Book Review

A Pictorial History of Psychology

N Engl J Med 1997; 337:944-945September 25, 1997

Article

A Pictorial History of Psychology
Edited by Wolfgang G. Bringmann, Helmut E. Lück, Rudolf Miller, and Charles E. Early. 636 pp., illustrated. Chicago, Quintessence, 1997. $78. ISBN: 0-86715-292-3

The remarkably rapid growth of psychology and other behavioral sciences in the 20th century has had an enormous impact on the way we see ourselves and understand our interactions with the world. Tracing the emergence of this field has become a subspecialty for scholars, and many universities now require even undergraduates concentrating in psychology to complete a course in the “history and systems” of psychology.

Given the wide range of books already available on this topic, any major new work in the area must be evaluated in terms of whether it contributes any really new understanding of the unfolding of the field and whether it presents the connections between the past and the present more meaningfully than earlier books. In that respect, even though this book has some unique features, as a whole it is something of a disappointment.

For one thing, the title A Pictorial History of Psychology is a bit misleading, since “pictorial” suggests a work in which the burden of the presentation is carried by pictures, with an accompanying and explanatory text. This book, in fact, consists of a large number of essays, all with accompanying photos or drawings, but in many of them the text makes minimal or no reference to the pictures. Moreover, this is not a history in the sense of an integrated story of how or why something happened. Instead, it is a compilation of 107 short and essentially independent articles, 50 of which are translations from an earlier publication in German and 57 of which are new pieces written in English for this book. The articles are grouped roughly according to chronology or subject area, but unfortunately they are not tied together by the editors in any way that would help a reader understand the connection between the disparate, albeit at times fascinating, tales told in the individual essays.

One must sympathize with editors who had to struggle with 107 articles by 109 authors and coauthors, so perhaps one cannot expect any unity of writing or consistency of approach to the enormously diverse topics covered. There is little apparent correlation between the space devoted to a topic and its importance. For example, the life and work of Sigmund Freud, the groundbreaking developer of psychoanalysis, is summarized in four pages, the same number as are given over to a discussion of the role of psychological methods in the selection of German railroad crews.

Despite these flaws, there is much to recommend this work. It is comprehensive, covering major themes from the early prescientific period through the rise of experimental psychology in the 19th century. Much of the latter took place in Germany, and hence the discussion is heavily weighted toward scientific psychology's German roots in the articles translated from German. Adequate though selective presentations on the later evolution of American behavioral sciences are also provided. A unique feature is the inclusion of reviews of developments in countries Americans do not usually think of as having contributed much to the evolution of the field — for example, the Netherlands, Hungary, Spain, Italy, and the countries of Latin America.

There are even a few gems. One is an essay documenting the fact that card 1 of the Thematic Apperception Test, a widely used projective personality-assessment technique, which shows a young boy gazing indeterminately at a violin on a table in front of him, turns out to have been a slightly modified publicity photograph of the child prodigy and later world-renowned violinist Yehudi Menuhin.

Then there is the profusion of pictures: portraits of pioneers in psychology, displays of early laboratory equipment, photographs of important buildings, facsimiles of letters and diaries — a unique collection of documentary material that alone would qualify this as a book that deserves to be found in any library.

As a library book, this work belongs in the encyclopedia section, since that is what it truly is — an assemblage of relatively brief, disconnected, encyclopedia-type articles on a broad and somewhat indiscriminate range of topics in the history of psychology. It is well worth a browse, but it is not exactly a coherent history of the field of psychology.

Robert H. Goldstein, Ph.D.
University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, NY 14642