The Story of Psychology

by Morton Hunt

  Zuckerman, C., Wallach, H., “Wolfgang Kohler.” In Sills,

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For this updated edition of The Story of Psychology, I received the help of a number of individuals and organizations whom it is my pleasure to thank.

  Some deserve special mention: Philip Zimbardo, Donald Norman, and Michael Gazzaniga steered me toward the central issues in the explosive developments in psychology within the fifteen years since the first edition of this book was published. Pamela Wilentz of the APA (American Psychological Association) Public Affairs Office, Jessica Kohout of the APA Office of Research, and Nina Jackson, Membership Coordinator of the APS (Association for Psychological Science) provided me with much essential information, contacts, and other forms of assistance. Donald Cherry, survey statistician, National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control, ferreted out answers to a number of difficult statistical questions, Howard Silver, executive director of COSSA (Consortium of Social Science Associations), was an invaluable source of information about political interference with psychological research.

  Among the many psychologists and other specialists I spoke to, I owe particular thanks to several for their patient explanations of current developments in their special areas: Martha Farah, director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania; Donald Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group and expert on applied cognitive science; Judith Beck, director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research; Paul Crits-Christoph, director, Center for Psychotherapy Research, University of Pennsylvania; and Brenda Major, president of SPSP (Society for Personality and Social Psychology).

  Other people who were helpful: Heidi and Guy Burgess, co-directors of the University of Colorado Conflict Resolution Consortium; Teddy Fine, of the Office of Communications, SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration); Harrison Gough; Wray Herbert; Dennis Krebs; Colleen Labbe of NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) Press; Hani Miletski, chair, Sex Therapy Certification Committee of AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists); Mark Olfson; Jennifer Shupinka, Division of Research, APS; and Abe Wolf, president of Division 29 (psychotherapy), APA.

  In addition to the organizations already cited, I was assisted in various ways by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Group Psychotherapy Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the Cognitive Science Society, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, the National Association of Social Workers, the Society for the Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

  The staff of the Gladwyne Free Library in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, aided me in gaining access to a number of recondite published works in various public and academic libraries.

  Bernice Hunt, my wife, was a multiskilled and tireless helper. Herself a writer, editor, computer buff, and retired psychotherapist, she aided me in many and varied ways, among them editing, proofreading, research assistance, online searching for books I needed, and amanuensis chores. She was not only a female version of Figaro but a Patient Griselda, putting up uncomplainingly with my innumerable requests, obsessive work habits, and fits of grouchiness.

  I also want to reiterate my gratitude to the people who helped me with the first edition of The Story of Psychology.

  Three people deserve my special thanks: Herman Gollob, my editor, who not only conceived of this project but throughout was a writer’s dream of what an editor should be; Bernice Hunt, my wife, who painstakingly and excellently line edited the first draft of the entire manuscript; and Frances Apt, who was a superb copy editor. Emily Wolman, my granddaughter, diligently tracked down and identified a number of missing or incomplete references.

  My thanks to the psychologists who read chapters about which they have special knowledge and made invaluable corrections and comments: Morton Deutsch, Randy Gobbel, Donald Norman, and Irvin Rock. Bernice Hunt lent her expertise as a psychotherapist and her wide knowledge of that field to a critique of chapter 17.

  The following granted me time for lengthy interviews and furnished me with useful data: Raymond D. Fowler, James M. Jones, Lewis P. Lipsitt, and Bryant Welch, all of the APA; Lee Herring of the APS; and Douglas Bray, Linda Gottfredson, Dennis Krebs, Ulric Neisser, Julian Rotter, and Martin E. P. Seligman. I was generously supplied with research materials by the APA, the APS, the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institutes of Health, and the Office of Technology Assessment.

  Librarians at Long Island University’s Southampton College and the main library at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, rendered me invaluable help.

  About 250 psychologists and people in other disciplines and professions answered my written and telephoned queries, sent me reprints, and made helpful suggestions. I cannot list them all here but must single out for notice some who extended themselves beyond the bounds of normal collegiality: David W. Arnold, Mitchell G. Ash, Aaron T. Beck, Ludy T. Benjamin, Arthur C. Bohart, Douglas Bray, Timothy C. Brock, Ross Buck, William C. Byham, Paul T. Costa, Kay Deaux, Charles E. Early, Albert Ellis, H. J. Eysenck, Charles R. Gallistel, Harrison G. Gough, Wallace B. Hall, Ann Howard, Karen Hollis, Carroll Izard, Edward E. Jones, Bela Julesz, Sigmund Koch, Ronald W. Mayer, James L. McGaugh, John C. Norcross, J. Bruce Overmier, Robert Plutchik, John A. Popplestone, Irvin Rock, Saul Rosenzweig, Leonard Saxe, Stanley Schachter, Robert S. Siegler, Philip Teitelbaum, Wilse B. Webb, Sheldon H. White, and William R. Woodward.

  I acknowledge permission from the following to quote copyrighted text and/or reproduce copyrighted figures as specified:

  Allyn and Bacon, figure 9.4, “IQ and Genetic Relationship,” from Psychology and Life, 17th ed., 2005, by Richard Gerrig and Philip G. Zimbardo (figure 1 in the present work).

  American Association for the Advancement of Science and Roger N. Shepard: three figures from “Mental Rotation of Three-Dimensional Objects” by R. N. Shepard, Science 171:2/10/11 (figure 36 in the present work).

  American Psychological Association: the figure of a cat from “Some Informational Aspects of Visual Perception” by Fred Attneave, Psychol. Rev. 61 (1954):183–193 (figure 29 in the present work); American Psychological Association and Jay McClelland: the figure “Network and connectionist representations of concepts relating to birds,” from the article “Why there are complementary learning systems and the hippocampus and neo-cortex,” Psychol. Rev. 102 (3) (1995):430 (figure 42 in the present work).

  The British Psychological Society: two figures of impossible objects from “Impossible Objects: A Special Type of Visual Illusion,” Brit. Jour. of Psychol. 49 (1958):31–33 (figure 27 in the present work).

  Raymond B. Cattell: diagram of three personality profiles from his “Personality Pinned Down,” Psychology Today, July 1973 (figure 17 in the present work).

  Albert Ellis: a passage from his Growth Through Reason (Wilshire, 1975), and a passage from his “Self-Direction in Sport and Life,” Rational Living 17 (1982):27–33.

  Elsevier Science Publishers: the logo COGNITION from early 1970s editions of Cognition (figure 45 in the present work); figure of Hs and Ss in “Forest Before Trees” by David Navon in Cognitive Psychology 9 (3), July, 1977 (figure 14 in the present work).

  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., and Elizabeth Loftus: figure titled “A piece of the semantic memory network—a later view,” from Cognitive Psychology and Information Processing: An Introduction (1979), edited by Roy Lachman, Janet L. Lachman, and Earl C. Butterfield (figure 41 in the present work).

  H. J. Eysenck: multiplex figure of personality dimensions from The Causes and Cures of Neurosis (Knapp, 1965), by H. J. Eysenck and S. Rachman (figure 16 in the present work).

  W. H. Freeman and Company, publishers, and Ulric Neisser: figure 1 from Ulric Neisser’s Cognition and Reality, 1976 (adapted in figure 39 in the present work).
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  Greenwood Publishing Group: a passage from Wilhelm Wundt’s Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology, University Publications of America, 1977 [1892, 1919].

  Guilford Publications and Aaron T. Beck: two passages from Cognitive Therapy of Depression, 1979, by Aaron T. Beck, A. John Rush, et al.

  HarperCollins Publishers and James R. Rest: a passage, adapted, from the excerpt of Rest’s doctoral dissertation that appears on pp. 49–55 of Lawrence Kohlberg, Psychology of Moral Development, vol. II, Harper and Row, 1984.

  Hogarth Press, Sigmund Freud Copyrights, and The Institute of Psychoanalysis: passages from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, 23 vols., 1953–1966, James Strachey, ed., as follows: three passages from pp. 63, 101–102, and 270 of “Studies in Hysteria,” 1893–1895, vol. II of the Standard Edition; two passages from pp. 116–118 of “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,” 1905, vol. VII; a passage from p. 223 of “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning,” 1911, vol. XII;. and a passage from pp. 94–95 of “Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety,” 1926, vol. XX.

  Houghton Mifflin Company: a passage from “The Case of Mary Jane Tilden” by Carl Rogers, in Casebook of Non-Directive Counseling, 1947, William U. Snyder, ed.; and two passages from The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976, by Julian Jaynes.

  Bela Julesz: random-dot stereogram from his Foundations of Cyclopean Perception, Chicago University Press, 1971 (figure 34 in the present work).

  Dalia S. Kleinmuntz, trustee for the Benjamin Kleinmuntz Trust: four sample Rorschach inkblots with interpretations, from Benjamin Kleinmuntz, Essentials of Abnormal Psychology, Harper and Row, 1980 (figure 15 in the present work).

  Macmillan Journals, Ltd.: diagram from “Apparent Relative Movement of ‘Unsharp’ and ‘Sharp’ Visual Patterns,” by E. J. Verheijen, reprinted by permission from Nature 29 (1963):160–161 (figure 21 in the present work).

  Macmillan Publishing Company: a passage from Science and Human Behavior by B. F. Skinner, The Free Press, 1953, and figures 2-14A and 2-14B from An Introduction to Perception, 1975, by Irvin Rock (figure 13 in the present work).

  Walter Mischel: three sample questions from a personality test, p. 132 of his Introduction to Personality, 2nd edition, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1976.

  The MIT Press: ray figure in D. M. MacKay, “Interactive Processes in Visual Perception,” in Sensory Communication, 1961, edited by Walter A. Rosenblith (figure 30 in the present work); figure 6-24, p. 160, in The Logic of Perception, 1983, by Irvin Rock (figure 32 in the present work); and figure 2, p. 50, from Parallel Distributed Processing, vol. 1, Foundations, by David E. Rumelhart, James L. McClelland, and the PDP Research Group, 1986 (figure 43 in the present work).

  W. W. Norton & Company: from The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, first published in English by Hogarth Press, 23 vols., 1953–1966; passages from “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,” 1905, vol. VIII; “Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,” 1916–1917, vol. XVI; “An Autobiographical Study,” 1925, vol. XX; “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety,” 1926, vol. XX; and “New Introductory Lectures,” 1933, vol. XXII. Also, three passages from Pioneers of Psychology, 1979, by Raymond Fancher.

  W. W. Norton & Company, and Michael Gazzaniga: figure 5.20 from Cognitive Neuro-science: The Biology of the Mind, 2nd ed., by Michael S. Gazzaniga, Richard B. Ivy, and George R. Mangun, 2002 (figure 31 in the present work); and figure 11.3 from Psychological Science, 2nd ed., by Michael S. Gazzaniga and Todd Heatherton, 2006, 2003 (figure 19 in the present work).

  Plenum Publishing Corp. and Peter Sifneos: a passage from Sifneos’s Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, 1987.

  Brent Roberts and the APA: fig. 2 from “Patterns of Mean-Level Change in Personality” by Brent Roberts, Kate Walton, and Wolfgang Viechtbauer,” Psychol. Bull. 132 (figure 18 in the present work).

  Julian Rotter and Univ. of Connecticut Psychology and CLAS Academic Services Center: questions 2, 4, 11, and 25 from his monograph “Generalized Expectancies for Internal versus External Control of Reinforcement.” Psychol. Monogr. 80 (1), whole no. 609 (1966).

  Routledge publications: passages from The Mentality of Apes by Wolfgang Köhler, 1948 [1917].

  Sage Publications, Morton Deutsch, and Bruce M. Russett, editor, Journal of Conflict Resolution: map of the “Acme-Bolt Game,” from “Studies of Interpersonal Bargaining,” by Morton Deutsch and Robert M. Krauss, Journal of Conflict Resolution 4 (1962), copyright by Sage Publications, 1962 (figure 20 in the present work).

  Roger N. Shepard: top line of figures on p. 107 of “Turning Something Over in the Mind” by Lynn A. Cooper and Roger N. Shepard, Scientific American, December 1984 (figure 37 in the present work).

  Stanford University Press: a passage from Psychology by Reciprocal Inhibition by Joseph Wolpe, 1958.

  Wadsworth Publishing Company: figure 7.42, p. 264, in Sensation and Perception, 3rd edition, 1989, by E. Bruce Goldstein (figure 35 in the present work).

  Copyright © 1993, 2007 by Morton Hunt

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States in different form by Doubleday, in 1993.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous edition as follows: Hunt, Morton M., 1920–

  The story of psychology / Morton Hunt.

  p. cm.

  1. Psychology—History. 1. Title.

  BF81.H86 1993

  150′.9—dc20 92-15131

  eISBN: 978-0-307-56830-4

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v3.0

  Introduction:

  The Fissioning of Psychology—

  and the Fusion of the

  Psychological Sciences

  We have come a long way.

  We have seen philosophers progress from metaphysical speculations and fancies about the mind to a quasi-scientific understanding of some of its processes, and at last, aided by physiologists, extract psychology from philosophy and establish it as an independent science.

  We have seen, too, that like other immature sciences, in its early decades as an independent field of knowledge psychology developed no truly unifying theory but only a number of special theories, each of which explained particular phenomena. The theories were the work of great men—men like Wundt, James, Freud, Watson, and Wertheimer— but great though they were, none was the Newton of psychology.

  Their followers, however, thought otherwise. The early decades of scientific psychology were “the era of the schools”—there were at least seven in the 1930s1—and the adherents of each claimed that their school’s theory could make a coherent science out of the chaotic mass of findings and mini-theories that had been accumulating since the time of Helmholtz. But by the middle of the last century, many psychologists had begun to think that none of the existing theories had or could become the unifying paradigm of psychology. Neither Wundtian theory nor behaviorism, for instance, had anything useful to say about such matters as problem solving or decision making; Freudian theory cast no light on such matters as perceptual processes or learning; Gestalt theory was unenlightening about child development. As Nevitt Sanford, then of Stanford University, said in 1963, “The great difficulty for general psychology is that the ‘general’ laws so much admired and so eagerly sought are never very general. On the contrary, they are usually quite specific.”2

  This could mean that psychology was simply not advanced enough to permit anyone to conceive an overarching theory. But it could mean something quite different: that psychology is not a science in the same sense as physics, chemistry, or biology; that it is a cluster of scientific fields that, though related, are too disparate to fit into the framework of a single theory. Two decades ago, in a
summing-up of the condition of psychology, William Kessen, a distinguished developmental psychologist, and his co-author, Emily D. Cahan, wrote in American Scientist:

  Lying at the deepest level is the conviction (for some of us, no more than a suspicion) that psychology is not susceptible to unifying ontological and epistemological premises any more than it is susceptible to definition by a particular content, a particular method, or a particular functional process…In the extreme version of this view, psychology has no core problem; rather than elevating perception or learning or problem-solving into a model for all psychology, we must recognize that psychology is as wide as the human mind and as rich in variety.3

  The story of psychology since the end of the era of the schools seemed for several decades to prove that conviction (or suspicion) correct. A number of new theories had appeared, but they pertained to specific fields of psychology, not all or even most of the discipline. No school claiming jurisdiction over the whole territory had been founded, and in fact the field of psychology burst apart and became a number of autonomous fields of specialization. By 1990 the American Psychological Association had recognized fifty-eight fields of psychology and had forty-five “divisions” (membership subgroups) representing those fields—the fission products of the split-up. And on it goes: Today APA recognizes some seventy fields of psychology and has fifty-six divisions.

  Michael Gazzaniga, president of the Association for Psychological Science (APS, formerly the American Psychological Society), recalled in a recent article that some years ago Leon Festinger epitomized the problem when telling him why he was quitting psychology for archaeology: “I realized I was learning more and more about less and less.”4

  Today, Gazzaniga said in the article, “every psychology department carries this curse, as does every field of human endeavor. We split, titrate, and specialize as a way of becoming experts on at least something. We then protect that turf as if it were life itself. We frown on the integrative and feel it is sort of for lightweights.” But in fact he himself has recently moved from Dartmouth to the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he now heads an interdisciplinary institute attracting “collaborators from philosophy, biology, psychology, anthropology, computer science, and the humanities…in the hunt for a better understanding of mind.”