----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Palij" <[email protected]> To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)" <[email protected]> Cc: "Michael Palij" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, February 11, 2013 5:41:17 PM Subject: Re: [tips] The "Other" Psychological Review
>I'm not surprised that there were journals both in the U.S. and elsewhere that focused on spiritualism, psychic phenomena, the "mind-cure", and the various religious movement that developed in the 19th century (e.g., Christian Science; see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Science ) rather, I'm surprised that the APA would use "Psychological Review" as a title for one of its journals given how recent the publication of the spiritualist version was. Checking the online catalog for the British Library, they have volumes 1-5, and issues 1-2 of volume 6, spanning 1878-1883. The new Psych Review begin in 1894 or about a decade later. I doubt that Cattell would not know about the old PR given that he worked in Wundt's lab in Leipzig during 1883-1886 and would have been exposed to European publications both in English and other languages. As Alvarado points out in the first publication below, Cattell was antagonistic toward spiritualism and psychic phenomena. One wonders if Cattell was being supremely ironic or just having a joke in naming what would be come one of the premier journals in experimental psychology that denied supernaturalism after a journal that had promoted it. Imagine the Skeptical Inquirer going broke and being bought out by a parapsychological group to publish its articles in. Chris Green mentioned G. Stanley Hall's dealings with supporters of psychical research in his efforts to establish the American Journal of Psychology. Coon (1992) discusses the wide popular appeal of spiritualism toward the latter half of the 19th century and the confusion in terminology regarding the terms 'psychical' and 'psychological'. Consider the following quotes from Coon: "Psychology had a critical problem in the process of its professionalization and conceptualization, however. It was haunted by a public and by some members of its own ranks who thought that the most interesting questions about the mind concerned not the range of perception and the timing of thought, but whether or not people could communicate with each other by direct thought transference, whether gifted individuals could foretell the future, or whether the living could communicate with the dead. When people began to hear and read about the "New Psychology" in the popular and literary magazines of the late 19th century, they turned to this new breed of mental experts to answer their innermost questions about the more mysterious powers of the mind and spirit." (pg. 145). A little later, she writes: " The problem was that much of psychology's popular appeal lay in precisely those topics of its possible subject matter that many psychologists wanted to shed as pseudoscience—topics such as mental telepathy, clairvoyance, and spiritistic communication with the dead. Psychologists already had enough trouble trying to prove their investigations of normal mental phenomena were scientific and not subjective (Burnham, 1987; Coon, in press; Danziger, 1990). Investigating the supernatural and supernormal seemed to many psychologists simply to be courting disaster for the budding discipline" (pg. 145). " To add to the confusion, the term psychological was occasionally used to refer specifically to paranormal phenomena. In 1881, Wundt named his journal Psychologische Studien but changed the name within months to Philosophische Studien, most likely because there was already a journal of spiritism and parapsychology published under the former name (Bringmann, Bringmann, & Ungerer, 1980). Ten years before the founding in 1893 of the American experimental psychology journal, the Psychological Review, a British Psychological Review existed as a "journal of spiritualism." (pp 145-146). -------- Earlier I wrote: "As the de factor historian of parapsychology ..." 'de factor'? Oy vey!!! I must have been thinking of 'de factor analysis'. ;-) Miguel --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=23636 or send a blank email to leave-23636-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
