Volume 17, Number 1, Winter
Lobotomy in Scandinavian Psychiatry
Joar Tranøy, University of Oslo
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 1–20, ISSN 0271–0137
This article surveys the development of the use of lobotomy in Scandinavian psychiatry. Scandinavian hospitals lobotomized 2.5 times as many people per capita as hospitals in the United States. The use of lobotomy in Scandinavia is chiefly illustrated by detailed patient records from Gaustad Mental Hospital in Oslo, Norway, where the most lobotomies were performed. Overcrowding and understaffing in mental hospitals cannot explain the extensive use of lobotomy in Scandinavia since the frequency of operations did not correlate with these factors. Neither can ignorance of damaging effects be used as a justification since such effects were discussed very early in the development of the surgery. Finally, the patient’s own suffering did not seem to be a significant factor. Rather, lobotomy seems to have been primarily a way of controlling troublesome patients and minimizing their disruptions of medical, nursing and hospital routines.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Joar Tranøy, Institute for Criminology, University of Oslo, P.B. 6872, St. Olavs plass, N-0130 Oslo, Norway.
Instrument Driven Theory
Warren W. Tryon, Fordham University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 21—30, ISSN 0271—0137
Instruments are mainly used to provide data for testing theoretical predictions. However, sometimes instrument development sets the occasion for profound theoretical changes which are totally unanticipated. This article presents examples of instrument driven theory derived from biology and physics (astronomy) as well as discussing implications for psychology. The role of theory in the design of instruments is considered.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Warren W. Tryon, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Fordham University, Bronx, New York 10458—5198 (E-mail: Wtryon@Murray.Fordham.edu).
Disunity in Psychology and Other Sciences: The Network or the Block Universe?
Wayne Viney, Colorado State University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 31—44, ISSN 0271—0137
The nineteenth-century metaphor of a block universe in which science is regarded as a structure consisting of basic building blocks resting on firm foundations is contrasted with the contemporary metaphor of science as a network of relations. The network metaphor challenges the view that one science is more foundational than others and raises questions about whether an all-pervasive unity is desirable or even possible. The unity-disunity issue in psychology and other sciences (with special reference to biology) is discussed with respect to the network and building block metaphors and with respect to three arenas: organizations, methodology, and subject content areas. It is argued that in these three arenas, psychology is no more disunified than biology. There is no basis for the development of a disciplinary inferiority complex based on the belief that the other sciences are unified while psychology remains in the intellectual backwaters of plurality.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Wayne Viney Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523.
The Sciousness Hypothesis – Part I
Thomas Natsoulas, University of California, Davis
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 45—66, ISSN 0271—0137
The Sciousness Hypothesis holds that how we know our mental-occurrence instances does not include our having immediate awareness of them. Rather, we take notice of our behaviors or bodily reactions and infer mental-occurrence instances that would explain them. In The Principles,James left it an open question whether the Sciousness Hypothesis is true, and proceeded in accordance with the conviction that one’s stream of consciousness consists only of basic durational components of which one has (or could have had) immediate awareness. Nevertheless, James seems to have been tempted by the Sciousness Hypothesis. And he adopted an account of inner awareness that is popular among present-day psychologists of consciousness, to the effect that awareness of a mental-occurrence instance never takes place from within its phenomenological structure, always from a certain distance, by means of a distinct mental-occurrence instance. This means that the immediacy of inner awareness can only be a temporal and causal immediacy, not the kind we seem to have, whereby we consciously participate in the occurrence of a mental state. The present article, which is published in two separate though continuous parts, clarifies and elaborates the Sciousness Hypothesis, and critically discusses it and the kind of account of inner awareness that seems closest to it.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Thomas Natsoulas, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, California, 95616-8686.
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture
Book Author: Paul Krassner. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1993
Reviewed by Steven Connelly, Indiana State University
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 67—74, ISSN 0271—0137
This study reports on the current stereotypes of ten ethnic groups. Black college students, 38 males and 49 females enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses at a black religiously affiliated college in the southeast, indicated traits they felt were typical of each of ten ethnic groups. The traits were selected from a list of 84 adjectives originally used by Katz and Braly (1933) in a study of racial stereotypes. Clear stereotypes emerged for six ethnic groups; all were relatively positive except one, whites, which was extremely negative. The most favorable stereotypes were of Chinese and Jews. The stereotype of blacks ranked third in favorableness, followed by Italians and Germans. Interracial relations have focused primarily on decreasing white prejudice and stereotypes of blacks.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Linda A. Foley, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of North Florida, Jacksonville, Florida 32216.
Vico, Metaphor, and the Origin of Language
Book Authors: Marcel Danesi. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1993
Giambattista Vico and the Cognitive Science Enterprise
Book Author: Marcel Danesi. (Emory Vico Studies edited series, Volume 4). New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1995
Reviewed by Robert E. Haskell, University of New England
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Winter 1996, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 75—78, ISSN 0271—0137
[Note: First paragraph, no abstract available.] In the last decade or so there has been a rediscovery of Giambattista Vico’s (1668—1744) work and its importance to both philosophy and psychology. The publication of these two books by Marcel Danesi, Professor of Semiotics and Italian at the University of Toronto, and Director of the Program in Semiotics, represents a re-entering of Giambattista Vico’s works into the social and behavioral sciences and into cognitive science proper. These two books constitute no less than a Vichian cognitive science project.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert E. Haskell, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, Department of Social and Behavioral Science,University of New England, Biddeford, Maine 04005; or by e-mail to haskellr@biddeford.com
Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle: The Evolution of a “Transcultural” Approach to Wholeness
Book Author: Steven M. Rosen. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994
Reviewed by Michael Washburn, Indiana University South Bend
The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Vol. 17, No. 1, Pages 79-82, ISSN 0271—0137
[Note: First paragraph, no abstract available.] Steven Rosen has written a fascinating book which brings together and updates essays he has published over the past twenty years. Rosen is a professor of psychology who is well versed in philosophy, mathematics, and physics, and his essays treat topics that draw together ideas from all of these fields. Some of the chapters of Science, Paradox, and the Moebius Principle discuss issues in mathematics and physics in ways that may present a challenge for people in the behavioral sciences or humanities. This is especially true of the chapter “A Neo-Intuitive Proposal for Kaluza-Klein Unification,” which, originally published in Foundations of Physics, is a technically sophisticated essay on cosmogony conceived as a process of dimensional generation. Even this paper, however, is accessible in its basic ideas to the general reader. And it is well worth serious study, for it formulates Rosen’s theoretical program in an uncompromisingly rigorous and elegant way. It is a tour de force and the centerpiece of the collection.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael Washburn, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, Indiana University South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Ave., P.O. Box 7111, South Bend, Indiana 46634.
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