The story of psychology in America that we began in the last chapter relies heavily on the standard storyline that experimental psychology was born in the Leipzig laboratory of Wilhelm Wundt and was brought to the United States by a bevy of enthusiastic American students who traveled to Germany to study the new science.
As the standard story goes, after bringing back what they learned in Leipzig to their native land, they combined it with the can-do, practical, functionally oriented ethos of the American context, importing some aspects of Galtonian individual-difference approaches along the way.
What this account fails to elaborate are the preexisting strands of psychological thought and practice in the United States onto which these new psychologists superimposed their German experiences.
In terms of intellectual antecedents, several historians of psychology have shown that a firmly established tradition of American mental philos- ophy and moral philosophy clearly addressed psychological topics before the new psycholo- gists declared their new science and of which they were often well aware because of their previous training. In typical historical accounts, American mental and moral philosophy has been presented (when referred to) as the old way of thinking from which the new Psychology was a radical de- parture and to which the new psychologists owed nothing. The rhetoric of the new psychologists was intended to promulgate the view that theirs was a revolution, rather than an evolution, in thinking. As several historians of psychology have persuasively argued, however, the actual process whereby the new Psychology indigenized to its local context was more like a changing of the guard than a palace revolution. As historian of psychology Al Fuchs has remarked, ‘‘The psy- chology that evolved in the United States was indebted not only to the laboratories of Europe but also to the mental philosophy that the first
generation of the new psychologists had learned from their college texts’’ (2000, p. 3).
This ‘‘college text’’ mental and moral philos- ophy had a history of its own. It was heavily imbued with the Scottish common sense school represented by Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), Thomas Reid (1710–1796), and Thomas Brown (1778–1820), with some influence from the asso- ciationism of John Locke. The Scottish common sense school, formed partly in reaction to the idealism of George Berkeley and the skepticism of David Hume, stated that we perceive the world directly through our senses and that this
‘‘common sense’’ information is the source of ac- curate knowledge about real things in the world.
John Witherspoon (1723–1794), a minister with theChurch of Scotland, has been credited with bringing Scottish common sense realism to the United States. Witherspoon was heavily influ- enced by the writings of Reid, especially hisAn Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense(1764). He adhered to the Scot- tish realist view that knowledge acquired by way of the senses is superior to knowledge based purely on reasoning. In this view, mental phi- losophy would be the study of the God-given faculties of the mind—namely, the understand- ing (knowing), the will (doing), and the affections (feeling)—through direct experience and induc- tive methods. Witherspoon was critical of the deistic views that had gained momentum among college students under the influence of Newton and Locke.Deismwas the belief that although God designed the universe and set the clock- work in motion, He had no direct influence, and did not intervene, in the day-to-day affairs of humans. As a belief system, Deism derived from Enlightenment rationalism and was ori- ented toward the new scientific approaches to understanding nature and man’s place in it. Many forward-thinking people of this era were Deist.
In the late 1700s, on the heels of the Ameri- can and French revolutions, students at American colleges were displaying unprecedented levels of atheism, deism, and materialism. This was partic- ularly worrisome, given that almost all American
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colleges were affiliated with one of the Protestant Christian religions. Harvard was Unitarian, Yale wasCongregationalist, and Princeton (then still theCollege of New Jersey) was Presbyterian. Of these branches of Protestantism, Presbyterian- ism was the most dominant. It was through the influence of Witherspoon that the mental and moral philosophy of the Scottish enlightenment was to change the course of American philoso- phy and reign in some of the worrisome student revolt by providing not just intellectual guidance but moral guidance as well.Moral philosophy was the branch of philosophy that dealt with ethics and conduct. Mental philosophy dealt with the elements and processes of the mind and how they influenced action. Most mental and moral philosophers were trained as ministers.
In the United States, seminary training was the sole route to graduate education until the new research universities emerged at the end of the 19th century.
Witherspoon became president of Princeton University in 1768 and used his position to spread Scottish common sense realism through- out the curriculum. As historian of psychology Rand Evans (1984) has noted, by the 1820s, Scottish philosophy was the norm in Amer- ican colleges, often taught by the president of the university in the required course on mental and moral philosophy. By the time it reached the textbooks read by the future van- guard of the new Psychology, however, it had acquired a distinctly American inflection. One of the earliest—and most influential—textbooks of American mental philosophy was written by Thomas Upham (1799–1872) of Bowdoin College.
Upham received his graduate training at the Andover Theological Seminary. He wrote Elements of Intellectual Philosophy in 1827. This work is notable in that its table of contents appears to delineate, somewhat presciently, the subjects that would come to be of interest to the later experimental psychologists. Included are sections on sensation and perception, attention, dreaming, consciousness, association, memory, reasoning, emotions, and instincts, to take just
a small sample. It is systematic and heavily inductive, reflecting the immense popularity that Baconian philosophy of science enjoyed in that period; that is, it summarized, organized, and attempted to find lawful relationships among a large body of facts. In 1832, Upham retitled his book Elements of Mental Philosophy to more accurately reflect the scope of topics he covered, which included not only the intellect but the sensibilities and the will as well. His complete table of contents listed 495 topics in all.
Upham’s text, and indeed American mental philosophy generally, emphasized the active pro- cesses of the mind, or the mind-in-use, and had a distinctly functional character. Nonetheless, the American mental philosophy of the pre–Civil War period was still closely tied to the view that humans and the human mind were the unique creations of a Protestant God. Darwinian evolu- tionary theory, as well as the emerging research on physiological psychology, posed a materialis- tic challenge to this view. Some later Scottish realist mental philosophers in America, such as James McCosh (1811–1895), dealt with this by regarding evolution as an example of God’s handiwork. McCosh was elected president of Princeton in 1868, about 100 years after With- erspoon. He was remarkably open to the new developments in psychology. Although a strong Scottish realist mental philosopher, McCosh was
FIGURE 4.1 James McCosh
FORGING A PSYCHOLOGICAL SENSIBILITY: FROM RELIGION TO PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 75
interested in the new experimental psychology, especially the work in physiological psychology, and encouraged his students to further their studies of these topics. James Mark Baldwin (1861–1934) was one of his students. Baldwin re- called that, in McCosh’s class on natural realism, the students read Wundt and learned about the theory of biological evolution. Princeton faculty members, at the request of McCosh, gave labo- ratory demonstrations in the new Psychology.
Thus, historians have argued that a more accurate story of the arrival of Wundtian experi- mental psychology in America would emphasize the important role played by training in the ex- perimental method but would show that within a few short years the Wundtian focus on mind-as- contents would disappear. Instead, the strongly entrenched Scottish philosophy of mind-in-use and its emphasis on mental functions would com- bine with the experimental method to produce a distinctly American amalgam. The new psy- chologists resisted explicitly acknowledging their debt to their American mental philosophy fore- bears, however. This was partly due to their desire to separate their new science from both philosophy and religion. In the case of religion, they walked a fine line. University administra- tors and the public were reluctant to embrace a new discipline that appeared to endorse godless materialism. As we show later in this chapter, several rhetorical strategies were used by profes- sionalizers of the new science, such as G. Stanley Hall, to convince the public that psychology and religion, or science and soul, could coexist.
FORGING A PSYCHOLOGICAL SENSIBILITY: FROM RELIGION TO PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
Outside the walls of the academy, exciting devel- opments proved to be key elements in the cre- ation of psychological sensibility. Religion played an important role in these events, especially what historian of religionCatherine Albanese (2007) has called the metaphysical stream of Ameri- can religion. We explore this more later. First,
we need to contextualize our story with a brief overview of 19th-century American life.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the United States was largely a rural society whose population, while not entirely homogeneous, was principally of Anglo-Saxon and Northern Euro- pean descent. Over the course of the century, the country became both more urbanized and industrialized. In the second half of the century, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and China made the country more ethnically diverse, although it should be noted that these immigrants were subject to intense discrimina- tion. Native Americans and African Americans, most of whom were brought over in the slave trade, were also an important part of the popu- lation and contributed to the events we describe in ways that historians are still seeking to under- stand. All of these trends reshaped American life in ways that were important to our story.
Education also underwent dramatic changes during the century. Although educational progress was slow and uneven, by midcentury the United States had the highest literacy rate in the world. This helped create a demand for printed materials of all kinds and made dissemination of new ideas easier. Americans of all classes developed an appetite for information and new knowledge, whether it was disseminated through books, newspapers, and pamphlets or via public lectures and demonstrations.
However, education for the professions and for science was decidedly mixed in the first half of the century. Until the late 19th century, one could still become a physician through an apprenticeship without any formal medical education. Scientific education and training were available only to a privileged few; until late in the century, most Americans, indeed most educated people in the Western world, understood science to be any form of systematic knowledge. It was not until 1876 that the United States had its first graduate university, when Johns Hopkins University was established in Baltimore.
A critical aspect of the events and changes we describe was the belief that every person could think and decide for themselves, whether
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the matter concerned religion, medicine, or any other issue. This populism grew rapidly after the American Revolution and was celebrated in the presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1820s. Jack- son was a rough-and-tumble ‘‘common man’’
who inspired an ethos of the self-made man and a disregard for the privileges typically accorded the elites. In this antiauthoritarian environment, the canons of traditional societies with their so- cial hierarchies were challenged, along with the received authorities of religion, science, and the professions. Many individuals asserted their own interpretations of science and religion. In one sense, this promoted an age of exploration of new ideas about human nature. The populism exemplified by Jackson was also found in religion and among religious leaders, often leading to new religious groups and idiosyncratic interpre- tations. This should be kept in mind as we explore the contributions to an American psychological sensibility.
We should also note that the movements and practices we describe here held immense appeal to people in all strata of American society. Phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism, and New Thought attracted followers from among the best-educated and from among the least-educated members of the population. Each movement developed its own literature—books, magazines, journals, pamphlets—and had its own lecture circuit. In other words, these events and movements were not on the margins, but were very much in the public spotlight. At the peak of each movement, they were very much on the minds of Americans who were hungry to know more about the phenomena they described and to receive whatever benefit they promised.
Religion and Revival
From their arrival, European settlers brought their religious views and practices with them to what became the United States. Indeed, for many
of them, freedom to practice religion was their motivation to immigrate to such a far shore.
Since then, there have been periodic upswings in religious fervor that acted like a social contagion in its spread across great swaths of the country.
New and renewed religious movements in the 18th century in German-speaking countries (the Pietists), England (the Methodists), and Scotland (among Congregationalists and Presbyterians) also had their counterparts in America. What historians call the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s was one such period marked by renewed religious fervor and conversion across New England. One facet of this awakening was embodied in the great American preacher of the time, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), who articulated a religious psychology that characterized the soul as an inseparable unity of understanding, will, and affections.
Another, more dynamic facet of the Awaken- ing was the Methodist revivalism led in America by George Whitefield (1714–1770) and John Wesley (1703–1791). Both men preached up and down the Eastern seaboard colonies, of- ten to open-air crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. The legacy of their work was not only many newChristian believers but also openness to deep and profound religious experi- ences, sometimes manifested in marked physical demonstrations, such as shouting, falling down, visions, and trance-like behaviors. As we demon- strate, this shout tradition had implications for the development of an everyday psychology in the 19th century.
In the 19th century, a new religious revival swept over the North and Midwest of America.
Out of this revival, new religious and philosoph- ical movements emerged that helped create a psychological sensibility in the United States.
The religious movements included Methodism, Seventh-Day Adventism, and Mormonism. We use Methodism to illustrate the contribution to the creation of psychological understanding.
The Methodist EpiscopalChurch grew from the work of Wesley and his colleagues in England
FORGING A PSYCHOLOGICAL SENSIBILITY: FROM RELIGION TO PSYCHICAL RESEARCH 77
in the mid-18th century. By the early 19th cen- tury, it was the fastest growing denomination in the United States, doubling its membership from 1820 to 1830 to a half-million adherents. The rapid growth of Methodism reflected what histo- rian of American religion Nathan Hatch (1989) has termed ‘‘religious populism.’’ Methodist meetings became known for involvement of the lay members in the services, with signs of grace and conversion often being acted out physically, much as in the traditions laid down earlier. The physical demonstrations of conversion and per- sonal transformation came to be referred to as theshout traditionin American revivalist reli- gion. The emotional and psychological intensity of these experiences, while religious in character, began to be perceived by some observers and participants as analogous to other psychologi- cal phenomena, especially the recently imported mesmeric practices.
Mesmerism and Religion
In the next chapter, we explore the origins of mesmerism in greater detail and trace its influence into psychiatry and the psychology of mental health. Here, we will give a brief background.
Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1805) was a Viennese physician who drew upon then current theories about the influence of various physical forces—stars, planets, magnets—to promote an understanding of health and disease based upon the balance of bodily fluids. The mesmeric state was characterized by a deep connection between the mesmerist and the subject; the connection was one of sympathy between the two. Later, this connection was thought of as the psychological characteristic of suggestibility. Once in this state, it was thought individuals could be directed to perform physical and intellectual tasks that were outside their capacity in the normal state. Often, upon being ‘‘awakened’’ from the mesmeric state, people could not remember what had occurred.
FIGURE 4.2 Franz Anton Mesmer
Mesmer was discredited in both Vienna and Paris, but his ideas and practices were kept alive by his followers and from the late 18th century into the 19th century were exported across Europe and England and to North America. Mesmer’s most important disciple, Marquis de Puys´egur (1751–1825), expanded the psychological possibilities of mesmerism with his demonstration of the mesmeric trance state, which he called magnetic somnambulism.
The trance state, Puys´egur discovered, could be induced with a series of arm movements or ‘‘magnetic passes.’’ In England, mesmerism became part of the reform of medical education and practice and was eventually transformed into hypnosis. In both England and the United States, mesmerism was often combined with phrenology and was part of the armamentarium of itinerant healers and lecturers. This, too, is an untold part of the history of everyday psychology in America.
Mesmerism was also perceived by some minis- ters as a possible way to understand the workings of the human mind normally hidden from view.
Historian of psychology David Schmit (2005, 2009) has begun to explain the complex relation- ships among mesmerism, American religion, and spiritualism, indicating that the questions raised by mesmeric and spiritualistic practices led to
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attempts to scientifically or systematically in- vestigate them for their psychological meaning.
Among the practitioners of mesmerism during its most popular period in the United States in the 1840s were several ministers and former minis- ters, including La Roy Sunderland (1804–1885).
His work was critically important in articulat- ing a psychological view of religious experience based on insights gained from mesmerism.
Sunderland was converted and called to the Methodist ministry in the early 1820s. For 10 years, he was a Methodist revivalist preacher in the shout tradition. He then worked as a reformer and advocate for abolition of slavery for several years before leaving the Methodist ministry in the early 1840s. Sunderland then focused on developing his psychological theories and practices and embraced spiritualism for a short period in the 1850s.
What is critical about Sunderland’s involve- ment is that he sought to understand the re- ligiously inspired phenomena in psychological terms. His periodical,The Magnet,was an outlet for his theorizing about the connections between the mesmeric state and the experiences of those caught up in religious ecstasies in camp meet- ings and revival settings. He claimed, based on his experience as a minister, that the phenom- ena were the same. Such naturalistic explanations placed the two states on a continuum of normal- ity, however abnormal they may have appeared to outsiders.
In the 1840s, Sunderland, like many of his colleagues, attempted to merge mesmerism with phrenology, another recent import from Europe.
We have already discussed phrenology’s trajec- tory in the United States (see Chapter 2). As noted there, phrenology had a remarkable ap- peal to people in every walk of life, including those who often engaged in enthusiastic wor- ship traditions. This phrenomesmerism did not persist, as the two approaches were based upon different premises of human functioning. By the 1850s, Sunderland had embraced spiritualism and its claim that it was possible to commu- nicate with the spirit realm and, thus, with the
dead. Although he did not remain a spiritualist, Sunderland was typical of his day among those whose interests lay in the intersection of religion and psychology.
Spiritualism
Spiritualismemerged in the mid-1800s in a time when religious enthusiasm was still pronounced and mesmerism and phrenology were accepted by a growing number of Americans. It, too, was part of the beliefs and practices that helped make Americans psychologically minded.
The link between spiritualism and mesmerism was that some practitioners, such as Sunderland, believed that the mesmeric state was like a door- way into the spirit realm, providing empirical and verifiable proof of the existence of that realm.
The psychological understanding of the mes- meric state promoted by people like Sunderland and others made it appear to be a natural, rather than a supernatural, phenomenon. This natural- ism of mesmerism, then, helped make commu- nication with the spirit realm also seem natural.
To many spiritualists, theirs was an experiential religion, based on a belief in the immortality of souls and an afterlife, just as in Methodism or other belief systems. Many spiritualist leaders also sought to explain their approach as scien- tific psychology, based on empirical evidence, and some sought the involvement of scientists in validating their claims. We discuss the role of psychologists in these matters later.
Spiritualism drew upon technological innova- tions, such as the wireless telegraph, to explain spiritualist phenomena. When X-rays were dis- covered in the 1890s, many suggested that it was only a matter of time before scientists discov- ered the heretofore secret energy rays that made spiritualist practices work. We should note that spiritualism enjoyed a great popularity, among all classes, especially after the American Civil War (1861–1865). So many men were killed in the war, more than 600,000, that many homes had no adolescent or adult males in residence for several