The History Of Psychology: A Survey And Critical Assessment

On History for the Present: Revisiting George Stocking's Influential Rejection of “Presentism”

“…He plunged into study of “the great psychologists” of the past (Watson ) and led a movement to create a “Division of the History of Psychology” within the American Psychological Association (Hilgard ). Other steps he took to establish the history of psychology as “a self‐conscious subdiscipline” included founding a dedicated history of psychology doctoral program at the University of New Hampshire (Evans ; Hilgard , 84; Richards , 202).…”

“…But far from seeing this as evidence of class, academic, or (unmentioned) racial exclusivity, the author described a pure merit system in which “eminent teachers … attracted potentially‐eminent students predisposed by virtue of their middle class training to appreciate the necessity for hard work and delayed gratifications” to achieve eminence, and then “the eminent teachers recommended their potentially‐eminent Ph.D.’s for appointment at other universities where scientific eminence and productivity were properly appreciated, and the potentially‐eminent novitiate continued the productive ways he learned from the Master” (Wispé , 89, 96–97; cf. Hilgard , 92). By and large, the articles were self‐congratulatory, the authors positioning themselves as privileged witnesses to the grandeur and progress of science, and nearly all took for granted a present‐day conception of their field of study—for example, psychology studies mental processes and psychiatry mental pathology—in interpreting historical material.…”

“…For his part, Watson was eager to learn from professional historians about the “methodology of history,” and he graciously accepted the main thrust of Stocking's and Young's critique, incorporating their essays into the methodological canon of the nascent field of history of psychology (Watson , 255; , 10–11; Hilgard , 81, 83, 91). He and Stocking kept up a cordial professional relationship.…”

La Historiografía en la Institucionalización de la Psicología Académica. Estados Unidos, 1890–1989

“…Se mantienen así las críticas a la escasa incorporación de perspectivas críticas y de nuevos hallazgos y desarrollos empíricos a dicha literatura. En un sentido más general, lo que múltiples autores han abogado desde los '90 es precisamente por ir más allá de las reconstrucciones manualizadas de historia: es decir, acudir directamente a las fuentes primarias y a las revisiones históricas que constituyen las fuentes secundarias (Hilgard, Leary, & McGuire, 1991). Sin embargo, "los profesores aún dependen predominantemente de historias de manual, en vez de organizar los materiales del curso en torno al uso de fuentes primarias o materiales de archivo" (Pickren, 2012, p. 14).…”

The “new history of psychology” and the uses and abuses of dichotomies

“…Historians have also tried to explain these changes in their own specialty. There seems to be an agreement that these developments constituted the professionalization of the history of psychology (see, e.g., Ash, 1983;Hilgard, Leary, & McGuire, 1991;Vaughn-Blount, Rutherford, Baker, & Johnson, 2009;Watson, 1975) and, in the 1980s, some scholars realized what had changed in narratives since professionalization began. They noticed that new approaches were usually critical both of psychology and of its traditional history.…”