“Alfred Lehmann and the Establishment of Modern Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, 1890–1918”

Jörgen Pind (University of Iceland, Faculty of Psychology)

Psychology, as a modern experimental subject, had an early start at the University of Copenhagen through the pioneering efforts of Alfred Lehmann (1858-1921). Lehmann was educated as a natural scientist but his interest in psychological topics was aroused early on. After finishing his education, he spent the winter 1885-1886 in Wilhelm Wundt’s laboratory of psychology in Leipzig. Here he carried out the first experimental study of visual contrast. Upon his return to Copenhagen he established, at his own expense, a Laboratory of psychophysics, one of the earliest laboratories of psychology. This was overtaken by the University of Copenhagen in 1893 where Lehmann had become temporary docent of psychology in 1890. Lehmann was a prolific researcher, mainly concentrating on psychophysiology but also known for his work in applied psychology and especially for his critical stance towards parapsychology. In this talk I will give an overview of Lehmann’s career and discuss his efforts in establishing psychology as a separate field of study at the University of Copenhagen. It had been possible to major in psychology at the University of Copenhagen as part of a master’s degree in philosophy from the latter half of the nineteenth century. Through Lehmann’s efforts, psychology was established as an independent field of study in 1918.

“The Fragmentation of Clinical Psychology: Prestige and Purpose in a Heterogeneous Field”

Andrew Hogan (Creighton University)

The sub-discipline of clinical psychology grew significantly in size and prominence during the 1940s and 1950s. Its expansion was largely driven by government investment and planning to increase the number of mental health professionals available to war veterans. Clinical psychology soon became the largest division of the American Psychological Association. Though clinical psychology remained deeply rooted in the basic research oriented discipline of psychology, most of its newly trained graduates left academia to enter private practice. By the 1980s, those who remained in academic positions lamented that clinical psychology had become highly fragmented in its interests, methodologies, and purposes. While clinical psychology retained a plurality of APA membership, researchers within the sub-discipline increasingly aligned themselves with other sub-disciplines: including the more empirically oriented developmental psychology, or the social activist ambitions of community psychology.

This paper contributes to growing interest in the history of psychology. While a few historians of medicine have examined longstanding postwar tensions between clinical psychologists and psychiatrists, there has been little attention given, among historians of science, to the growing postwar divisions within clinical psychology. Focusing specifically on debates over the proper management of mental retardation in the late-20th century, my presentation argues that purpose and prestige were closely linked in the increasingly fragmented field of clinical psychology during this era. Practitioners who retained the traditional approaches of academic psychology maintained a dominant position in the field, while those with more socially oriented methods and goals were increasingly marginalized or encouraged to leave behind clinical psychology entirely.

“The Cybernetic Effect: The Origins of Soviet Psychology of Thinking”

Ekaterina Babintseva (University of Pennsylvania)

It was not until 1971 when psychology became represented at the Soviet Academy of Sciences by a separate and solid institute. Despite a long history of research in the physiology of nervous system and child development, psychology remained a marginalized pedagogical discipline until the 1970s in Russia. The status of psychology changed with the interference of Aksel Berg, the founder and the chairman of the Council of Cybernetics. A former Deputy Minister of Defense in charge of radar, Berg created the institute whose task was to study information retrieval, reception, transport, storage, processing, and control in the human and the machine. Additionally, the institute solved practical needs as it assisted in the development of computer-based education and studied problem-solving skills in a machine operator.

This paper seeks to showcase how the cybernetics movement led to the institutional establishment of the field of psychology in the USSR. Many scholars have shown how computing and cybernetics provided other sciences with new metaphors and concepts, but only a few went further and demonstrated how cybernetics influenced the practice of science. I argue that it was the boom of Soviet cybernetics that elevated Soviet psychology from a pedagogical discipline to a scientific field. This transformation became possible as cybernetics and military-related technical problems oriented Soviet psychological research towards thinking and information processing. This paper draws on archival documents from the Soviet Academy of Sciences, as well as published work that appeared in Russian journal Issues of Psychology in the 1960s-1970s.