Constructing Scientific Psychology

Constructing Scientific Psychology is the first full-scale interpretation of the life and work of the major American neuropsychologist Karl Lashley. It sets Lashley’s research at the heart of two controversies that polarized the American life and human sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. These concerned the relationship between ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ and the relative roles of ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ in shaping behaviour and intelligence. The book explodes the myth of Lashley’s neuropsychology as a fact-driven, ‘pure’ science by arguing that a belief in the power of heredity and a nativist and deeply conservative racial ideology informed every aspect of his theory and practice.

• A full-scale interpretation of the life and work of a major twentieth-century scientist • Integrates the history of psychology with the history of biology • Treats science as inseparable from its social/cultural context and questions the myth of pure science

Preface; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Lashley and Jennings: the origins of a hereditarian; 2. Lashley, Watson, and the meaning of behaviorism; 3. The pursuit of a neutral science; 4. Neuropsychology and hereditarianism; 5. Psychobiology and progressivism; 6. Psychobiology and its discontents: the Lashley-Herrick debate; 7. Hull and psychology as a social science; 8. Intelligence testing and thinking machines: the Lahley-Hull debate; 9. Pure psychology; 10. Public science and private life; 11. Genetics, race biology, and depoliticization; Epilogue: Lashley and American neuropsychology; Appendix: archives holding Lashley material; Bibliography; Index.