetacean protection consciousness. Indeed, by describing in detail the behavior and psychology of these animals, these works depicted cetaceans as capable of cognition and emotions, facilitating empathy from the readers and challenging the general audience to consider critical issues connected to whale hunting, such as animal suffering and species extinction. From a behavioral point of view, Beale and Cheever, among the first naturalists that had direct experiences with living whales, refuted the previous dominant view of the whale based on the monothematic stereotype of the “bloodthirsty” “monster of the deep,” and described instead a more complete and scientifically accurate ethogram of whales, underscoring how these animals actually express a wide range of complex emotions, including joy, playfulness, maternal affection, filial affection, social affection to non-kins, defensive attitudes towards conspecifics in danger and succorant attitudes towards injured members of their pod. Moreover, these three works are milestones not only in the history of behavioral biology, but also in the history of environmentalism. Indeed, these works innovatively started presenting the whales object of hunting as sentient victims undergoing great sufferings and mass-slaughter, rather than as mere monsters to defeat. This new view of the whale represented the first step of a change of attitude in the public opinion, that, over the course of the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, progressively shifted its sympathy from the whale hunters to the whales, leading to the rise of cetacean protection movements. We here analyze these three works, underlining in particular their contributions to behavioral cetology. The rediscovery of these works will be important not only for cetology and behavioral sciences, but also for history of science, anthropology, ethics, animal rights, and ecocriticism.

From the second half of the nineteenth-century treatment of “imbecile” children in Britain underwent significant change. Examining the period from 1870 to 1920 when imbecility became a discrete category, and a matter of concern in policy and practice, this paper focuses on conceptualizations around fright, idleness, morality, and parental mental state as behavioral, emotional, and psychological causes and attributions of “imbecility” in children. I view this in light of the Victorian emotional culture of “care and control,” which was driven by a shift in cost-cutting and fear of the impact of “imbecile children” on society, justifying exclusions, defining boundaries, and driving change. In light of the legacy of the “deserving/undeserving paradigm” and “care and control” agenda propagated by the Poor Law established in 1834 in England (and in 1845 in Scotland), “idleness” and “immorality” implied a form of abnormality, while “fright” could cause abnormality, and all needed to be controlled. Furthermore “fright” was classified as an (external) emotional event or trigger that has a lasting impact, and an early indication of including psychological factors (in addition to somatic) in explanations of “deficiencies.” Using the Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children founded in 1862 and the Waifs and Strays Society for destitute children, established in London in 1881 as examples, I argue that concerns about the rise of “mental deficiency” in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods were driven by moral panic as a force for social control, and to a lesser extent, the concept of care.

The paper reviews and summarizes the historical research that has been carried out in recent decades to explore the connections between esotericism and psychology while highlighting the typical historical and contemporary ways in which psychology and esotericism are linked. This examination underscores why academic research on esotericism is relevant to psychology, including why a substantive definition of esotericism made within the context of psychology is essential. Based on the sources currently at our disposal, it is asserted that the influences of esotericism have never been peripheral to psychology. The foundations and basic features of “esoteric psychology” unfolding within various theoretical frameworks are described. With this paper, the author aims to contribute to the emergence of a critical yet open and flexible discourse that recognizes the impact of esotericism on psychology and is ready to evaluate these influences in an objective way.