The Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Abstract

25th anniversary meeting and subsequently was published (Miner, 193 1).In that history, Miner discussed the conditions in southern educational institutions in the first quarter of the 20th century. In addition, he discussed the contributions of the SSPP to southern educational institutions and to the two disciplines. The SSPP had the enhancement of teaching of psychology in the South as one of its early objectives and established a committee on teaching psychology, which is discussed later in this chapter.Miner also stated that the SSPP served to counteract the trend toward specialization in the academic world. Finally, he provided a list of officers of the SSPP from its founding in 1904 until the presentation of the paper in 1930.Ten years later, Miner (1941) presented a second history covering the period from 1931 to 1941, and Balz "traced the history of philosophy in the Society during its 35 years of existence" (Munn, 1941, p. 683). However, in the published version, Balz (1941) discussed the relation between philosophy and psychology but little of the history of philosophy within the SSPP.The most recent published history of the SSPP is one by Harris and Alluisi (1964), which is an abbreviated version of a longer history that Harris (1964), the historian of the SSPP at that time, had written. The published version of the history was "authorized" in that the manuscript was approved by an ad hoc committee of SSPP officers. Harris and Alluisi included some of the information that Miner (1931, 1941) had presented and added information about the SSPP from 1941 until 1964. Furthermore, in the Harris version, there was a brief description of many of the presidential addresses. More recently, Cebik (1983) prepared a history for the 75th anniversary booklet.In 1972, Key Barkley organized a symposium on the history of psychology in the South. Since then, there has been an annual history symposium at the meeting of the SSPP, and that symposium has often contained papers about some aspects of the SSPP. For example, I presented a description of the archives of the SSPP (Pate, 1985) and some information about the academic ancestry of some of the presidents of the SSPP (Pate, 1986(Pate, , 1987. Some of that information is included later in this chapter. FOUNDING AND EARLY MEETINGSAccording to Miner (1931), "few societies can so clearly trace their beginnings to one person" (p. 1). That person was Edward Franklin Buchner, who received a PhD in philosophy from Yale University in 1893. In 1903, he joined the faculty of the University of Alabama as a professor of philosophy and education. Despite those credentials, he was a psychologist who contributed frequently to psychological journals. JAMES L. PATECopyright American Psychological Association. Not for further distribution.'Harris (1964) stated that the date of the founding meeting was February 23, 1904, but in the published abbreviated version of that document (Harris & Alluisi, 1964), the date was reported to be February 24, 1904.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters? The Most “Central” Members of Psychology and Philosophy Associations Ca. 1900

“…The SSΦΨ was not like the other three organizations, though. Indeed, in one important way it was the opposite of them: it explicitly aimed to hold together the tapestry of philosophy and psychology that the other groups had been endeavoring to unweave (see, e.g., Pate, )…”

John Wallace Baird: The First Canadian president of the American Psychological Association.

“…This might seem late for a man who was already three years post-PhD, but his earlier patron, Titchener, did not approve of what he felt to be the APA's unwise indulgence of applied psychology and, so, had founded his own exclusive, invitation-only group called The Experimentalists—later the Society of Experimental Psychologists—in 1904, of which Baird was an early member. Baird also joined the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, which had been founded by Baldwin in 1904 (Pate, 1993). That Baldwin approved of Baird's work is attested to by his reappointment as Instructor for the 1905–1906 academic year and his substantial raise in pay (from $800 to $1,000) 12…”