by DK
Binet maintained that a child’s “intelligence is not a fixed quantity,” but grows just as the child does, and that even though he had devised a way of quantifying it, no number could ever give an accurate measure of a person’s intelligence. A complete picture, Binet thought, could only be formed from an accompanying case study. Ultimately, Binet did not believe that it was possible to measure intellectual aptitude as if it were a length or a capacity; it was only possible to classify it.
Uses and abuses
In 1908, the American psychologist Henry H. Goddard traveled to Europe, where he discovered the Binet—Simon tests. He translated them, distributing around 22,000 copies across the US to be used for testing in schools. Unfortunately, while Binet had been careful not to attribute intelligence to hereditary factors, Goddard thought that it was genetically determined. He saw the Binet—Simon Scale as a way of rooting out “feebleminded people” for compulsory sterilization.
In 1916, yet another American psychologist, Lewis Terman, modified the Binet—Simon Scale. Using test results from a large sample of American children, he renamed it the Stanford—Binet Scale. It was no longer used solely to identify children with special needs, but to pick out those who might be suitable for streaming off into more vocational, or job-oriented, education, effectively condemning them to a lifetime of menial work. Terman, like Goddard, believed that intelligence was inherited and unchangeable, so no amount of schooling could alter it.
Binet was probably unaware of these uses of his work for quite some time. He was an isolated figure, who rarely concerned himself with professional developments outside his immediate sphere. He never traveled outside France, where the Binet—Simon Scale was not adopted during his lifetime, so he was never confronted by any modifications of his work. When he eventually became aware of the “foreign ideas being grafted on his instrument” he strongly condemned those who with “brutal pessimism” and “deplorable verdicts” promoted the concept of intelligence as a single constant.
Binet’s concept of the “IQ test” remains the basis of intelligence testing today. Despite its shortcomings, it has generated research that has advanced our knowledge of human intelligence.
ALFRED BINET
Alfred Binet was born in Nice, France, but moved to Paris at a young age after his parents separated. He gained a law degree in 1878, then studied sciences at the Sorbonne, in preparation for taking up medicine. But Binet decided that his real interest lay in psychology, and although he was largely self-taught, in 1883 he was offered a post at Paris’s Salpêtrière Hospital by Jean-Martin Charcot. After his marriage the following year, and the birth of two daughters, he began to take an interest in intelligence and learning. In 1891, Binet was appointed associate director of the Sorbonne’s Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, becoming director in 1894.
Many honors have been heaped upon Binet since his untimely death in 1911. These include changing the name of La Société Libre pour l’Etude Psychologique de l’Enfant to La Société Alfred Binet in 1917.
Key works
1903 Experimental Study of Intelligence
1905 The Mind and Brain
1911 A Method of Measuring the Development of Intelligence
See also: Francis Galton • Jean-Martin Charcot • Wilhelm Wundt • Raymond Cattell
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Neurological science
BEFORE
1878 Jean-Martin Charcot in Diseases of the Nervous System describes the symptoms of hysteria, then considered to be a distinct, biological illness.
AFTER
1895 Sigmund Freud suggests that dissociation is one of the mind’s defense mechanisms.
1900s American neurologist Morton Prince suggests that there is a spectrum of dissociative disorders.
1913 French naturalist J.P.F. Deleuze describes dissociation as being like the formation of two distinct people—one of them fully awake, and the other in a trancelike state.
1977 Ernest R. Hilgard’s Divided Consciousness discusses the splitting up of consciousness by hypnosis.
Between around 1880 and 1910, there was a great deal of interest in the condition of “dissociation”—the separation of some mental processes from a person’s conscious mind, or normal everyday personality. Mild dissociation, in which the world seems “dreamlike” and “unreal,” is common, and affects most people at some time or other. It is often caused by illnesses, such as flu, or drugs, including alcohol, and may lead to a partial or complete loss of memory during and after the period of dissociation. In rare cases of what was then described as multiple personality disorder, a person appears to have two or more distinct personalities. Such extreme examples are now classified as “dissociative identity disorder.”
The French philosopher and physician Pierre Janet is credited with being the first person to study and describe dissociation as a psychiatric condition. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, he worked at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, where he treated patients who were suffering from “hysteria.” He published case studies of several women who showed extreme symptoms. A patient called “Lucie,” for example, would usually be calm, but then suddenly became agitated, crying and looking terrified for no apparent reason. She seemed to have three distinct personalities, which Janet named “Lucie 1,” “Lucie 2,” and “Lucie 3,” and would change between them unexpectedly, especially when hypnotized. Lucie 1 had only “her own” memories, as did Lucie 2, but Lucie 3 could remember events relating to all three personalities. Significantly, Lucie 3 could recall a traumatic experience, while on vacation at the age of seven, when she was terrified by two men who were hiding behind a curtain.
"These people are persecuted by something, and you must investigate carefully to get to the root."
Pierre Janet
Subconscious trauma
Lucie’s childhood trauma, Janet concluded, was the cause of her dissociation. As he wrote in Psychological Automatism: “To have one’s body in the posture of terror is to feel the emotion of terror; and if this posture is determined by a subconscious idea, the patient will have the emotion alone in his consciousness without knowing why he feels this way.” As her terror took hold, Lucie would say, “I’m afraid and I don’t know why.” “The unconscious,” said Janet, “is having its dream; it sees the men behind the curtains, and puts the body in a posture of terror.” Janet added that he believed traumatic events and stress could cause dissociation in anyone with that predisposition.
Janet described the part of the mind that he believed was behind uncharacteristic and disturbed behavior as “the subconscious.” But Sigmund Freud thought this term was too vague, and instead labeled the source of his patients’ mental traumas as the “unconscious.” Freud also developed Janet’s ideas, stating that dissociation was a universal “defense mechanism.”
Janet’s work was neglected for decades, as the use of hypnotism to investigate and treat mental illness was discredited. However, since the late 20th century, it has again attracted interest from psychologists studying dissociative disorders.
Childhood traumas may appear to be forgotten, but according to Pierre Janet, they can often remain in the “subconscious” part of the mind, giving rise to mental problems in later life.
PIERRE JANET
Pierre Janet was born into a cultured, middle-class family in Paris, France. As a child he loved the natural sciences, and began collecting and cataloging plants. His philosopher uncle, Paul Janet, encouraged him to study both medicine and philosophy, and after attending the elite École Normale Supérieure in Paris, he wen
t on to receive a master’s degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne. Aged just 22, Janet was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Lycée in Le Havre, where he launched his research into hypnotically induced states. Influenced by Jean-Martin Charcot, Janet extended his studies to include “hysteria,” becoming director of Charcot’s laboratory at Paris’s Salpêtrière Hospital in 1898. He also taught at the Sorbonne, and was made Professor of Psychology at the Collège de France in 1902.
Key works
1893 The Mental State of Hystericals
1902 Neuroses
1907 The Major Symptoms of Hysteria
See also: Jean-Martin Charcot • Alfred Binet • Sigmund Freud • Thigpen & Cleckley • Ernest R. Hilgard
INTRODUCTION
By the 1890s, psychology was accepted as a scientific subject separate from its philosophical origins. Laboratories and university departments had been established in Europe and the US, and a second generation of psychologists was emerging.
In the US, psychologists anxious to put the new discipline on an objective, scientific footing reacted against the introspective, philosophical approach taken by William James and others. Introspection, they felt, was by definition subjective, and theories based on it could be neither proved nor disproved; if psychology was to be treated as a science, it would have to be based on observable and measurable phenomena. Their solution was to study the manifestation of the workings of the mind —behavior—under strictly controlled laboratory conditions. As John B. Watson put it, psychology is “that division of Natural Science which takes human behavior— the doings and sayings, both learned and unlearned—as its subject matter.” Early “behaviorists,” including Edward Thorndike, Edward Tolman, and Edwin Guthrie, designed experiments to observe the behavior of animals in carefully devised situations, and from these tests inferred theories about how humans interact with their environment, as well as about learning, memory, and conditioning.
Conditioning responses
Behaviorist experiments were influenced by similar experiments devised by physiologists studying physical processes, and it was a Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, who unwittingly provided a basis for the emergent behaviorist psychology. In his now famous study of salivation in dogs, Pavlov described how an animal responds to a stimulus in the process of conditioning, and gave psychologists the foundation on which to build the central idea of behaviorism. The notion of conditioning, often referred to as “stimulus—response” (S—R) psychology, shaped the form behaviorism was to take.
The behaviorist approach concentrated on observing responses to external stimuli, ignoring inner mental states and processes, which were thought to be impossible to examine scientifically and therefore could not be included in any analysis of behavior. The shift from “mind” to “behavior” as a basis for the study of psychology was revolutionary, and was even accompanied by a “behaviorist manifesto”—the paper Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, delivered in 1913 by Watson.
In the US, which was leading the field in psychology, behaviorism became the dominant approach for the next 40 years. Evolving from the idea of Pavlovian or classical conditioning came Watson’s assertion that environmental stimuli alone shape behavior; innate or inherited factors are not involved. The next generation included the “radical behaviorist” B.F. Skinner, who proposed a rethink of the stimulus—response notion in his theory of “operant conditioning” —which stated that behavior was shaped by consequences, not by a preceding stimulus. Although the concept was similar to ideas proposed by William James, it radically altered the course of behaviorism, taking into account genetic factors and explaining mental states as a result (rather than as a cause) of behavior.
The cognitive revolution
By the mid-20th century, however, psychologists were questioning the behaviorist approach. Ethology, the study of animal behavior, showed the importance of instinctive as well as learned behavior—a finding that sat uncomfortably with strict ideas of conditioning. A reaction to Skinner’s ideas also sparked the “cognitive revolution,” which turned attention once again from behavior back to the mind and mental processes. A key figure at this time was Edward Tolman, a behaviorist whose theories had not dismissed the importance of perception and cognition, due to his interest in German-based Gestalt psychology. Advances in neuroscience, explored by another behaviorist, Karl Lashley, also played a part in shifting the emphasis from behavior to the brain and its workings.
Behaviorism had now run its course, and was superseded by the various branches of cognitive psychology. However, its legacy, particularly in establishing a scientific methodology for the subject, and in providing models that could be used in psychological experimentation, was a lasting one. Behavioral therapy is also still in use today, as an essential part of cognitive-behavioral therapy.
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Classical conditioning
BEFORE
Early 12th century Arab physician Avenzoar (Ibn Zuhr) performs experiments on animals in order to test surgical procedures.
1890 In Principles of Psychology, William James states that in animals “the feeling of having executed one impulsive step is an indispensable part of the stimulus of the next one.”
AFTER
1920 John B. Watson’s “Little Albert” experiment demonstrates classical conditioning in humans.
1930s B.F. Skinner shows that rats can be “conditioned” to behave in a specific way.
1950s Psychotherapists employ “conditioning” as part of behavior therapy.
Many of the key discoveries made when modern psychology was still in its infancy were the result of research by scientists working in other fields. Ivan Pavlov, a Russian physiologist, is one of the best known of these early pioneers, whose investigations into the secretion of saliva during digestion in dogs led him to some unexpected conclusions.
During the 1890s, Pavlov carried out a series of experiments on dogs, using various surgically implanted devices to measure the flow of saliva when these animals were being fed. He noted that the dogs salivated not only when they were actually eating, but also whenever they could just smell or see some appetizing food. The dogs would even salivate, in anticipation of food being produced, when they were simply being approached by one of their keepers.
Pavlov’s observations led him to investigate the links between various stimuli and the responses they elicited. In one experiment, he set off a clicking metronome just before offering food to the dogs, repeating this process until the animals always associated the sound with a good meal. This “conditioning” eventually resulted in the dogs salivating in response to the click of the metronome alone.
In further experiments, Pavlov replaced the metronome with a bell or buzzer, a flashing light, and whistles of different pitches. However, regardless of the nature of the stimulus used, the result was the always same: once an association between the neutral stimulus (bell, buzzer, or light) and food had been established, the dogs would respond to the stimulus by salivating.
"Facts are the air of science. Without them a man of science can never rise."
Ivan Pavlov
Pavlov’s dogs would salivate simply at the sight of someone in a white lab coat. They had become “conditioned” to associate the coat with eating, as whoever fed them always wore one.
Conditioned response
Pavlov concluded that the food offered to the dogs was an “unconditioned stimulus” (US), because it led to an unlearned, or “unconditioned” response (UR)—in this case, salivation. The click of the metronome, however, only became a stimulus to salivation after its
association with food had been learned. Pavlov then called this a “conditioned stimulus” (CS). The salivation in response to the metronome was also learned, so was a “conditioned response” (CR).
In later experiments, Pavlov showed that conditioned responses could be repressed, or “unlearned,” if the conditioned stimulus was given repeatedly without being followed by food. He also demonstrated that a conditioned response could be mental as well as physical, by carrying out experiments in which various stimuli were associated with pain or some form of threat and began to elicit a conditioned response of fear or anxiety.
The principle of what is now known as classical or Pavlovian conditioning, as well as Pavlov’s experimental method, marked a groundbreaking step in the emergence of psychology as a truly scientific, rather than philosophical, discipline. Pavlov’s work was to be hugely influential, particularly on US behaviorist psychologists, such as John B. Watson and B.F. Skinner.