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In recent decades, various studies have challenged the traditional view that John Broadus Watson's Behaviorist Manifesto prompted a psychological revolution. However, methodological hindrances underlie all these attempts to evaluate the impact of Watson's study, such as the absence of comparative parameters. This article remedies this problem by conducting a comparative citation analysis involving Watson and eight other representative psychologists of the time: J. R. Angell, H. Carr, J. M. Cattell, J. Dewey, G. S. Hall, W. James, E. L. Thorndike, and E. B. Titchener. Eight important American journals were scrutinized for the period between 1903 and 1923, a decade before and a decade after the publication of Watson's Manifesto. The results suggest that even if Watson's study cannot be taken as revolutionary, it had an impact between 1914 and 1923 that was close to Dewey's, Titchener's, and Thorndike's and higher than Angell's, Carr's, Cattell's, and Hall's, although distant from James's. Finally, some methodological implications of this study are discussed.

Objective: The mind-brain problem (MBP) has marked implications for psychiatry, but has been poorly discussed in the psychiatric literature. This paper evaluates the presentation of the MBP in the three leading general psychiatry journals during the last 20 years. Methods: Systematic review of articles on the MBP published in the three general psychiatry journals with the highest impact factor from 1995 to 2015. The content of these articles was analyzed and discussed in the light of contemporary debates on the MBP. Results: Twenty-three papers, usually written by prestigious authors, explicitly discussed the MBP and received many citations (mean = 130). The two main categories were critiques of dualism and defenses of physicalism (mind as a brain product). These papers revealed several misrepresentations of theoretical positions and lacked relevant contemporary literature. Without further discussion or evidence, they presented the MBP as solved, dualism as an old-fashioned or superstitious idea, and physicalism as the only rational and empirically confirmed option. Conclusion: The MBP has not been properly presented and discussed in the three leading psychiatric journals in the last 20 years. The few articles on the topic have been highly cited, but reveal misrepresentations and lack of careful philosophical discussion, as well as a strong bias against dualism and toward a materialist/physicalist approach to psychiatry.

William James é uma figura central na história da psicologia e da filosofia. Entretanto, a interpretação de sua obra ainda está repleta de lacunas e mal-entendidos. Por exemplo, a extensão e o sentido do seu projeto psicológico permanecem mal compreendidos. Para muitos autores, James teria abandonado a psicologia após The Principles of Psychology (1890), ao passo que outros entendem o The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) como obra psicológica. O objetivo deste artigo é explorar a questão da evolução do projeto psicológico de James, acompanhando diversos momentos de sua manifestação ao longo de sua carreira. Ao final, vamos defender aquilo que chamamos de tese da pervasividade, segundo a qual a psicologia está presente em toda a obra de James.

In my rejoinder, I show how Brock’s and Burman’s replies to my article (Araujo, 2017) are based on a series of misunderstandings and misattributions. First, I argue that Brock ignores crucial passages of my article and my related book, and show not only that he misunderstands Wundt’s position on the introspective method, but also that his claim, according to which there is nothing new in my approach, lacks substance. Second, I argue that Burman’s text fails to make contact with the substantive thrust of my paper, and that his appeal to contextualism is vague and does not address the substantive questions I raise. Finally, I conclude that Brock’s rejection of my proposal, as well as his misunderstandings and misattributions, derives from a kind of methodological dogmatism, against which the best medicine is methodological pluralism, and that Burman’s worries are unjustified and can be avoided by a careful reading of my paper.

The suspicion that language can become an obstacle to human knowledge is not new in the Western intellectual tradition. Following the empiricist legacy, many authors have suggested the perils and pitfalls of common sense language for science. Applied to psychology, this leads to the issue of the reliability of psychological language for scientific psychology. William James, in his Principles of Psychology, was one of the first psychologists to address this problem explicitly. The goal of this paper is to situate his position and contrast it with contemporary debates over the status of folk psychology. The results indicate that James conceived of common sense psychology in a very complex manner, and pointed to a kind of illusion that remains ignored in the current literature, with negative consequences for psychology. I conclude by suggesting the relevance of James for contemporary debates in theoretical and philosophical psychology.

Recent transformations in the history of science and the philosophy of science have led historians of psychology to raise questions about the future development of their historiography. Although there is a dominant tendency among them to view their discipline as related to the social turn in the history of science, there is no consensus over how to approach the history of psychology methodologically. The aim of this article is to address the issue of the future of the historiography of psychology by proposing an alternative but complementary path for the field, which I call a philosophical history of psychology. In order to achieve this goal, I will first present and discuss the emergence of the social turn in the history of psychology, showing some of its problems. I will then introduce the contemporary debate about the integration of the history of science and the philosophy of science as an alternative model for the history of psychology. Finally, I will propose general guidelines for a philosophical history of psychology, discussing some of its possible advantages and limitations.

Edward Titchener (1867–1927) is one of the most prominent figures in the history of American psychology from the early 20th century. Accordingly, his psychological system—structuralism—has received due attention in the secondary literature. However, a closer look at traditional interpretations of the development of Titchener’s ideas reveals a series of missing elements, such as his early studies before going to Leipzig. The central goal of this article is to present the main elements of Titchener’s intellectual education in Oxford, thereby showing the influence of the British tradition of the 19th century upon his early intellectual development. On the basis of hitherto unexplored primary sources, we discuss Titchener’s relationship with British idealism and scientific naturalism, two movements that shaped a significant part of British psychological thinking in the 19th century. We conclude that Titchener’s Oxford years are much more relevant to understanding his intellectual development than the literature has so far assumed.

In order to legitimate itself as a science, psychology has faced the ongoing problem of establishing its proper method of investigation. In this context, debates on introspection have emerged that have remained intense since the 18th century. However, contemporary debates and historical investigations on this topic have not done justice to the richness and diversity of positions, leading to oversimplifications and hasty generalizations, as if the terms “introspection” and “introspectionism” referred to one and same thing. The central goal of this article is to offer an analysis of William James’s position on the introspective method within the intellectual context of his time, covering the period from his early writings until the publication, in 1890, of The Principles of Psychology. Our results indicate that James used two different types of introspection. We conclude by discussing divergences in the secondary literature and the implications of our study for historical and theoretical debates in psychology.

Contexto: As visões dos psiquiatras sobre a relação mente-cérebro (RMC) têm marcantes implicações para a clínica e a pesquisa, mas há carência de estudos sobre esse tema. Objetivos: Avaliar as opiniões dos psiquiatras sobre a RMC e se elas são suscetíveis ou não a mudanças. Métodos: Realizamos um levanta- mento sobre as visões que os psiquiatras possuem sobre a RMC imediatamente antes e após um debate sobre a RMC no Congresso Brasileiro de Psiquiatria de 2014. Resultados: Inicialmente, entre mais de 600 participantes, 53% endossaram a visão de que “a mente (o ‘Eu’) é um produto da atividade cerebral”, enquanto 47% discordaram. Além disso, 72% contestaram a visão de que “o universo é composto apenas de matéria”. Após o debate, 30% mudaram de uma visão materialista da mente para uma perspectiva não materialista, enquanto 17% mudaram na direção oposta. Conclusão: Os psiquiatras se interessam por debates sobre a RMC, não possuem uma visão monolítica sobre o tema e suas opiniões estão abertas a reflexões e mudanças, sugerindo a necessidade de mais estudos em profundidade e de debates rigorosos, mas não dogmáticos sobre o tema.

Wilhelm Wundt’s biography is one of the main domains in Wundt scholarship that deserves more detailed attention. The few existing biographical works present many problems, ranging from vagueness to chronological inaccuracies, among others. One of the important gaps concerns the so-called Heidelberg period (1852–1874), during which he went from being a medical student to holding a professorship at the University of Heidelberg. The aim of this article is to dispel a very common confusion in the secondary literature, which refers to Wundt’s assistantship with Helmholtz at the Physiological Institute, by establishing the precise dates of his assistantship. Contrary to what is generally repeated in the secondary literature, the primary sources allow us to determine precisely this period from October 1858 to March 1865. I conclude by pointing out the indispensability of the primary sources not only to Wundt scholarship but also to the historiography of psychology in general.

After its foundation, the Laboratory for Experimental Psychology at Leipzig University became an international center for psychological research, attracting students from all over the world. The Russian physiologist and psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev (1857–1927) was one of Wilhelm Wundt's students in 1885, and after returning to Russia he continued enthusiastically his experimental research on mental phenomena. However, he gradually distanced himself from Wundt's psychological project and developed a new concept of psychology: the so-called Objective Psychology or Psychoreflexology. The goal of this paper is to analyze Bekhterev's position in relation to Wundt's experimental psychology, by showing how the former came to reject the latter's conception of psychology. The results indicate that Bekhterev's development of a philosophical program, including his growing interest in establishing a new Weltanschauung is the main reason behind his divergence with Wundt, which is reflected in his conception of scientific psychology. Despite this, Wundt remained alive in Bekhterev's mind as an ideal counterpoint.

Com o desenvolvimento, na segunda metade do século XX, das novas tecnologias de neuroimagem para estudar o funcionamento do cérebro humano, uma nova onda de entusiasmo com as explicações materialistas dos fenômenos mentais invadiu os departamentos de filosofia e psicologia em todo o mundo. O auge de tudo isso foi a assim chamada "década do cérebro" nos anos 1990. Entretanto, um exame mais detalhado dos argumentos apresentados por esses novos materialistas revela padrões recorrentes de analogias e metáforas, além de uma velha estratégia retórica de apelar para um futuro distante, no qual todos os problemas serão resolvidos. Este trabalho pretende mostrar que essas novas formas de materialismo repetem estratégias discursivas de versões mais arcaicas do pensamento materialista, sobretudo do materialismo francês do século XVIII e do materialismo alemão do século XIX. Finalmente, uma interpretação para o eterno retorno do materialismo será oferecida.

John Searle repeatedly claims to have offered a solution to the mind-brain problem, especially as regards the mystery of consciousness. The aim of this paper is to present and analyse Searle’s theory of biological naturalism, from its earliest expression in the 1980s to his most recent works. Our analysis shows that Searle’s biological naturalism suffers from many theoretical difficulties and logical inconsistencies, which disqualify it as a sound explanation for consciousness and the mind-brain problem. We conclude that, far from offering a solution to the problem of consciousness, Searle ended up creating a new mystery of consciousness.

The expansion of Brazilian universities since 2009 has promoted a general growth and incentive of scientific activities throughout the country, not only in the so-called hard sciences, but also in the human sciences. In this brief report, we announce the creation of two new institutional spaces dedicated to the history and philosophy of psychology at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF) in Brazil: the Wilhelm Wundt Center for the History and Philosophy of Psychology (NUHFIP) and the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Psychology.

Despite the numerous and important contributions brought by Wundt scholarship in recent decades, some aspects of his work remain unclear and poorly understood. The aim of this paper is to explore one of these aspects, namely, the relationship between philosophy and psychology in Wundt's thought. To this end, we shall discuss an important yet neglected moment in Wundtian psychology, which remains unexplained to date: Why did Wundt abandon his early theory of the unconscious? According to the interpretation offered here, this can only be adequately explained by his intense philosophical studies in the period preceding the publication of the Grundzüge in 1874. Finally, we will point out some implications of this analysis to the general interpretation of Wundt's psychological project.

A proposta inovadora de uma nova área de pesquisa denominada Escolologia – a ciência da escola - iniciada pela psicóloga e educadora Helena Antipoff na Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Professores de Belo Horizonte, nos anos de 1930, é examinada através de investigação documental. A Escolologia apoiava-se em conceitos da Psicologia da Criança e da Pedagogia Experimental, de Édouard Claparède, e no método de Experimentação Natural, de Alexander Lazursky, visando obter uma síntese objetiva das relações entre o desenvolvimento físico, mental e social dos escolares, suas origens sociais e as práticas culturais de suas famílias, os procedimentos pedagógicos adotados e o funcionamento institucional das escolas. Os estudos escolológicos permitiram identificar os fatores que influenciavam no aproveitamento escolar dos alunos, tais como: o alto índice de retenção no primeiro ano de escolarização, as condições de higiene e nutrição das crianças, o método pedagógico, a organização escolar e as condições socioeconômicas e culturais das famílias.