Listening seems to be a simple and natural act. We sit back, look at the speaker, and take in what she says. And yet, we also know that good listening is a skill, an art, that if done correctly, can be transformative. This article looks into the history of listening as a therapeutic practice placing emphasis on the ways it has been shaped by media technologies. Sketching the development of the concept and practice of "empathic," "reflective," or "active listening" through the career of humanistic psychologist Carl R. Rogers, the article shows how Rogers' use of phonographic recordings changed not only his practice of listening, but ultimately also the ideals that shaped that practice. The technology of recording offered Rogers and his colleagues the opportunity to listen to themselves to learn how to listen well, thus allowing them to study, and to adjust, their own role in the therapeutic situation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
Cheiron's Book Prize Committee is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2022 Prize is Nadine Weidman, Lecturer on the History of Science at Harvard University, for her book Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America. In other news from the Society for the History of Psychology, Marjorie Lorch has recently published an article on how the concept of a matched control group was initially developed in neuropsychological testing. Lorch, M. P. (2022). Defining 'normal': Methodological issues in Aphasia and intelligence research. Cortex, 153, 224-234. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
On May 14, 2022, a gunman walked into a supermarket in Buffalo, NY, and opened fire on the customers, killing 10 and injuring three. The alleged killer published a document explaining he chose a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood to maximize the likelihood of killing Black people. He believed in the "Great Replacement" theory that Jews were conspiring to commit "White Genocide" by having inferior races outbreed the superior White race. The 180-page "Manifesto" relied on a mix of Internet memes, plagiarized arguments from a similar killing in New Zealand, links to White nationalist and antisemitic websites, and citations to scientific publications. Overwhelmingly, the scientific publications cited in the document were from psychology. In this brief article, the author contends that psychologists need to ask themselves why an alleged deranged killer took his inspiration from psychology and not, for example, human genetics. The answer is that geneticists have recognized the responsibility that comes along with inquiry. While researchers are free to pursue any questions they desire, scientific and editorial standards still need to be met for disciplinary integrity. The heart of academic freedom is the ability and responsibility to distinguish responsible scholarship from its pretender. Psychology must do better. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
This article traces a genealogy for the various strands of contemporary psychology which are concerned with global environmental change, including conservation psychology, ecopsychology, and other subfields and interdisciplinary concentrations. Focusing on a network of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other researchers based at a research center founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982, the article explores what those who first turned to the psychological causes and implications of climate change and other kinds of global environmental disruption had learned from their studies of nuclear-era psychology. The explorations of these researchers and practitioners in systems psychology, depth psychology, and political psychology, elicited by the first truly planetary crisis of the modern world, the threat of general nuclear war (which, apart from the enormous damage done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and during weapons tests, remained largely theoretical), were applied to a new planetary crisis which was already unfolding: global environmental degradation. As they completed this pivot from the nuclear threat to the environmental crisis, at the end of the Cold War, using the language of the psychology of survival, these researchers displayed the form and function of what might be called a planetary psychology-of psychological theory and practice which broaches the planetary context of the individual psyche. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
The present article assesses the hidden importance of Georges Politzer's (1903-1942) work in the development of French philosophy and psychology. After sketching his biography and isolating the most important concepts developed in his book Critique of the Foundations of Psychology (1928), this article proceeds by dividing his reception into four distinct moments, the features of which derive from the interconnected mutations of the scientific field in its relation with the transformation of the political field. In the first moment, the publication of the Critique, Politzer's most important work, played an essential role in introducing psychoanalysis into philosophy, psychology, and psychiatry, and in sketching the path of a possible encounter between psychoanalysis and Marxism. In the second moment, during the 1940s and the 1950s, following Politzer's Marxist auto-critique, French communists widely rejected psychoanalysis as a dangerous ideology. In the third moment, during the 1960s in a context marked by structuralism, both the psychoanalysts and the Marxists addressed to Politzer's humanism a new, theoretical, critique. Finally, at the end of the 1960s and even more after May 1968, Politzer's works were republished and reevaluated, and new transformations taking place in the intellectual and political field during the 1970s contributed to a better understanding of Politzer's essential role in French philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
The history of the psychology of eyewitness testimony cannot be adequately understood without taking the respective legal systems, that is inquisitorial versus adversarial system, into account. Across all periods, questions regarding the accuracy of testimony, its suggestibility, and intentional distortions in false accusations become apparent. We describe the history of the experimental psychology of testimony in Germany from the beginning of the 20th century until the time after the second world war. Louis William Stern and Otto Lipmann conceived and established a broad conception of Aussagepsychologie (psychology of report), attracting the collaboration of lawyers, pedagogues, and scholars from other disciplines to conduct laboratory and staged event experiments. They were successful in institutionalizing psychology and law by organizing interdisciplinary conferences, founding a journal, and testifying as experts in court. When appearing as experts, they encountered strong rivalry from psychiatrists. We also sketch some of the problems psychologists in Germany faced during the second world war. In our discussion, we stress the importance of legal, contextual, and sociocultural factors affecting both research outcomes and expert testimony, which appear to be parallel to present-day concerns. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).