Medicine/Behavioral Science

Charles Darwin did not come up with the idea of evolution, he was merely the first to come up with an explanation for how evolution worked that explained what he and other biologists saw in the world. Darwin came up with the idea of Natural Selection. This is the idea that the environment an organism lives in helps to determine which organisms survive and produce young, and which do not.

AMERICA, 1847: a highly competent and, by all accounts, pleasant manual laborer of Irish extraction named Phineas Gage is involved in rock blasting operations in mountainous terrain. In the course of one sadly uncontrolled explosion, an iron bar is picked up by the force of the blast and driven clean through the front part of his head. Phineas is sent flying, but, to everybody's surprise, he survives the removal of the protruding bar. As he recovers, however, it is observed that his personality has dramatically changed, though his memory and intelligence remain apparently unaffected. In 1868, a physician named Harlow from Boston writes about him: "His equilibrium, or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires." The now extremely rude Phineas Gage is an object of immense medical interest, for it seems clear, from his somewhat crude experience of psychosurgery, that one can alter the social behavior of the human animal by physically interfering with the frontal lobes of the brain.

The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, California is an educational institution dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and the public appreciation of the Lower Jurassic. Like a coat of two colors, the Museum serves dual functions. On the one hand the Museum provides the academic community with a specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities. On the other hand the Museum serves the general public by providing the visitor a hands-on experience of "life in the Jurassic"....

These web pages are the result of a project for Dr. Phillips's Psychology of Women class, Spring 1999. Originally these biographies of women in psychology were displayed as a bulletin board recognizing March as Women's History Month. When we searched the web and found almost no information on women in psychology, we decided to make it a resource that the world could share.
In chosing women to write about, we tried to include women of various races, ages, and sexual orientations. Some of these women are famous, some are not. Some are modern, and some are from the past. We feel they all share one trait, however: They are all remarkable women who have made an impact on psychology. We hope you enjoy reading about them.

I shall begin my case history by telling you about some experiments that tested how accurately people can assign numbers to the magnitudes of various aspects of a stimulus. In the traditional language of psychology these would be called experiments in absolute judgment. Historical accident, however, has decreed that they should have another name. We now call them experiments on the capacity of people to transmit information. Since these experiments would not have been done without the appearance of information theory on the psychological scene, and since the results are analyzed in terms of the concepts of information theory, I shall have to preface my discussion with a few remarks about this theory.

RETICULUM is a gateway to Internet resources for history and historians of basic, clinical, and behavioral neuroscience.  Links to existing sites are reviewed for salience and accuracy, organized by topic for convenient access, and regularly tested for availability.  Comments, questions, and additional resource suggestions and submissions are welcomed.

The Gestalt Archive Gestalt theoretical / Gestalt psychological articles
online in full text
A primary distinction that comes to mind when one undertakes to compare gestalten and computers is that computers as instruments by themselves are deprived of consciousness, whereas the cognitive and perceptual processes of gestalten are not. But this distinction does not really hold, because the finest example of a gestalt can operate without consciousness. It is the physiological functions of the human and animal body. The nervous system organizes the complex physical activities of the body as well as its cognitive ones.

Knight Dunlap (1875-1949) has been called the "forgotten man" of American psychology. While some behavior therapists associate his name with "negative practice," he is probably unknown to the majority of psychologists. Although it is highly unlikely that Dunlap will ever be a household name, this page attempts to redress the neglect of Dunlap's many contributions to the history of American psychology.

A quarterly journal, (March, June, etc.) publishing research articles, analysis and information across the entire field of history of mental illness and the forms of medicine, psychiatry, cultural response and social policy which have evolved to understand and treat it. It covers all periods of history up to the present day, and all nations and cultures. An important feature is the publication (and translation into English where necessary) of classic texts in in psychiatric history. Most issues carry book reviews.