Connectomics is the production and study of connectomes: comprehensive maps of connections within an organism's nervous system.
More generally, it can be thought of as the study of neuronal wiring
diagrams with a focus on how structural connectivity, individual
synapses, cellular morphology, and cellular ultrastructure contribute to
the make up of a network. The nervous system
is a network made of billions of connections and these connections are
responsible for our thoughts, emotions, actions, memories, function and
dysfunction. Therefore, the study of connectomics aims to advance our
understanding of mental health and cognition by understanding how cells
in the nervous system are connected and communicate. Because these
structures are extremely complex, methods within this field use a high-throughput application of functional and structural neural imaging, most commonly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), electron microscopy, and histological
techniques in order to increase the speed, efficiency, and resolution
of these nervous system maps. To date, tens of large scale datasets have
been collected spanning the nervous system including the various areas
of cortex, cerebellum, the retina, the peripheral nervous system and neuromuscular junctions.
Generally speaking, there are two types of connectomes; macroscale and microscale. Macroscale connectomics refers to using functional and structural
MRI data to map out large fiber tracts and functional gray matter areas
within the brain in terms of blood flow (functional) and water
diffusivity (structural). Microscale connectomics is the mapping of
small organisms' complete connectome using microscopy and histology.
That is, all connections that exist in their central nervous system.
Methods
Magnetic
Resonance Imaging used to assess Macroscale connectomics within the
human brain. dMRI image series are used to map white matter tracts, and
fMRI series are used to assess how blood flow correlates between
connected gray matter areas.
Macroscale Connectomics
Macroscale connectomes are commonly collected using diffusion magnetic resonance imaging
(dMRI) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). dMRI datasets
can span the entire brain, imaging white matter between the cortex and subcortex.
In contrast, fMRI datasets measure cerebral blood flow in the brain, as
a marker of neuronal activation. One of the benefits of MRI is it
offers in vivo information about connectivity between different brain
areas. Macroscale connectomics has furthered our understanding of
various brain networks including visual, brainstem, and language networks, among others.
Microscale Connectomics
On
the other hand, microscale connectomes focus on a much smaller area of
the nervous system with much higher resolution. These datasets are
commonly collected using electron microscopy
imaging and offer single synapse resolution of entire local circuits.
Some of the milestones in EM connectomics include the entire nervous
system of C. elegans, an entire fly brain, and most recently a millimeter cube from both mouse and human cortex.
Tools
One of the main tools used for connectomics research at the macroscale level is MRI.
When used together, a resting-state fMRI and a dMRI dataset provide a
comprehensive view of how regions of the brain are structurally
connected, and how closely they are communicating. The main tool for connectomics research at the microscale level is chemical brain preservation followed by 3D electron microscopy, used for neural circuit reconstruction. Correlative microscopy,
which combines fluorescence with 3D electron microscopy, results in
more interpretable data as is it able to automatically detect specific
neuron types and can trace them in their entirety using fluorescent
markers.
To see one of the first micro-connectomes at full-resolution, visit the Open Connectome Project, which is hosting several connectome datasets, including the 12TB dataset from Bock et al. (2011).
A
connectivity matrix assessing the functional connectivity between each
brain region in the Default Mode Network (DMN). Here, shades of red
indicate stronger coupling between two regions blood flow changes, and
shades of blue indicate an anti-correlation between two regions.
By comparing diseased and healthy connectomes, we can gain insight into certain psychopathologies, such as neuropathic pain, and potential therapies for them. Generally, the field of neuroscience
would benefit from standardization and raw data. For example,
connectome maps can be used to inform computational models of
whole-brain dynamics. Current neural networks mostly rely on probabilistic representations of connectivity patterns.
Connectivity matrices (checkerboard diagrams of connectomics) have been
used in stroke recovery to evaluate the response to treatment via Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. Similarly, connectograms (circular diagrams of connectomics) have been used in traumatic brain injury cases to document the extent of damage to neural networks.
The human connectome can be viewed as a graph, and the rich tools, definitions and algorithms of the Graph theory can be applied to these graphs. Comparing the connectomes (or braingraphs) of healthy women and men, Szalkai et al.
have shown that in several deep graph-theoretical parameters, the
structural connectome of women is significantly better connected than
that of men. For example, women's connectome has more edges, higher
minimum bipartition width, larger eigengap, greater minimum vertex cover than that of men. The minimum bipartition width (or, in other words, the minimum balanced cut) is a well-known measure of quality of computer multistage interconnection networks,
it describes the possible bottlenecks in network communication: The
higher this value is, the better is the network. The larger eigengap
shows that the female connectome is better expander graph than the connectome of males. The better expanding property, the higher minimum bipartition width and the greater minimum vertex cover show deep advantages in network connectivity in the case of female braingraph.
Local measures of difference between populations of those graph
have been also introduced (e.g. to compare case versus control groups). Those can be found by using either an adjusted t-test, or a sparsity model, with the aim of finding statistically significant connections which are different among those groups.
Human connectomes have an individual variability, which can be measured with the cumulative distribution function, as it was shown in.
By analyzing the individual variability of the human connectomes in
distinct cerebral areas, it was found that the frontal and the limbic
lobes are more conservative, and the edges in the temporal and occipital
lobes are more diverse. A "hybrid" conservative/diverse distribution
was detected in the paracentral lobule and the fusiform gyrus. Smaller
cortical areas were also evaluated: precentral gyri were found to be
more conservative, and the postcentral and the superior temporal gyri to
be very diverse.
Comparison to genomics
The human genome project
initially faced many of the above criticisms, but was nevertheless
completed ahead of schedule and has led to many advances in genetics.
Some have argued that analogies can be made between genomics and
connectomics, and therefore we should be at least slightly more
optimistic about the prospects in connectomics.
Others have criticized attempts towards a microscale connectome,
arguing that we don't have enough knowledge about where to look for
insights, or that it cannot be completed within a realistic time frame.
Alternative media are media sources that differ from established or dominant types of media (such as mainstream media or mass media) in terms of their content, production, or distribution. Sometimes the term independent media
is used as a synonym, indicating independence from large media
corporations, but this term is also used to indicate media enjoying freedom of the press
and independence from government control. Alternative media does not
refer to a specific format and may be inclusive of print, audio,
film/video, online/digital and street art, among others. Some examples
include the counter-culturezines of the 1960s, ethnic and indigenous media such as the First People's television network in Canada (later rebranded Aboriginal Peoples Television Network), and more recently online open publishing journalism sites such as Indymedia.
In contrast to mainstream mass media, alternative media tend to
be "non-commercial projects that advocate the interests of those
excluded from the mainstream", for example, the poor, political and
ethnic minorities, labor groups, and LGBT identities. These media disseminate marginalized viewpoints, such as those heard in the progressive news program Democracy Now!, and create communities of identity, as seen for example in the It Gets Better Project that was posted on YouTube in response to a rise in gay teen suicides at the time of its creation.
Alternative media challenge the dominant beliefs and values of a
culture and have been described as "counter-hegemonic" by adherents of Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony;
however, since the definition of alternative media as merely counter to
the mainstream is limiting, some approaches to the study of alternative
media also address the question of how and where these media are
created, as well as the dynamic relationship between the media and the
participants that create and use them.
Definitions
There are various definitions of "alternative media." John Downing,
for example, defines "radical alternative media" as media "that express
an alternative vision to hegemonic policies, priorities, and
perspectives". In his assessment of a variety of definitions for the term, Chris Atton
notes repeatedly the importance of alternative media production
originating from small-scale, counter-hegemonic groups and individuals.
Christian Fuchs also argues that alternative media must have four
distinct properties. The first being that the audience of these media
must be involved in the creation of what is put out in alternative
media. The second is that it has to be different from the mainstream. The third is that it should create a perspective different from that of the state and major corporations.
The fourth property is that alternative media must "establish different
types of relationships with the market and/or the state."
As defined by Atton and Hamilton "Alternative journalism proceeds
from dissatisfaction not only with the mainstream coverage of certain
issues and topics but also with the epistemology of news. Its critique
emphasizes alternatives to, inter alia, conventions of news sources and
representation; the inverted pyramid of news texts; the hierarchical
and capitalized economy of commercial journalism; the professional,
elite basis of journalism as a practice; the professional norm of
objectivity; and the subordinate role of the audience as a receiver"
Journalistic Practices says "Alternative media not only allow but
also facilitate the participation (in its more radical meaning) of its
members (or the community) in both the produced content and the
content-producing organization.' In this sense, participation in
alternative media as described and reflected upon by the participants in
this study can best be understood as a form of active citizenship".
Common approaches and practices
Approaches
to the academic study of alternative media attempt to understand the
ways in which these media are significant, each emphasizing a different
aspect of media, including the role of the public sphere, social
movements, and the participation by communities that create the media.
Democratic theory and the public sphere
A public sphere described by Habermas - Coffee House in 18C
One way of understanding alternative media is to consider their role in the process of democratic communication. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas
proposed that a healthy democratic community requires a space where
rational debate can take place between engaged citizens. It is essential
that the dialogue in this public sphere occurs outside the control of any authority so that citizens can exchange ideas as equals. This translates to the need for free speech and a free press.
In Habermas's idea of the public sphere, participation is open to
everyone, all participants are considered equal, and any issue can be
raised for debate.
However, this view fails to note the inherent exclusion of women and
minorities (and their interests) from the debate in the public sphere.
In light of this social inequality, philosopher Nancy Fraser
argues for the importance of multiple independent public spheres, in
which members of subordinated groups can first deliberate their issues
and concerns among themselves and later assert those issues into the
larger public sphere. The alternative media associated with these
counter-public spheres are critical in developing the needs and identity
of the group and in challenging the larger dominant public sphere. A
feminist counter-public sphere is, for example, responsible for
circulating the view that women's issues such as domestic abuse and
reproductive rights are deserving of debate in the larger public sphere.
Social movement media
Social movements
are a type of collective action. They involve large, sometimes
informal, groups or organizations which focus on specific political or
social issues and promote, instigate, resist or undo the social change.
Social movement media is how social movements use media, and oftentimes,
due to the nature of social movements, that media tends to be an
alternative.
Communication is vital to the success of social movements.
Research shows that social movements experience significant difficulties
communicating through mainstream media because the mainstream media
often systematically distort, stigmatize, or ignore social movement
viewpoints.
They may deny social movements' access or
representation at critical moments in their development, employ message
frames that undermine or weaken public perceptions of a movement's
legitimacy or implicitly encourage movement actors who seek coverage to
cater to the questionable values of mainstream reportage on social
activism, including a heightened interest in violence, emotionality, and
slogans.
This problematic coverage of social movements is often referred to as
the protest paradigm: the idea that mass media marginalizes protest
groups through their depictions of the protesters, and, by doing so,
subsequently support the status quo. As a result, social movements often
turn to alternative media forms and practices in
order to more effectively achieve their goals.
Example of a sign used during the Occupy Wall Street movement.
An example of how the mainstream media problematically covers social movements is the Occupy movement, which began with Occupy Wall Street
in September 2011. The Occupy movement protested against social and
economic inequality around the world, its primary goal being to make the
economic and political relations in all societies less vertically
hierarchical and more flatly distributed. Among the movement's primary
concerns is the system which allows large corporations and the global
financial system to manipulate the world in a way that
disproportionately benefits a wealthy minority, undermines democracy,
and disregards environmental sustainability. In comparing the mainstream
news coverage of the Occupy movement against coverage from alternative
press several trends emerge. First, mainstream media used confusion over
the event as the dominant frame
while alternative media focused on what the demonstrators were actually
trying to accomplish. Second, the mainstream media placed the
protesters at fault of any violence while the alternative media focused
on the brutality of the police and their violent acts on the peaceful
protesters.
For more information about social movements, and alternative media, see social movement theory.
Alternative media tend to be activist by nature. Social movements in areas such as human rights, the environmental movement, and civil rights produce alternative media to further their goals, spread awareness, and inspire participation and support.
Human rights
A favela in Brazil.
An example of a human rights social movement using
alternative media is the group WITNESS.
WITNESS is a human rights non-profit
organization and its mission is to partner with on-the-ground
organizations to support the documentation of human rights violations
and their consequences, in order to further public engagement, policy
change, and justice. They rely on video recordings using technology such
as handheld camcorders and smartphones to capture the world's attention
and viscerally communicate human rights abuses. They have documented
human rights abuses from the police in the favelas
of Brazil, children soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
human trafficking in Brazil and the United States, and many other human
rights issues, all through the use of alternative media.
Environmental movement
Protester at a Greenpeace march in 2009.
An example of an environment movement using alternative media is the group, Green Peace.
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization whose goal
is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its
diversity and focuses its campaigning on worldwide issues such as
climate change, deforestation, overfishing, commercial whaling, genetic
engineering, and anti-nuclear issues. It uses direct action, lobbying,
and research to achieve its goals, as well as alternative media. They
use online tactics such as podcasts and blogs as well as performance art.
Civil rights
An example of a civil rights group using alternative media was the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). SNCC was one of the most important organizations of the American Civil Rights Movement in
the 1960s. SNCC was involved in voter registration rights in the south, established Freedom Schools, organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
(MFDP), among many other accomplishments. Alternative media tactics
used by SNCC included establishing a dedicated Communication Section
which included a photography arm, its own printing press (which
published its newsletter the Student Voice), published publicity
materials, and created an alternative wire press.
Participatory culture
Alternative media have frequently been studied as a manifestation of participatory culture,
in which citizens do not act as consumers only, but as contributors or
producers as well. By opening up access to media production,
participatory culture is believed to further democracy, civic
engagement, and creative expression.
Participatory culture pre-dates the Internet. Amateur Press Associations
are a form of participatory culture that emerged late in the 19th
century. Members of such associations typeset and print their own
publications, which are mailed through a network of subscribers. Zines,
community-supported radio stations, and other types of projects were
predecessors of blogs, podcasts, wikis, and social networks. Web
services such as Tumblr, Imgur, Reddit, Medium, TikTok, and YouTube, among others, allow users to distribute original content to wider audiences, which makes media production more participatory.
Alternative media are also created by participatory journalism
as citizens play an active role in collecting, reporting, analyzing,
and disseminating news and information. This form of alternative and
activist news-gathering and reporting functions outside of mainstream
media institutions, often as a response to the shortcomings of
professional journalism. It engages in journalistic practices but is
driven by goals other than profit making, has different ideals, and
relies on alternative sources of legitimacy.
Participatory media approaches consider participation in
producing media content as well as in making decisions about media
production processes as a defining feature of alternative media. Participatory culture can be realized in a number of ways. Media literacy
is a way to begin participating by understanding media systems'
conventions and means of production. Individuals learning to produce
media themselves is the step that moves citizens from literacy to
participation. Fan fiction, community radio (or low-power FM), and hyper-local blogging are just a few ways that citizens can produce media content to participate in the production of alternative media.
By fostering participation, alternative media contribute to the
strengthening of a civic attitude and allow citizens to be active in one
of the main spheres relevant to daily life and to put their right to
communication into practice. To demonstrate the relationship between
democracy and participation in media production, the term citizen's
media illustrates that alternative media can help those who are
producing media also become active citizens – particularly in a
democracy. This idea is tied very closely to community media (see next section).
Community media
Community media includes citizens′ media, participatory media, activist and radical media
as well as the broader forms of communication in which local or
regional specific platforms are engaged. Like other forms of alternative
media, community media seeks to bypass the commercialization of media.
The elimination or avoidance of sole ownership or sponsorship is
motivated by a desire to be free of oversight or obligation to cater to a
specific agenda. Community media is often categorized as grassroots, a
description that applies to both the financial structure and the process
of content creation. While there is diversity in community media, which
varies by media platform (radio, TV, web or print), it is typical that
the media source is open to the public/community to submit material and
content. This open policy aligns with the values of community media to
maintain a democratic approach and ethos. Historically community media
has served to provide an alternative political voice. Across the world
forms of community, media are used to elevate the needs and discourse of
a specific space, typically connected by geographical, cultural,
social, or economic similarities.
Race and indigenous media
Minority
community media can be both localized and national, serving to
disseminate information to a targeted demographic. They provide a
platform for discussion and exchange within the minority communities as
well as between the minority and the majority communities. Oftentimes
minority-focused media serves an essential resource, providing their
audiences with essential information, in their own language of origin,
helping the specified group to participate as equal citizens of their
country of residence. These media platforms and outlets create an
opportunity for cultural exchange and the elevation or empowerment of a
disenfranchised or marginalized group, based on racial, ethnic or
cultural identity. Historically, these forms of media have served a dual
purpose, to disseminate information to a community that is
traditionally ignored or overlooked by major media outlets and as a
vehicle for political protest or social reform.
Spaces created to address minority discourse typically straddle
the line of both alternative and activist media, working to provide a
resource unavailable through mainstream measures and to shift the
universally accepted perspective or understanding of a specific group of
people. Sociologist Yu Shi's exploration of alternative media provides
opposing arguments about the role of minority media to both facilitate
cultural place-making and hinder community assimilation and
acculturation. Shi expounds a widely shared understanding that racially
informed media provide a place, power, and political agency.
Throughout the 20th-century, media spaces were developed to
accommodate the growing multi-cultural state of the United States.
African-Americans created local publications like the Chicago Defender
to share critical information to protect citizens from discriminatory
practices by police and policy-makers, while Jet and Ebony's magazine
served to empower the national black identity, lauding the achievements
and thought leadership of Black Americans. Similar practices became
increasingly common for Latino/Latina and Asian groups. As immigration
increased post-1965, Spanish-language newspapers and television
stations, along with the creation of television networks like ICN-TV
specifically for Chinese immigrants. A critical awareness of an
increasingly participatory global media culture in multicultural
societies is becoming widespread and a necessary approach to explaining
the success and impact of ethnic or minority media, as well as to
embrace the changing ways in which people 'use' their media.
Connections to subaltern studies
There are related aims found in alternative media studies and subaltern studies, as a concern for disenfranchised and oppressed voices pervades both fields. Subaltern studies draw on Antonio Gramsci's
discussion of "subaltern" groups, that is, groups of people considered
to be of inferior rank socially, economically, and politically. One of the most significant questions in subaltern studies is posed by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak,
"Can the subaltern speak?" which she asks in her seminal essay of the
same name. Spivak investigates whether the subaltern has a voice within
hegemonic political discourses, and if so if their voices are being
heard, allowing them to participate. This is important, as the
subaltern's ability to participate in politics and other social and
cultural practices is key in establishing—as well as challenging—their
subaltern status.
This particular body of scholarship is useful to the study and
discussion of alternative media due to their shared preoccupation with
the ability of disenfranchised peoples to participate and contribute to
mainstream hegemonic discourses, especially in regards to ethnic and
racial media in which these groups speak from a subaltern position.
This connection is strengthened in the work of alternative media scholar Clemencia Rodriguez.
In her discussion of citizenship, Rodriguez comments that "Citizens
have to enact their citizenship on a day-to-day basis, through their
participation in everyday political practices...As citizens actively
participate in actions that reshape their own identities, the identities
of others, and their social environments, they produce power."
So it could be said that by subaltern groups creating alternative
media, they are indeed expressing their citizenship, producing their
power, and letting their voice be heard.
The alternative press consists of printed publications that provide a different or dissident viewpoint than that provided by major mainstream and corporate newspapers, magazines, and other print media.
Factsheet Five publisher Mike Gunderloy described the alternative press as "sort of the 'grown-up' underground press. Whole Earth, the Boston Phoenix, and Mother Jones are the sorts of things that fall in this classification."
In contrast, Gunderloy described the underground press as "the real
thing, before it gets slick, co-opted, and profitable. The underground
press comes out in small quantities, is often illegible, treads on the
thin ice of unmentionable subjects, and never carries ads for designer
jeans."
An example of alternative media is tactical media,
which uses 'hit-and-run' tactics to bring attention to an emerging
problem. Often tactical media attempts to expose large corporations that
control sources of mainstream media.
One prominent NGO dedicated to tactical media practices and info-activism is the Tactical Technology Collective
which assists human rights advocates in using technology. They have
released several toolkits freely to the global community, including NGO In A Box South Asia, which assists in the setting up the framework of a self-sustaining NGO, Security-In-A-Box,
a collection of software to keep data secure and safe for NGOs
operating in potentially hostile political climates, and their new short
form toolkit 10 Tactics, which "... provides original and artful ways for rights advocates to capture attention and communicate a cause".
Radio
Radio has been a significant form of alternative media due to its low cost, ease of use, and near ubiquity.
Alternative radio has arisen in response to capitalist and/or
state-sponsored mainstream radio broadcasts. For example, in early 1970s
Australia, a new alternative radio sector was created by those who felt
excluded from the two-sector national broadcasting system, consisting
of a national public service broadcaster and commercial services. In the US, the first listener-supported independent station, KPFA,
began in 1949 in order to provide an avenue for free speech
unconstrained by the commercial interests that characterized mainstream
radio.
Their content ranges broadly; while some stations' primary aims
are explicitly political and radical, others namely seek to broadcast
music that they believe to be excluded from mainstream radio. Alternative radio often, though not always, takes the form of community radio, which is generally understood as participatory, open, non-profit, and made by and for a community. These radio stations may broadcast legally or illegally, as pirate radio. Alternative radio is a global phenomenon. Examples of community and alternative radio endeavors include Tilos Rádió (Hungary), Missinipi Broadcasting Corporation (Canada), Pacifica Radio and the Prometheus Radio Project (both in the United States), and Radio Sagarmatha (Nepal).
Video and film
Alternative
film and video are generally produced outside of the mainstream film
and video industries and features content and/or style that is rarely
seen in mainstream product.
However, its particular genre, content, and form vary widely. It is
often produced in non-profit organizational contexts, such as video art
collectives (e.g. Videotage, Los Angeles Filmmakers' Cooperative) or
grassroots social justice organizations (e.g. Line Break, CINEP—Center
for Research and Popular Education). Participatory video projects in which marginalized or under-resourced
groups tell their stories through video demonstrate the possibility for
access and participation in video-making to empower those involved,
circulate representations unseen in mainstream media, and challenge
existing power relations.
Alternative film in the United States is evident in the work of
The Film & Photo League chapters of the 1930s, which drew attention
to union and class issues through social documentary film and the
editing of newsreels. Though initiated in the '60s and '70s, radical video making reached an apex in the '80s, as technology became more accessible. Public access television provided a broadcast outlet for oftentimes punk and hip-hop-influenced radical cultural critique.
Deep Dish TV, for instance, is a television network which seeks to
provide media access to grassroots organizations and to marginalized or
misrepresented perspectives through public access television.
Today, portable, accessible recording technology and the internet allow
increasing opportunities for global participation in the production,
consumption, and exchange of alternative video content.
Internet
With
the increasing importance attributed to digital technologies, questions
have arisen about where digital media fit in the dichotomy between
alternative and mainstream media. First, blogs, Facebook, Twitter
and other similar sites, while not necessarily created to be
information media, increasingly are being used to spread news and
information, potentially acting as alternative media as they allow
ordinary citizens to bypass the gatekeepers of traditional, mainstream
media and share the information and perspectives these citizens deem
important.
Second, the Internet provides an alternative space for
mobilization through the cultivation of interpersonal networks,
collective action towards social change, and making information much
readily accessible. Typically, among those with deviant, dissident or
non-traditional views, Internet platforms allow for the creation of new,
alternative communities that can provide a voice for those normally
marginalized by the mainstream media.
In addition, the Internet has also led to an alternative form of
programming, which allows both professionals and amateurs to subvert or
evade commercial and political restraints on open access to information and information technologies. Some examples of alternative computing are hacking, open source software or systems, and file sharing.
Lastly, the Internet also breeds a new way of creation and
dissemination of knowledge —commons knowledge— that is different from
the top-down manner. It seeks out and encourages the participation of
multiple users, fostering forms of collaborative knowledge production
and folksonomies. Wikipedia is an excellent example of this genre.
Street art
Often considered guerilla-art, street art operates free from the confines of the formal art world. In the form of graffiti,
stencil, mural, and print, street art appropriates or alters public
spaces as a means of protest and social commentary. Important aspects of
street art as an alternative form are its blend of aesthetics and
social engagement, use of urban spaces, and interaction with the social
landscape of the area in which the art is made.
The street art movement gained popularity in the 1980s as a form
of art distinct from high art and commercial venues, but as popularity
grew, some street artists moved from the alternative venues of the
streets to gallery and museum showings.
Cities such as Paris, Buenos Aires, and São Paulo rose to prominence
in using street art as legitimate alternative media through artist
collectives and competitions, bringing attention to alternative voices.
The internet has also influenced street art greatly by functioning as a
platform for artists and fans to share pictures of street art from
around the world. Websites like Streetsy.com and WoosterCollective.com
are among the most popular of street art sharing sites.
Performance
Performance as an alternative medium uses theater, song, and performance art as a means of engaging audiences and furthering social agendas. Performance art is an avant garde
art form that typically uses live performances to challenge traditional
forms of visual art. It operates as "the antithesis of theatre,
challenging orthodox art forms and cultural norms." Playing an important role in social and cultural movements from Dada and Surrealism to Post-Minimalism, performance art reflects the political environment of the time. While performance art is often relegated to high art, street theater is typically used in a grassroots fashion, utilizing local communities for performance or conversation. It can be used as a form of guerilla theater to protest, like in the case of The Living Theatre which is dedicated to transforming the hierarchy of power in society through experimental theater.
Music
Certain genres of music and musical performance can be categorized as alternative media. Independent music, or indie music,
is music that is produced separate from commercial record labels.
Professor David Hesmondhalgh describes indie music's alternative nature
as a "hard-headed network of post-punk companies which made significant
challenges to the commercial organization of cultural production
favoured by the major record companies."
Its subversive roots of sound or lyrics and alternative models of
distribution distinguish it from the commercial record companies.
Primarily concerned with the growing role of new media in
alternative media projects, communication scholar Leah Lievrouw
identifies five genres of contemporary new media based alternative and
activist media: culture jamming, alternative computing, participatory
journalism, mediated mobilization, and commons knowledge.
Culture jamming generally attempts to critique popular cultures such as entertainment, advertising, and art. It tends to comment on issues of corporate capitalism
and consumerism and seeks to provide political commentary.
Characteristics of culture jamming texts include the appropriation or
repurposing of images, video, sound, or text and that they are ironic or
satirical in some sense. Today, culture jamming can come in the form of internet memes and guerrilla marketing.
Alternative computing deals with the material infrastructure of
informational and communications technologies. It seeks to critique and
reconfigure systems with the intention of subverting or evading
commercial and political restraints on open access to information and
information technologies. Some examples of alternative computing are hacking, open source software or systems, and file sharing.
Participatory journalism refers to web-based sources of critical or
radical news either in the form of online news services or blogs. These
alternative outlets of news often adopt the philosophies of citizen journalism and view themselves as providing an alternative to mainstream news and opinion.
Participatory journalism projects may cover underreported groups and
issues. Within this genre authors and readers of some of these
alternative media projects have the ability contribute alike and
therefore has the characteristic of being participatory or interactive.
An example of participatory journalism is Indymedia and wearecgange.org
Mobilization media relate to communication practices that
mobilization or organization social movements, identity, or cultural
projects through the use of new media tools and platforms such as Facebook or YouTube.
Characteristics of this genre include the cultivation of interpersonal
networks, collective action towards social change, and making
information much readily accessible.
Commons knowledge as a genre refers to projects that provide
alternatives to the traditional top-down creation and dissemination of
knowledge. It seeks out and encourages the participation of multiple
users, fostering forms of collaborative knowledge production and folksonomies. Wikipedia is an excellent example of this genre.
Thinking of current forms of alternative media in terms of the genre
not only allows one to identify the features and conventions of certain
modes of communication, but also how "they allow people to express
themselves appropriately, and to achieve their various purposes or
intentions."
In other words, one can begin to understand how the creators and
participants of alternative new media projects actively shape their
communication practices.
YouTube is considered to be not only a commercial enterprise but
also a platform designed to encourage cultural participation by ordinary
citizens. Although YouTube aimed to be foremost a commercial
enterprise, nevertheless, it has become a community media as one of the
forms of alternative media. Scholars assume that YouTube's commercial
drive may have increased the probability of participation in online
video culture for a broader spectrum of participants than before. This
idea allows one to shift our concern away from the false contradiction
between market-driven and non-market-driven culture towards the tensions
between corporate logics and unruly and emergent traits of
participatory culture, and the limits of YouTube model for
cross-cultural diversity and global communication. In theory, YouTube
stands as a site of cosmopolitan cultural citizenship.
Uploading foreign soap opera episodes and dividing into several pieces
to pass YouTube's content limits, can be seen as acts of cultural
citizenship similar to the media sharing practices of diverse
communities identified by Cunningham and Nguyen (2000).
However, people who have the highest chance of encountering other
cultural citizens are those who have the access to various contents,
information and platforms; this is commonly referred to as the
'participation gap.' The notion of participation gap makes both digital
literacy and digital divide such important issues for cultural politics.
Therefore, it is still controversial whether YouTube is just another
conduit for strengthening cultural imperialism or one of the alternative media.
Aesthetics
In association with experimental and innovative modes of production and collaboration, aesthetics in alternative media can be a political tool used to subvert dominant power. Like many makers of alternative media, scholar Crispin Sartwell identifies politics as an aesthetic environment.
As such, these art political systems not only use aesthetics as a tool
to gain power but are also produced via aesthetic forms within all
media. Thus, it is not uncommon for alternative media to seek new
artistic, non-traditional, or avant-garde means to represent its
content. In this case, the use of aesthetics allows alternative media to
address otherwise banal content in a manner which re-aligns,
re-negotiates, or exposes the politics at work within it.
Form
Scholars have linked the Avant-garde art movements as one arena where alternative aesthetics are used as a political tool. Movements such as Futurism, Dada, and Situationism
looked to challenge the formal rules regarding what art was, how it
looked or sounded like, or where it could be in order to radically alter
public and political ideology. The logic, reason, and rules of style
and beauty, mandated by the dominant class, was rejected as an
affirmation of subjugation.
Appropriation
While
some alternative makers look to radically break away from the
suffocating restraints of the dominant class by rejecting their dominant
visual dogma, others appropriate, twist, and remix in order to subvert
dominant language and messaging through mimicry, mockery, and satire.
The détournement (and its successor culture-jamming) of the Situationists, the mimicry of Pop Art, and the reworking of normative narratives in slash fiction are examples of appropriation of mainstream media texts.
Participation
Avant-garde movements that have emphasized audience participation include Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Situationism, Pop art, Neo-concretism, and the Theatre of the Oppressed.
By inviting the audience to participate in the creation of media,
collaborators look to subvert or critique hierarchical structures (capitalism, the ivory tower)
within society by embracing democratic modes of production. Strategies
that involve the input or collaboration of all stakeholders often result
in less formally 'correct' aesthetics.
Today, psychology is defined as "the scientific study of
behavior and mental processes." Philosophical interest in the human mind
and behavior dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Persia, Greece, China, and India.
Psychology as a field of experimental study began in 1854 in Leipzig, Germany when Gustav Fechner
created the first theory of how judgments about sensory experiences are
made and how to experiment on them. Fechner's theory, recognized today
as Signal Detection Theory foreshadowed the development of statistical
theories of comparative judgment and thousands of experiments based on
his ideas (Link, S. W. Psychological Science, 1995). Later, 1879, Wilhelm Wundt
founded in Leipzig, Germany, the first Psychological laboratory
dedicated exclusively to psychological research. Wundt was also the
first person to refer to himself as a psychologist. A notable precursor of Wundt was Ferdinand Ueberwasser (1752-1812) who designated himself Professor of Empirical Psychology and Logic in 1783 and gave lectures on empirical psychology at the Old University of Münster, Germany. Other important early contributors to the field include Hermann Ebbinghaus (a pioneer in the study of memory), William James (the American father of pragmatism), and Ivan Pavlov (who developed the procedures associated with classical conditioning).
Soon after the development of experimental psychology, various kinds of applied psychology appeared. G. Stanley Hall brought scientific pedagogy to the United States from Germany in the early 1880s. John Dewey's educational theory of the 1890s was another example. Also in the 1890s, Hugo Münsterberg began writing about the application of psychology to industry, law, and other fields. Lightner Witmer established the first psychological clinic in the 1890s. James McKeen Cattell adapted Francis Galton's anthropometric methods to generate the first program of mental testing in the 1890s. In Vienna, meanwhile, Sigmund Freud developed an independent approach to the study of the mind called psychoanalysis, which has been widely influential.
The 20th century saw a reaction to Edward Titchener's critique of Wundt's empiricism. This contributed to the formulation of behaviorism by John B. Watson, which was popularized by B. F. Skinner.
Behaviorism proposed emphasizing the study of overt behavior, because
that could be quantified and easily measured. Early behaviorists
considered the study of the "mind"
too vague for productive scientific study. However, Skinner and his
colleagues did study thinking as a form of covert behavior to which they
could apply the same principles as overt (publicly observable)
behavior.
The final decades of the 20th century saw the rise of cognitive science,
an interdisciplinary approach to studying the human mind. Cognitive
science again considers the "mind" as a subject for investigation, using
the tools of cognitive psychology, linguistics, computer science, philosophy, behaviorism, and neurobiology.
This form of investigation has proposed that a wide understanding of
the human mind is possible, and that such an understanding may be
applied to other research domains, such as artificial intelligence.
Many cultures throughout history have speculated on the nature of the
mind, heart, soul, spirit, brain, etc. For instance, in Ancient Egypt,
the Edwin Smith Papyrus
contains an early description of the brain, and some speculations on
its functions (described in a medical/surgical context) and the
descriptions could be related to Imhotep who were the first Egyptian physician who anatomized and discovered the body of the human being.
Though other medical documents of ancient times were full of
incantations and applications meant to turn away disease-causing demons
and other superstition, the Edwin Smith Papyrus gives remedies to almost
50 conditions and only two contain incantations to ward off evil.
Ancient Greek philosophers, from Thales (fl. 550 BC) through even to the Roman period, developed an elaborate theory of what they termed the psuchẽ (psyche) (from which the first half of "psychology" is derived), as well as other "psychological" terms – nous, thumos, logistikon, etc. The most influential of these are the accounts of Plato (especially in the Republic), Pythagoras and of Aristotle (esp. Peri Psyches, better known under its Latin title, De Anima). Plato's tripartite theory of the soul, Chariot Allegory and concepts such as eros defined the subsequent Western Philosophy views of the psyche and anticipated modern psychological proposals, such as Freud's id, ego and super-ego and libido;
to the point that "in 1920, Freud decided to present Plato as the
precursor of his own theory, as part of a strategy directed to define
the scientific and cultural collocation of psychoanalysis". Hellenistic philosophers (viz., the Stoics and Epicurians)
diverged from the Classical Greek tradition in several important ways,
especially in their concern with questions of the physiological basis of
the mind. The Roman physician Galen
addressed these issues most elaborately and influentially of all. The
Greek tradition influenced some Christian and Islamic thought on the
topic.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Manual of Discipline (from the Dead Sea Scrolls,
ca. 21 BC–61 AD) notes the division of human nature into two
temperaments or opposing spirits of either veracity or perversity
Walter M Freeman proposes that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal Mind and Matter entitled "Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas."
In Asia, China had a long history of administering tests of ability as part of its education system. In the 6th century AD, Lin Xie
carried out an early experiment, in which he asked people to draw a
square with one hand and at the same time draw a circle with the other
(ostensibly to test people's vulnerability to distraction). It has been
cited that this is the first psychology experiment, and, therefore, the
beginnings of psychology as an experimental science.
India had a theory of "the self" in its Vedanta
philosophical writings. Additionally, Indians thought about the
individual's self as being enclosed by different levels known as koshas.
Additionally, the Sankya philosophy said that the mind has 5
components, including manas (lower mind), ahankara (sense of I-ness),
chitta (memory bank of mind), buddhi (intellect), and atman (self/soul). Buddhist philosophies have developed several psychological theories (see Buddhism and psychology), formulating interpretations of the mind and concepts such as aggregates (skandhas), emptiness (sunyata), non-self (anatta), mindfulness and Buddha-nature, which are addressed today by theorists of humanistic and transpersonal psychology. Several Buddhist lineages have developed notions analogous to those of modern Western psychology, such as the unconscious, personal development and character improvement, the latter being part of the Noble Eightfold Path and expressed, for example, in the Tathagatagarbha Sutra. Hinayana traditions, such as the Theravada, focus more on individual meditation, while Mahayana traditions also emphasize the attainment of a Buddha nature of wisdom (prajña) and compassion (karuṇā) in the realization of the boddhisattva ideal, but affirming it more metaphysically, in which charity and helping sentient beings is cosmically fundamental. Buddhist monk and scholar D. T. Suzuki describes the importance of the individual's inner enlightenment and the self-realization of the mind. Researcher David Germano, in his thesis on Longchenpa, also shows the importance of self-actualization in the dzogchen teaching lineage.
Ahmed ibn Sahl al-Balkhi
(850–934) was among the first, in this tradition, to discuss disorders
related to both the body and the mind, arguing that "if the nafs [psyche] gets sick, the body may also find no joy in life and may eventually develop a physical illness." Al-Balkhi recognized that the body and the soul can be healthy or sick, or "balanced or imbalanced". He wrote that imbalance of the body can result in fever, headaches and other bodily illnesses, while imbalance of the soul can result in anger, anxiety, sadness and other nafs-related symptoms. He recognized two types of what we now call depression: one caused by known reasons such as loss or failure,
which can be treated psychologically; and the other caused by unknown
reasons possibly caused by physiological reasons, which can be treated
through physical medicine.
Witelo is considered a precursor of perception psychology. His Perspectiva contains much material in psychology, outlining views that are close to modern notions on the association of idea and on the subconscious.
Further development
Many of the Ancients' writings would have been lost without the efforts of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish translators in the House of Wisdom, the House of Knowledge, and other such institutions in the Islamic Golden Age, whose glosses and commentaries were later translated into Latin in the 12th century. However, it is not clear how these sources first came to be used during the Renaissance, and their influence on what would later emerge as the discipline of psychology is a topic of scholarly debate.
Etymology and the early usage of the word
The first print use of the term "psychology", that is, Greek-inspired neo-Latin psychologia, is dated to multiple works dated 1525. Etymology has long been attributed to the Germanscholasticphilosopher Rudolf Göckel (1547–1628, often known under the Latin form Rodolphus Goclenius), who published the Psychologia hoc est: de hominis perfectione, animo et imprimis ortu hujus... in Marburg in 1590. Croatian humanist Marko Marulić (1450–1524) likely used the term in the title of a Latin treatise entitled Psichiologia de ratione animae humanae
(c.1520?). Although the treatise itself has not been preserved, its
title appears in a list of Marulic's works compiled by his younger
contemporary, Franjo Bozicevic-Natalis in his "Vita Marci Maruli
Spalatensis" (Krstić, 1964).
The term did not come into popular usage until the German Rationalist philosopher, Christian Wolff (1679–1754) used it in his works Psychologia empirica (1732) and Psychologia rationalis (1734). This distinction between empirical and rational psychology was picked up in Denis Diderot's (1713–1780) and Jean le Rond d'Alembert's (1717–1783) Encyclopédie (1751–1784) and was popularized in France by Maine de Biran
(1766–1824). In England, the term "psychology" overtook "mental
philosophy" in the middle of the 19th century, especially in the work of
William Hamilton (1788–1856).
Enlightenment psychological thought
Early psychology was regarded as the study of the soul (in the Christian sense of the term). The modern philosophical form of psychology was heavily influenced by the works of René Descartes (1596–1650), and the debates that he generated, of which the most relevant were the objections to his Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), published with the text. Also important to the later development of psychology were his Passions of the Soul (1649) and Treatise on Man (completed in 1632 but, along with the rest of The World, withheld from publication after Descartes heard of the Catholic Church's condemnation of Galileo; it was eventually published posthumously, in 1664).
Although not educated as a physician, Descartes did extensive anatomical studies of bulls' hearts and was considered important enough that William Harvey
responded to him. Descartes was one of the first to endorse Harvey's
model of the circulation of the blood, but disagreed with his
metaphysical framework to explain it. Descartes dissected animals and
human cadavers and as a result was familiar with the research on the
flow of blood leading to the conclusion that the body is a complex
device that is capable of moving without the soul, thus contradicting
the "Doctrine of the Soul". The emergence of psychology as a medical
discipline was given a major boost by Thomas Willis,
not only in his reference to psychology (the "Doctrine of the Soul") in
terms of brain function, but through his detailed 1672 anatomical work,
and his treatise De anima brutorum quae hominis vitalis ac sentitiva est: exercitationes duae
("Two Discourses on the Souls of Brutes"—meaning "beasts"). However,
Willis acknowledged the influence of Descartes's rival, Pierre Gassendi,
as an inspiration for his work.
German idealism pioneered the proposition of the unconscious, which Jung considered to have been described psychologically for the first time by physician and philosopher Carl Gustav Carus. Also notable was its use by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1835), and by Eduard von Hartmann in Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869); psychologist Hans Eysenck writes in Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1985) that Hartmann's version of the unconscious is very similar to Freud's.
Also influential on the emerging discipline of psychology were debates surrounding the efficacy of Mesmerism (a precursor to hypnosis) and the value of phrenology. The former was developed in the 1770s by Austrian physician Franz Mesmer
(1734–1815) who claimed to use the power of gravity, and later of
"animal magnetism", to cure various physical and mental ills. As Mesmer
and his treatment became increasingly fashionable in both Vienna and
Paris, it also began to come under the scrutiny of suspicious officials.
In 1784, an investigation was commissioned in Paris by King Louis XVI which included American ambassador Benjamin Franklin, chemist Antoine Lavoisier and physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin (later the popularizer of the guillotine). They concluded that Mesmer's method was useless. Abbé Faria,
an Indo-Portuguese priest, revived public attention in animal
magnetism. Unlike Mesmer, Faria claimed that the effect was 'generated
from within the mind’ by the power of expectancy and cooperation of the
patient.
Although disputed, the "magnetic" tradition continued among Mesmer's
students and others, resurfacing in England in the 19th century in the
work of the physician John Elliotson (1791–1868), and the surgeons James Esdaile (1808–1859), and James Braid
(1795–1860) (who reconceptualized it as property of the subject's mind
rather than a "power" of the Mesmerist's, and relabeled it "hypnotism").
Mesmerism also continued to have a strong social (if not medical)
following in England through the 19th century (see Winter, 1998).
Faria's approach was significantly extended by the clinical and
theoretical work of Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault and Hippolyte Bernheim of the Nancy School.
Faria's theoretical position, and the subsequent experiences of those
in the Nancy School made significant contributions to the later
autosuggestion techniques of Émile Coué. It was adopted for the treatment of hysteria by the director of Paris's Salpêtrière Hospital, Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893).
Phrenology began as "organology", a theory of brain structure developed by the German physician, Franz Joseph Gall
(1758–1828). Gall argued that the brain is divided into a large number
of functional "organs", each responsible for particular human mental
abilities and dispositions – hope, love, spirituality, greed, language,
the abilities to detect the size, form, and color of objects, etc. He
argued that the larger each of these organs are, the greater the power
of the corresponding mental trait. Further, he argued that one could
detect the sizes of the organs in a given individual by feeling the
surface of that person's skull. Gall's ultra-localizationist position
with respect to the brain was soon attacked, most notably by French
anatomist Pierre Flourens
(1794–1867), who conducted ablation studies (on chickens) which
purported to demonstrate little or no cerebral localization of function.
Although Gall had been a serious (if misguided) researcher, his theory
was taken by his assistant, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776–1832), and developed into the profitable, popular enterprise of phrenology,
which soon spawned, especially in Britain, a thriving industry of
independent practitioners. In the hands of Scottish religious leader George Combe (1788–1858) (whose book The Constitution of Man
was one of the best-sellers of the century), phrenology became strongly
associated with political reform movements and egalitarian principles
(see, e.g., Shapin, 1975; but also see van Wyhe, 2004). Phrenology soon
spread to America as well, where itinerant practical phrenologists
assessed the mental well-being of willing customers (see Sokal, 2001).
The development of modern psychology was closely linked to psychiatry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see History of psychiatry),
when the treatment of the mentally ill in hospices was revolutionized
after Europeans first considered their pathological conditions. In fact,
there was no distinction between the two areas in psychotherapeutic
practice, in an era when there was still no drug treatment (of the
so-called psychopharmacologicy revolution
from 1950) for mental disorders, and its early theorists and pioneering
clinical psychologists generally had medical background. The first to
implement in the Western a humanitarian and scientific treatment of mental health, based on Enlightenment ideas, were the French alienists, who developed the empirical observation of psychopathology,
describing the clinical conditions, their physiological relationships
and classifying them. It was called the rationalist-empirical school,
which most known exponents were Pinel, Esquirol, Falret, Morel and Magnan.
In the late nineteenth century, the French current was gradually
overcome by the German field of study. At first, the German school was
influenced by romantic ideals and gave rise to a line of mental process speculators, based more on empathy than reason. They became known as Psychiker, mentalists or psychologists, with different currents being highlighted by Reil (creator of the word "psychiatry"), Heinroth (first to use the term "psychosomatic") Ideler and Carus. In the middle of the century, a "somatic reaction" (somatiker) formed against the speculative doctrines of mentalism, and it was based on neuroanatomy and neuropathology. In it, those who made important contributions to the psychopathological classification were Griesinger, Westphal, Krafft-Ebbing and Kahlbaum, which, in their turn, would influence Wernicke and Meynert. Kraepelin revolutionized as the first to define the diagnostic aspects of mental disorders in syndromes, and the work of psychological classification was followed to the contemporary field by contributions from Schneider, Kretschmer, Leonhard, and Jaspers. In Great Britain, there stand out in the nineteenth century Alexander Bain founder of the first journal of psychology, Mind, and writer of reference books on the subject at the time, such as Mental Science: The Compendium of Psychology, and the History of Philosophy (1868), and Henry Maudsley. In Switzerland, Bleuler coined the terms "depth psychology", "schizophrenia", "schizoid" and "autism". In the United States, the Swiss psychiatrist Adolf Meyer maintained that the patient should be regarded as an integrated "psychobiological" whole, emphasizing psychosocial factors, concepts that propitiated the so-called psychosomatic medicine.
Emergence of German experimental psychology
Until the middle of the 19th century, psychology was widely regarded as a branch of philosophy. Whether it could become an independent scientific discipline was questioned already earlier on: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) declared in his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science
(1786) that psychology might perhaps never become a "proper" natural
science because its phenomena cannot be quantified, among other reasons.
Kant proposed an alternative conception of an empirical investigation
of human thought, feeling, desire, and action, and lectured on these
topics for over twenty years (1772/73-1795/96). His Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798), which resulted from these lectures, looks like an empirical psychology in many respects.
Johann Friedrich Herbart
(1776–1841) took issue with what he viewed as Kant's conclusion and
attempted to develop a mathematical basis for a scientific psychology.
Although he was unable to empirically realize the terms of his
psychological theory, his efforts did lead scientists such as Ernst Heinrich Weber (1795–1878) and Gustav Theodor Fechner
(1801–1887) to attempt to measure the mathematical relationships
between the physical magnitudes of external stimuli and the
psychological intensities of the resulting sensations. Fechner (1860) is
the originator of the term psychophysics.
Meanwhile, individual differences in reaction time had become a
critical issue in the field of astronomy, under the name of the "personal equation". Early researches by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (1784–1846) in Königsberg and Adolf Hirsch led to the development of a highly precise chronoscope by Matthäus Hipp that, in turn, was based on a design by Charles Wheatstone
for a device that measured the speed of artillery shells (Edgell &
Symes, 1906). Other timing instruments were borrowed from physiology
(e.g., Carl Ludwig's kymograph) and adapted for use by the Utrecht ophthalmologist Franciscus Donders (1818–1899) and his student Johan Jacob de Jaager in measuring the duration of simple mental decisions.
The 19th century was also the period in which physiology,
including neurophysiology, professionalized and saw some of its most
significant discoveries. Among its leaders were Charles Bell (1774–1843) and François Magendie (1783–1855) who independently discovered the distinction between sensory and motor nerves in the spinal column, Johannes Müller (1801–1855) who proposed the doctrine of specific nerve energies, Emil du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896) who studied the electrical basis of muscle contraction, Pierre Paul Broca (1824–1880) and Carl Wernicke (1848–1905) who identified areas of the brain responsible for different aspects of language, as well as Gustav Fritsch (1837–1927), Eduard Hitzig (1839–1907), and David Ferrier (1843–1924) who localized sensory and motor areas of the brain. One of the principal founders of experimental physiology, Hermann Helmholtz
(1821–1894), conducted studies of a wide range of topics that would
later be of interest to psychologists – the speed of neural
transmission, the natures of sound and color, and of our perceptions of
them, etc. In the 1860s, while he held a position in Heidelberg, Helmholtz engaged as an assistant a young M.D. named Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt employed the equipment of the physiology laboratory – chronoscope, kymograph,
and various peripheral devices – to address more complicated
psychological questions than had, until then, been investigated
experimentally. In particular he was interested in the nature of apperception – the point at which a perception occupies the central focus of conscious awareness.
In 1864 Wundt took up a professorship in Zürich, where he published his landmark textbook, Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie (Principles of Physiological Psychology, 1874). Moving to a more prestigious professorship in Leipzig
in 1875, Wundt founded a laboratory specifically dedicated to original
research in experimental psychology in 1879, the first laboratory of its
kind in the world. In 1883, he launched a journal in which to publish
the results of his, and his students', research, Philosophische Studien (Philosophical Studies)
(For more on Wundt, see, e.g., Bringmann & Tweney, 1980; Rieber
& Robinson, 2001). Wundt attracted a large number of students not
only from Germany, but also from abroad. Among his most influential
American students were G. Stanley Hall (who had already obtained a PhD from Harvard under the supervision of William James), James McKeen Cattell (who was Wundt's first assistant), and Frank Angell (who founded laboratories at both Cornell and Stanford). The most influential British student was Edward Bradford Titchener (who later became professor at Cornell).
Experimental psychology laboratories were soon also established at Berlin by Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) and at Göttingen by Georg Elias Müller
(1850–1934). Another major German experimental psychologist of the era,
though he did not direct his own research institute, was Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909).
Experimentation was not the only approach to psychology in the
German-speaking world at this time. Starting in the 1890s, employing the
case study technique, the Viennese physician Sigmund Freud developed and applied the methods of hypnosis, free association, and dream interpretation to reveal putatively unconscious beliefs and desires that he argued were the underlying causes of his patients' "hysteria." He dubbed this approach psychoanalysis.
Freudian psychoanalysis is particularly notable for the emphasis it
places on the course of an individual's sexual development in pathogenesis.
Psychoanalytic concepts have had a strong and lasting influence on
Western culture, particularly on the arts. Although its scientific
contribution is still a matter of debate, both Freudian and Jungian
psychology revealed the existence of compartmentalized thinking, in
which some behavior and thoughts are hidden from consciousness – yet
operative as part of the complete personality. Hidden agendas, a bad
conscience, or a sense of guilt, are examples of the existence of mental
processes in which the individual is not conscious, through choice or
lack of understanding, of some aspects of their personality and
subsequent behavior.
Psychoanalysis examines mental processes which affect the ego. An
understanding of these theoretically allows the individual greater
choice and consciousness with a healing effect in neurosis and
occasionally in psychosis, both of which Richard von Krafft-Ebing defined as "diseases of the personality".
Jung
was an associate of Freud's who later broke with him over Freud's
emphasis on sexuality. Working with concepts of the unconscious first
noted during the 1800s (by John Stuart Mill, Krafft-Ebing, Pierre Janet, Théodore Flournoy and others), Jung defined four mental functions which relate to and define the ego, the conscious self:
Sensation, which tell consciousness that something is there.
Feelings, which consist of value judgments, and motivate our reaction to what we have sensed.
Intellect, an analytic function that compares the sensed event to
all known others and gives it a class and category, allowing us to
understand a situation within a historical process, personal or public.
And intuition, a mental function with access to deep behavioral
patterns, being able to suggest unexpected solutions or predict
unforeseen consequences, "as if seeing around corners" as Jung put it.
Jung insisted on an empirical psychology on which theories must be
based on facts and not on the psychologist's projections or
expectations.
Early American
Around 1875 the Harvard physiology instructor (as he then was), William James, opened a small experimental psychology demonstration laboratory for use with his courses. The laboratory
was never used, at that time, for original research, and so controversy
remains as to whether it is to be regarded as the "first" experimental
psychology laboratory or not. In 1878, James gave a series of lectures
at Johns Hopkins University entitled "The Senses and the Brain and their Relation to Thought" in which he argued, contraThomas Henry Huxley, that consciousness is not epiphenomenal,
but must have an evolutionary function, or it would not have been
naturally selected in humans. The same year James was contracted by Henry Holt
to write a textbook on the "new" experimental psychology. If he had
written it quickly, it would have been the first English-language
textbook on the topic. It was twelve years, however, before his
two-volume The Principles of Psychology would be published. In the meantime textbooks were published by George Trumbull Ladd of Yale (1887) and James Mark Baldwin then of Lake Forest College (1889).
William James was one of the founders of the American Society for Psychical Research in 1885, which studied psychic phenomena (parapsychology), before the creation of the American Psychological Association in 1892. James was also president of the British society that inspired the United States' one, the Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1882, which investigated psychology and the paranormal on topics such as mediumship, dissociation, telepathy and hypnosis,
and it innovated research in psychology, by which, according to science
historian Andreas Sommer, were "devised methodological innovations such
as randomized study designs" and conducted "the first experiments
investigating the psychology of eyewitness testimony (Hodgson and Davey,
1887), [and] empirical and conceptual studies illuminating mechanisms
of dissociation and hypnotism"; Its members also initiated and organised
the International Congresses of Physiological/Experimental psychology.
In 1879 Charles Sanders Peirce was hired as a philosophy instructor at Johns Hopkins University.
Although better known for his astronomical and philosophical work,
Peirce also conducted what are perhaps the first American psychology
experiments, on the subject of color vision, published in 1877 in the American Journal of Science (see Cadwallader, 1974). Peirce and his student Joseph Jastrow published "On Small Differences in Sensation" in the Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, in 1884. In 1882, Peirce was joined at Johns Hopkins by G. Stanley Hall,
who opened the first American research laboratory devoted to
experimental psychology in 1883. Peirce was forced out of his position
by scandal and Hall was awarded the only professorship in philosophy at
Johns Hopkins. In 1887 Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology,
which published work primarily emanating from his own laboratory. In
1888 Hall left his Johns Hopkins professorship for the presidency of the
newly founded Clark University, where he remained for the rest of his career.
In 1890, William James' The Principles of Psychology
finally appeared, and rapidly became the most influential textbook in
the history of American psychology. It laid many of the foundations for
the sorts of questions that American psychologists would focus on for
years to come. The book's chapters on consciousness, emotion, and habit
were particularly agenda-setting.
One of those who felt the impact of James' Principles was John Dewey, then professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan. With his junior colleagues, James Hayden Tufts (who founded the psychology laboratory at Michigan) and George Herbert Mead, and his student James Rowland Angell, this group began to reformulate psychology, focusing more strongly on the social environment and on the activity
of mind and behavior than the psychophysics-inspired physiological
psychology of Wundt and his followers had heretofore. Tufts left
Michigan for another junior position at the newly founded University of Chicago in 1892. A year later, the senior philosopher at Chicago, Charles Strong, resigned, and Tufts recommended to Chicago president William Rainey Harper
that Dewey be offered the position. After initial reluctance, Dewey was
hired in 1894. Dewey soon filled out the department with his Michigan
companions Mead and Angell. These four formed the core of the Chicago
School of psychology.
In 1892, G. Stanley Hall invited 30-some psychologists and philosophers to a meeting at Clark with the purpose of founding a new American Psychological Association
(APA). (On the history of the APA, see Evans, Staudt Sexton, &
Cadwallader, 1992.) The first annual meeting of the APA was held later
that year, hosted by George Stuart Fullerton at the University of Pennsylvania. Almost immediately tension arose between the experimentally and philosophically inclined members of the APA. Edward Bradford Titchener and Lightner Witmer
launched an attempt to either establish a separate "Section" for
philosophical presentations, or to eject the philosophers altogether.
After nearly a decade of debate, a Western Philosophical Association was
founded and held its first meeting in 1901 at the University of Nebraska. The following year (1902), an American Philosophical Association held its first meeting at Columbia University. These ultimately became the Central and Eastern Divisions of the modern American Philosophical Association.
In 1894, a number of psychologists, unhappy with the parochial editorial policies of the American Journal of Psychology
approached Hall about appointing an editorial board and opening the
journal out to more psychologists not within Hall's immediate circle.
Hall refused, so James McKeen Cattell (then of Columbia) and James Mark Baldwin (then of Princeton) co-founded a new journal, Psychological Review, which rapidly grew to become a major outlet for American psychological researchers.
Beginning in 1895, James Mark Baldwin (Princeton, Hopkins) and Edward Bradford Titchener (Cornell)
entered into an increasingly acrimonious dispute over the correct
interpretation of some anomalous reaction time findings that had come
from the Wundt laboratory (originally reported by Ludwig Lange and James McKeen Cattell). In 1896, James Rowland Angell and Addison W. Moore (Chicago) published a series of experiments in Psychological Review appearing to show that Baldwin was the more correct of the two. However, they interpreted their findings in light of John Dewey's
new approach to psychology, which rejected the traditional
stimulus-response understanding of the reflex arc in favor of a
"circular" account in which what serves as "stimulus" and what as
"response" depends on how one views the situation. The full position was
laid out in Dewey's landmark article "The Reflex Arc Concept in
Psychology" which also appeared in Psychological Review in 1896.
Titchener responded in Philosophical Review
(1898, 1899) by distinguishing his austere "structural" approach to
psychology from what he termed the Chicago group's more applied
"functional" approach, and thus began the first major theoretical rift
in American psychology between Structuralism and Functionalism. The group at Columbia, led by James McKeen Cattell, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S. Woodworth,
was often regarded as a second (after Chicago) "school" of American
Functionalism (see, e.g., Heidbredder, 1933), although they never used
that term themselves, because their research focused on the applied
areas of mental testing, learning, and education. Dewey was elected
president of the APA in 1899, while Titchener dropped his membership in
the association. (In 1904, Titchener formed his own group, eventually
known as the Society of Experimental Psychologists.) Jastrow
promoted the functionalist approach in his APA presidential address of
1900, and Angell adopted Titchener's label explicitly in his influential
textbook of 1904 and his APA presidential address of 1906. In reality,
Structuralism was, more or less, confined to Titchener and his students. (It was Titchener's former student E. G. Boring, writing A History of Experimental Psychology
[1929–1950, the most influential textbook of the 20th century about the
discipline], who launched the common idea that the
structuralism/functionalism debate was the primary fault line in
American psychology at the turn of the 20th century.) Functionalism,
broadly speaking, with its more practical emphasis on action and
application, better suited the American cultural "style" and, perhaps
more important, was more appealing to pragmatic university trustees and
private funding agencies.[citation needed]
Early French
Jules Baillarger founded the Société Médico-Psychologique in 1847, one of the first associations of its kind and which published the Annales Medico-Psychologiques. France already had a pioneering tradition in psychological study, and it was relevant the publication of Précis d'un cours de psychologie ("Summary of a Psychology Course") in 1831 by Adolphe Garnier, who also published theTraité des facultés de l'âme, comprenant l'histoire des principales théories psychologiques ("Treatise of the Faculties of the Soul, comprising the history of major psychological theories") in 1852. Garnier was called "the best monument of psychological science of our time" by Revue des Deux Mondes in 1864.
In no small measure because of the conservatism of the reign of Louis Napoléon
(president, 1848–1852; emperor as "Napoléon III", 1852–1870), academic
philosophy in France through the middle part of the 19th century was
controlled by members of the eclectic and spiritualist schools, led by
figures such as Victor Cousin (1792–1867), Thédodore Jouffroy (1796–1842), and Paul Janet
(1823–1899). These were traditional metaphysical schools, opposed to
regarding psychology as a natural science. With the ouster of Napoléon
III after the débacle of the Franco-Prussian War, new paths, both political and intellectual, became possible. From the 1870 forward, a steadily increasing interest in positivist, materialist, evolutionary, and deterministic approaches to psychology developed, influenced by, among others, the work of Hyppolyte Taine (1828–1893) (e.g., De L'Intelligence, 1870) and Théodule Ribot (1839–1916) (e.g., La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine, 1870).
In 1876, Ribot founded Revue Philosophique (the same year as Mind
was founded in Britain), which for the next generation would be
virtually the only French outlet for the "new" psychology (Plas, 1997).
Although not a working experimentalist himself, Ribot's many books were
to have profound influence on the next generation of psychologists.
These included especially his L'Hérédité Psychologique (1873) and La Psychologie Allemande Contemporaine
(1879). In the 1880s, Ribot's interests turned to psychopathology,
writing books on disorders of memory (1881), will (1883), and
personality (1885), and where he attempted to bring to these topics the
insights of general psychology. Although in 1881 he lost a Sorbonne
professorship in the History of Psychological Doctrines to
traditionalist Jules Soury (1842–1915), from 1885 to 1889 he taught
experimental psychology at the Sorbonne. In 1889 he was awarded a chair at the Collège de France in Experimental and Comparative Psychology, which he held until 1896 (Nicolas, 2002).
France's primary psychological strength lay in the field of psychopathology. The chief neurologist at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Jean-Martin Charcot
(1825–1893), had been using the recently revivied and renamed (see
above) practice of hypnosis to "experimentally" produce hysterical
symptoms in some of his patients. Two of his students, Alfred Binet (1857–1911) and Pierre Janet (1859–1947), adopted and expanded this practice in their own work.
In 1889, Binet and his colleague Henri Beaunis (1830–1921) co-founded, at the Sorbonne,
the first experimental psychology laboratory in France. Just five years
later, in 1894, Beaunis, Binet, and a third colleague, Victor Henri (1872–1940), co-founded the first French journal dedicated to experimental psychology, L'Année Psychologique.
In the first years of the 20th century, Binet was requested by the
French government to develop a method for the newly founded universal
public education system to identify students who would require extra
assistance to master the standardized curriculum. In response, with his
collaborator Théodore Simon (1873–1961), he developed the Binet-Simon Intelligence Test,
first published in 1905 (revised in 1908 and 1911).
Although the test was used to effect in France, it would find its
greatest success (and controversy) in the United States, where it was
translated into English by Henry H. Goddard (1866–1957), the director of the Training School for the Feebleminded in Vineland, New Jersey, and his assistant, Elizabeth Kite (a translation of the 1905 edition appeared in the Vineland Bulletin
in 1908, but much better known was Kite's 1916 translation of the 1908
edition, which appeared in book form). The translated test was used by
Goddard to advance his eugenics
agenda with respect to those he deemed congenitally feeble-minded,
especially immigrants from non-Western European countries. Binet's test
was revised by Stanford professor Lewis M. Terman (1877–1956) into the Stanford-Binet IQ test in 1916.
With Binet's death in 1911, the Sorbonne laboratory and L'Année Psychologique fell to Henri Piéron (1881–1964). Piéron's orientation was more physiological that Binet's had been.
Pierre Janet became the leading psychiatrist in France, being appointed to the Salpêtrière (1890–1894), the Sorbonne (1895–1920), and the Collège de France (1902–1936). In 1904, he co-founded the Journale de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique with fellow Sorbonne professor Georges Dumas
(1866–1946), a student and faithful follower of Ribot. Whereas Janet's
teacher, Charcot, had focused on the neurological bases of hysteria,
Janet was concerned to develop a scientific approach to psychopathology
as a mental disorder. His theory that mental pathology results
from conflict between unconscious and conscious parts of the mind, and
that unconscious mental contents may emerge as symptoms with symbolic
meanings led to a public priority dispute with Sigmund Freud.
Early British
Although the British had the first scholarly journal dedicated to the topic of psychology – Mind, founded in 1876 by Alexander Bain and edited by George Croom Robertson –
it was quite a long while before experimental psychology developed
there to challenge the strong tradition of "mental philosophy." The
experimental reports that appeared in Mind in the first two decades of its existence were almost entirely authored by Americans, especially G. Stanley Hall and his students (notably Henry Herbert Donaldson) and James McKeen Cattell.
Francis Galton's (1822–1911) anthropometric
laboratory opened in 1884. There people were tested on a wide variety
of physical (e.g., strength of blow) and perceptual (e.g., visual
acuity) attributes. In 1886 Galton was visited by James McKeen Cattell who would later adapt Galton's techniques in developing his own mental testing
research program in the United States. Galton was not primarily a
psychologist, however. The data he accumulated in the anthropometric
laboratory primarily went toward supporting his case for eugenics.
To help interpret the mounds of data he accumulated, Galton developed a
number of important statistical techniques, including the precursors to
the scatterplot and the product-moment correlation coefficient (later perfected by Karl Pearson, 1857–1936).
Soon after, Charles Spearman (1863–1945) developed the correlation-based statistical procedure of factor analysis
in the process of building a case for his two-factor theory of
intelligence, published in 1901. Spearman believed that people have an
inborn level of general intelligence or g which can be crystallized into a specific skill in any of a number of narrow content area (s, or specific intelligence).
Laboratory psychology of the kind practiced in Germany and the
United States was slow in coming to Britain. Although the philosopher James Ward (1843–1925) urged Cambridge University
to establish a psychophysics laboratory from the mid-1870s forward, it
was not until the 1891 that they put so much as £50 toward some basic
apparatus (Bartlett, 1937). A laboratory was established through the
assistance of the physiology department in 1897 and a lectureship in
psychology was established which first went to W. H. R. Rivers (1864–1922). Soon Rivers was joined by C. S. Myers (1873–1946) and William McDougall (1871–1938). This group showed as much interest in anthropology as psychology, going with Alfred Cort Haddon (1855–1940) on the famed Torres Straits expedition of 1898.
Insofar
as psychology was regarded as the science of the soul and
institutionally part of philosophy courses in theology schools,
psychology was present in Russia from the second half of the 18th
century. By contrast, if by psychology we mean a separate discipline,
with university chairs and people employed as psychologists, then it
appeared only after the October Revolution. All the same, by the end of
the 19th century, many different kinds of activities called psychology
had spread in philosophy, natural science, literature, medicine,
education, legal practice, and even military science. Psychology was as
much a cultural resource as it was a defined area of scholarship.
The question, "Who Is to Develop Psychology and How?", was of such importance that Ivan Sechenov,
a physiologist and doctor by training and a teacher in institutions of
higher education, chose it as the title for an essay in 1873. His
question was rhetorical, for he was already convinced that physiology
was the scientific basis on which to build psychology. The response to
Sechenov's popular essay included one, in 1872–1873, from a liberal
professor of law, Konstantin Kavelin.
He supported a psychology drawing on ethnographic materials about
national character, a program that had existed since 1847, when the
ethnographic division of the recently founded Russian Geographical Society
circulated a request for information on the people's way of life,
including “intellectual and moral abilities.” This was part of a larger
debate about national character, national resources, and national
development, in the context of which a prominent linguist, Alexander Potebnja, began, in 1862, to publish studies of the relation between mentality and language.
Although it was the history and philology departments that
traditionally taught courses in psychology, it was the medical schools
that first introduced psychological laboratories and courses on experimental psychology.
As early as the 1860s and 1870s, I. M. Balinskii (1827–1902) at the
Military-Surgical Academy (which changed its name in the 1880s to the
Military Medical Academy) in St. Petersburg and Sergey Korsakov, a psychiatrist at Moscow university, began to purchase psychometric apparatus. Vladimir Bekhterev
created the first laboratory—a special space for psychological
experiments—in Kazan’ in 1885. At a meeting of the Moscow Psychological
Society in 1887, the psychiatrists Grigory Rossolimo
and Ardalion Tokarskii (1859–1901) demonstrated both Wundt's
experiments and hypnosis. In 1895, Tokarskii set up a psychological
laboratory in the psychiatric clinic of Moscow university with the
support of its head, Korsakov, to teach future psychiatrists about what
he promoted as new and necessary techniques.
in January 1884, the philosophers Matvei Troitskii and Iakov Grot
founded the Moscow Psychological Society. They wished to discuss
philosophical issues, but because anything called “philosophical” could
attract official disapproval, they used “psychological” as a euphemism.
In 1907, Georgy Chelpanov announced a 3-year course in psychology based
on laboratory work and a well-structured teaching seminar. In the
following years, Chelpanov traveled in Europe and the United States to
see existing institutes; the result was a luxurious four-story building
for the Psychological Institute of Moscow with well-equipped
laboratories, opening formally on March 23, 1914.
Second generation German
Würzburg School
In 1896, one of Wilhelm Wundt's former Leipzig laboratory assistants, Oswald Külpe (1862–1915), founded a new laboratory in Würzburg. Külpe soon surrounded himself with a number of younger psychologists, the so-called Würzburg School, most notably Narziß Ach (1871–1946), Karl Bühler (1879–1963), Ernst Dürr (1878–1913), Karl Marbe (1869–1953), and Henry Jackson Watt
(1879–1925). Collectively, they developed a new approach to
psychological experimentation that flew in the face of many of Wundt's
restrictions. Wundt had drawn a distinction between the old
philosophical style of self-observation (Selbstbeobachtung) in which one introspected for extended durations on higher thought processes, and inner perception (innere Wahrnehmung) in which one could be immediately aware of a momentary sensation, feeling, or image (Vorstellung).
The former was declared to be impossible by Wundt, who argued that
higher thought could not be studied experimentally through extended
introspection, but only humanistically through Völkerpsychologie (folk psychology). Only the latter was a proper subject for experimentation.
The Würzburgers, by contrast, designed experiments in which the
experimental subject was presented with a complex stimulus (for example a
Nietzschean aphorism or a logical problem) and after processing it for a
time (for example interpreting the aphorism or solving the problem),
retrospectively reported to the experimenter all that had passed through
his consciousness during the interval. In the process, the Würzburgers
claimed to have discovered a number of new elements of consciousness
(over and above Wundt's sensations, feelings, and images) including Bewußtseinslagen (conscious sets), Bewußtheiten (awarenesses), and Gedanken
(thoughts). In the English-language literature, these are often
collectively termed "imageless thoughts", and the debate between Wundt
and the Würzburgers, the "imageless thought controversy".
Wundt referred to the Würzburgers' studies as "sham" experiments
and criticized them vigorously. Wundt's most significant English
student, Edward Bradford Titchener, then working at Cornell,
intervened in the dispute, claiming to have conducted extended
introspective studies in which he was able to resolve the Würzburgers'
imageless thoughts into sensations, feelings, and images. He thus,
paradoxically, used a method of which Wundt did not approve in order to
affirm Wundt's view of the situation.
The imageless thought debate is often said to have been
instrumental in undermining the legitimacy of all introspective methods
in experimental psychology
and, ultimately, in bringing about the behaviorist revolution in
American psychology. It was not without its own delayed legacy, however.
Herbert A. Simon (1981) cites the work of one Würzburg psychologist in particular, Otto Selz (1881–1943), for having inspired him to develop his famous problem-solving computer algorithms (such as Logic Theorist and General Problem Solver) and his "thinking out loud" method for protocol analysis. In addition, Karl Popper
studied psychology under Bühler and Selz in the 1920s, and appears to
have brought some of their influence, unattributed, to his philosophy of
science.
Whereas the Würzburgers debated with Wundt mainly on matters of
method, another German movement, centered in Berlin, took issue with the
widespread assumption that the aim of psychology should be to break
consciousness down into putative basic elements. Instead, they argued
that the psychological "whole" has priority and that the "parts" are
defined by the structure of the whole, rather than vice versa. Thus, the
school was named Gestalt, a German term meaning approximately "form" or "configuration." It was led by Max Wertheimer (1880–1943), Wolfgang Köhler (1887–1967), and Kurt Koffka (1886–1941). Wertheimer had been a student of Austrian philosopher, Christian von Ehrenfels
(1859–1932), who claimed that in addition to the sensory elements of a
perceived object, there is an extra element which, though in some sense
derived from the organization of the standard sensory elements, is also
to be regarded as being an element in its own right. He called this
extra element Gestalt-qualität or "form-quality." For instance,
when one hears a melody, one hears the notes plus something in addition
to them which binds them together into a tune – the Gestalt-qualität. It is the presence of this Gestalt-qualität
which, according to Von Ehrenfels, allows a tune to be transposed to a
new key, using completely different notes, but still retain its
identity. Wertheimer took the more radical line that "what is given me
by the melody does not arise ... as a secondary process from the sum of
the pieces as such. Instead, what takes place in each single part
already depends upon what the whole is", (1925/1938). In other words,
one hears the melody first and only then may perceptually divide it up
into notes. Similarly in vision, one sees the form of the circle first –
it is given "im-mediately" (i.e. its apprehension is not mediated by a
process of part-summation). Only after this primary apprehension might
one notice that it is made up of lines or dots or stars.
Gestalt-Theorie (Gestalt psychology)
was officially initiated in 1912 in an article by Wertheimer on the
phi-phenomenon; a perceptual illusion in which two stationary but
alternately flashing lights appear to be a single light moving from one
location to another. Contrary to popular opinion, his primary target was
not behaviorism, as it was not yet a force in psychology. The aim of
his criticism was, rather, the atomistic psychologies of Hermann von
Helmholtz (1821–1894), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), and other European
psychologists of the time.
The two men who served as Wertheimer's subjects in the phi
experiment were Köhler and Koffka. Köhler was an expert in physical
acoustics, having studied under physicist Max Planck (1858–1947), but had taken his degree in psychology under Carl Stumpf
(1848–1936). Koffka was also a student of Stumpf's, having studied
movement phenomena and psychological aspects of rhythm. In 1917 Köhler
(1917/1925) published the results of four years of research on learning
in chimpanzees. Köhler showed, contrary to the claims of most other
learning theorists, that animals can learn by "sudden insight" into the
"structure" of a problem, over and above the associative and incremental
manner of learning that Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936) and Edward Lee Thorndike (1874–1949) had demonstrated with dogs and cats, respectively.
The terms "structure" and "organization" were focal for the
Gestalt psychologists. Stimuli were said to have a certain structure, to
be organized in a certain way, and that it is to this structural
organization, rather than to individual sensory elements, that the
organism responds. When an animal is conditioned, it does not simply
respond to the absolute properties of a stimulus, but to its properties
relative to its surroundings. To use a favorite example of Köhler's, if
conditioned to respond in a certain way to the lighter of two gray
cards, the animal generalizes the relation between the two stimuli
rather than the absolute properties of the conditioned stimulus: it will
respond to the lighter of two cards in subsequent trials even if the
darker card in the test trial is of the same intensity as the lighter
one in the original training trials.
In 1921 Koffka published a Gestalt-oriented text on developmental psychology, Growth of the Mind. With the help of American psychologist Robert Ogden, Koffka introduced the Gestalt point of view to an American audience in 1922 by way of a paper in Psychological Bulletin.
It contains criticisms of then-current explanations of a number of
problems of perception, and the alternatives offered by the Gestalt
school. Koffka moved to the United States in 1924, eventually settling
at Smith College in 1927. In 1935 Koffka published his Principles of Gestalt Psychology. This textbook laid out the Gestalt
vision of the scientific enterprise as a whole. Science, he said, is
not the simple accumulation of facts. What makes research scientific is
the incorporation of facts into a theoretical structure. The goal of the
Gestaltists was to integrate the facts of inanimate nature,
life, and mind into a single scientific structure. This meant that
science would have to swallow not only what Koffka called the
quantitative facts of physical science but the facts of two other
"scientific categories": questions of order and questions of Sinn,
a German word which has been variously translated as significance,
value, and meaning. Without incorporating the meaning of experience and
behavior, Koffka believed that science would doom itself to trivialities
in its investigation of human beings.
Having survived the onslaught of the Nazis up to the mid-1930s, all the core members of the Gestalt movement were forced out of Germany to the United States by 1935. Köhler published another book, Dynamics in Psychology, in 1940 but thereafter the Gestalt
movement suffered a series of setbacks. Koffka died in 1941 and
Wertheimer in 1943. Wertheimer's long-awaited book on mathematical
problem-solving, Productive Thinking, was published posthumously in 1945 but Köhler was now left to guide the movement without his two long-time colleagues.
As a result of the conjunction of a number of events in the early
20th century, behaviorism gradually emerged as the dominant school in
American psychology. First among these was the increasing skepticism
with which many viewed the concept of consciousness: although still
considered to be the essential element separating psychology from
physiology, its subjective nature and the unreliable introspective
method it seemed to require, troubled many. William James' 1904 Journal of Philosophy.... article "Does Consciousness Exist?", laid out the worries explicitly.
Second was the gradual rise of a rigorous animal psychology. In addition to Edward Lee Thorndike's work with cats in puzzle boxes in 1898, the start of research in which rats learn to navigate mazes was begun by Willard Small (1900, 1901 in American Journal of Psychology). Robert M. Yerkes's 1905 Journal of Philosophy...
article "Animal Psychology and the Criteria of the Psychic" raised the
general question of when one is entitled to attribute consciousness to
an organism. The following few years saw the emergence of John Broadus Watson
(1878–1959) as a major player, publishing his dissertation on the
relation between neurological development and learning in the white rat
(1907, Psychological Review Monograph Supplement; Carr & Watson, 1908, J. Comparative Neurology & Psychology). Another important rat study was published by Henry H. Donaldson (1908, J. Comparative Neurology & Psychology). The year 1909 saw the first English-language account of Ivan Pavlov's studies of conditioning in dogs (Yerkes & Morgulis, 1909, Psychological Bulletin).
A third factor was the rise of Watson to a position of
significant power within the psychological community. In 1908, Watson
was offered a junior position at Johns Hopkins by James Mark Baldwin. In addition to heading the Johns Hopkins department, Baldwin was the editor of the influential journals, Psychological Review and Psychological Bulletin.
Only months after Watson's arrival, Baldwin was forced to resign his
professorship due to scandal. Watson was suddenly made head of the
department and editor of Baldwin's journals. He resolved to use these
powerful tools to revolutionize psychology in the image of his own
research. In 1913 he published in Psychological Review the
article that is often called the "manifesto" of the behaviorist
movement, "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It." There he argued that
psychology "is a purely objective experimental branch of natural
science", "introspection forms no essential part of its methods..." and
"The behaviorist... recognizes no dividing line between man and brute".
The following year, 1914, his first textbook, Behavior went to
press. Although behaviorism took some time to be accepted as a
comprehensive approach (see Samelson, 1981), (in no small part because
of the intervention of World War I), by the 1920s Watson's revolution
was well underway. The central tenet of early behaviorism was that
psychology should be a science of behavior, not of the mind, and
rejected internal mental states such as beliefs, desires, or goals.
Watson himself, however, was forced out of Johns Hopkins by scandal in
1920. Although he continued to publish during the 1920s, he eventually
moved on to a career in advertising (see Coon, 1994).
Among the behaviorists who continued on, there were a number of
disagreements about the best way to proceed. Neo-behaviorists such as Edward C. Tolman, Edwin Guthrie, Clark L. Hull, and B. F. Skinner
debated issues such as (1) whether to reformulate the traditional
psychological vocabulary in behavioral terms or discard it in favor of a
wholly new scheme, (2) whether learning takes place all at once or
gradually, (3) whether biological drives should be included in the new
science in order to provide a "motivation" for behavior, and (4) to what
degree any theoretical framework is required over and above the
measured effects of reinforcement and punishment on learning. By the
late 1950s, Skinner's formulation had become dominant, and it remains a
part of the modern discipline under the rubric of Behavior Analysis. Its
application (Applied Behavior Analysis) has become one of the most
useful fields of psychology.
Behaviorism was the ascendant experimental model for research in
psychology for much of the 20th century, largely due to the creation and
successful application (not least of which in advertising) of
conditioning theories as scientific models of human behaviour.
Second generation francophone
Genevan School
In 1918, Jean Piaget (1896–1980) turned away from his early training in natural history and began post-doctoral work in psychoanalysis
in Zurich. In 1919, he moved to Paris to work at the Binet-Simon Lab.
However, Binet had died in 1911 and Simon lived and worked in Rouen. His
supervision therefore came (indirectly) from Pierre Janet, Binet's old rival and a professor at the Collège de France.
The job in Paris was relatively simple: to use the statistical
techniques he had learned as a natural historian, studying molluscs, to
standardize Cyril Burt's
intelligence test for use with French children. Yet without direct
supervision, he soon found a remedy to this boring work: exploring why
children made the mistakes they did. Applying his early training in
psychoanalytic interviewing, Piaget began to intervene directly with the
children: "Why did you do that?" (etc.) It was from this that the ideas
formalized in his later stage theory first emerged.
In 1921, Piaget moved to Geneva to work with Édouard Claparède at the Rousseau Institute. They formed what is now known as the Genevan School.
In 1936, Piaget received his first honorary doctorate from Harvard. In
1955, the International Center for Genetic Epistemology was founded: an
interdisciplinary collaboration of theoreticians and scientists, devoted
to the study of topics related to Piaget's theory.
In 1969, Piaget received the "distinguished scientific contributions"
award from the American Psychological Association.
Soviet Marxist Psychology
In the early twentieth century, Ivan Pavlov's
behavioral and conditioning experiments became the most internationally
recognized Russian achievements. With the creation of the Soviet Union in 1922, Marxism
was introduced as an overall philosophical and methodological framework
in scientific research. In 1920s, state ideology promoted a tendency to
the psychology of Bekhterev's reflexologist reductionism in its Marxist interpretation and to historical materialism, while idealistic
philosophers and psychologists were harshly criticized. Another
variation of Marxist version of psychology that got popularity mostly in
Moscow and centered in the local Institute of Psychology was Konstantin
Kornilov's (the Director of this Institute) reactology that became the
main view, besides a small group of the members of the Vygotsky-Luria Circle that, besides its namesakes Lev Vygotsky, and Alexander Luria, included Bluma Zeigarnik, Alexei Leontiev and others, and in 1920s embraced a deterministic "instrumental psychology" version of Cultural-historical psychology.
Due to Soviet censorship and primarily Vygotsky's failed attempt at
building consistent psychological theory of consciousness many works by
Vygotsky were not published chronologically.
A few attempts were made in 1920s at formulating the core of
theoretical framework of the "genuinely Marxist" psychology, but all
these failed and were characterized in early 1930s as either right- or
left-wing deviations of reductionist "mechanicism" or "menshevising
idealism". It was Sergei Rubinstein
in mid 1930s, who formulated the key principles, on which the entire
Soviet variation of Marxist psychology would be based, and, thus become
the genuine pioneer and the founder of this psychological discipline in
the Marxist disguise in the Soviet Union.
In late 1940s-early 1950s, Lysenkoism
somewhat affected Russian psychology, yet gave it a considerable
impulse for a reaction and unification that resulted in institutional
and disciplinary integration of psychological community in the postwar
Soviet Union.
Noam Chomsky's (1957) review of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior (that aimed to explain language acquisition
in a behaviorist framework) is considered one of the major theoretical
challenges to the type of radical (as in 'root') behaviorism that
Skinner taught. Chomsky claimed that language could not be learned
solely from the sort of operant conditioning that Skinner postulated.
Chomsky's argument was that people could produce an infinite variety of
sentences unique in structure and meaning and that these could not
possibly be generated solely through experience of natural language. As
an alternative, he concluded that there must be internal mental
structures – states of mind of the sort that behaviorism rejected as
illusory. The issue is not whether mental activities exist; it is
whether they can be shown to be the causes of behavior. Similarly, work
by Albert Bandura showed that children could learn by social observation, without any change in overt behaviour, and so must (according to him) be accounted for by internal representations.
The rise of computer technology also promoted the metaphor of mental function as information processing.
This, combined with a scientific approach to studying the mind, as well
as a belief in internal mental states, led to the rise of cognitivism as the dominant model of the mind.
With the increasing involvement of other disciplines (such as philosophy, computer science, and neuroscience) in the quest to understand the mind, the umbrella discipline of cognitive science has been created as a means of focusing such efforts in a constructive way.
