Transfer of Lamarckisms and emerging ‘scientific’ psychologies: 19th – early 20th centuries Britain and France

The paper argues that transfer of assumptions, concepts, models and metaphors from a variety of Lamarckisms played a significant role in the endeavors to constitute psychology as a scientific discipline. It deals with such efforts in the second half of the nineteenth century and until early twentieth century in Britain and in France.

The paper discusses works by Herbert Spencer, John Hughlings-Jackson, Théodule Ribot and Sigmund Freud. It argues that certain crucial facets of their work as discipline-founders could and should be looked upon as resulting from such transfer of/from Lamarckisms. Specifically it looks at the constitutive roles of notions of hierarchical order, parallelism, self, memory and collectivity.