Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences最新文献

Save the dates: the joint meeting of the Cheiron and European Society for the History of the Human Sciences will be hosted at the American University of Paris from July 1st–July 5th, 2025.

Stay tuned for updates on our web pages.

Save the dates: the joint meeting of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences and Cheiron will be hosted at the American University of Paris from July 1st–July 5th, 2025.

Stay tuned for updates on our web pages.

Karl Kraus was one of the most important and influential personalities in Vienna at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century; he was the founder and life director of the magazine Die Fackel, famous for leading important debates with writers, poets, journalists, and psychoanalysts. At the beginning of the 20th century, Freud wanted to win Kraus's sympathy because he believed that having him on his side was essential for psychoanalysis to penetrate the artistic and cultural circle of Vienna. As will be shown in this article, the alliance between the two was never consummated and, on the contrary, they became antagonists, with Ernst Jones naming Kraus “Freud's greatest enemy.” In this paper, mentions of Freud and psychoanalysis in Die Fackel between 1905 and 1930 were identified and subsequently, 26 aphorisms written by Kraus through the post-structural linguistic approach were analyzed. A sample from the digital collection AAC-FACKEL of the Austrian Academy Corpus was used. Early writings reveal that Kraus came to regard psychoanalysis as an ally in his struggle against Austrian sexual morality, yet he was always wary of its invasion of the intimate lives of individuals. Kraus criticized Freud's explanation of female hysteria and instead considered that the root of female suffering was due to their inability to give themselves individuality. It can be concluded that although Kraus was a severe critic of psychoanalysis, at many times he viewed some of its postulates with sympathy, to the point that he considered his aphorisms to be a kind of attenuated psychoanalysis; that is, without the exaggerated presence of sexual elements or interpretations.

This study investigates the development of concepts of psychosis in the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw, within the context of social and historical processes to which the hospital was the subject and a broader scope of European concepts of psychosis. In the years 1898–1909, the first chief physician of the psychiatric ward, Adam Wizel, focused mainly on hysteria. The interest in psychoses was initiated by Maurycy Bornsztajn, who started to promote psychoanalytic ideas. The second decade of the functioning of the Jewish Hospital's psychiatric ward was marked by issues concerning the classification of psychoses. In the third decade, after Poland regained independence, psychosis became the main focus of the hospital's staff. Newly appointed psychiatrists, Gustaw Bychowski and Władysław Matecki, contributed substantially to the psychoanalytic understanding of psychosis. Bornsztajn continued to develop his psychoanalytically based concept of psychosis. Wizel changed his attitude toward psychoanalysis and acknowledged the importance of Freud's discoveries. Władysław Sterling contributed to the biological understanding of schizophrenia. In the last period, 1931–1943, the Jewish Hospital in Warsaw struggled with the consequences of the economic crisis in Poland, Wizel's death, and Bychowski's departure, which resulted in the reduced number of publications in the field of psychosis. Nevertheless, Bornsztajn managed to further develop his concept of somatopsychic schizophrenia and Matecki introduced the category of pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia. The psychoanalytic approach developed by Wizel, Bornsztajn, Bychowski, and Matecki was supplemented with other influences, especially phenomenology. Wizel, Bychowski, and Matecki were advocates of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of psychotic patients.

Empathic qualitative methods have become emblematic of early Chicago sociology. Yet methods were not formalized through the early 20th century and empathy was not in usage as a term. Only at mid-20th century did methodological formalization in sociology begin to occur, and an additional quarter-century passed before writing about empathy in sociological methods began to crystallize. Nevertheless, a portion of early Chicago sociologists, assimilating pragmatist thought, established a framework for the deployment of empathic acumen. Because empathy involves understanding others, it is argued that it is central to the study of social life. The article contends that understanding empathy must be as central to the social scientist's knowledge as it is to the effective deployment of research methods: a competent quest to generate knowledge about social life is premised on empathy. To heighten awareness of empathy, an epistemology is necessary. To this end, the article examines empathy as situated by a set of organizational and historical conditions that account for its origin and ascendance as a prescriptive characteristic of sociological work. The author draws attention to the significance of suffering and suggests that its religious precepts are transmuted for the conditions under which sociology develops in turn-of-the-century Chicago.

Michel Jouvet (1925–2017) is one of the most important figures in the contemporary history of the neuroscience of sleep and dreams, and one of the most awarded French researchers of the last century. Yet this former CNRS gold medalist and winner of the Cino Del Duca World Prize remains little known—not to say unknown—outside the field of sleep medicine, especially in non-French-speaking countries, where the name of his American counterpart, William C. Dement, is more familiar. Often reduced to his experiments on cats and the discovery of what he called “paradoxical sleep,” Jouvet left behind a rather unique body of work that includes not only countless publications on sleep and dreams—neurophysiological as well as ethnological and psychological—but also major contributions to clinical medicine, two novels and an impressive collection of personal dream accounts and drawings, which now make it possible to explore the nocturnal side of the last 50 years of his life. This article draws on unpublished archives to illuminate all these little-known and unknown aspects of Jouvet's life and work, highlighting his hidden links with 19th-century scientific oneirology and bringing to light its paradoxes.