Mind Brain And Adaptation In The Nineteenth Century

The author examines ideas of the nature and localization of the functions of the brain in the light of the philosophical constraints at work in the sciences of mind and brain in the 19th century. Particular attention is paid to phrenology, sensory-motor physiology and associationist psychology.

The description for this book, Medicine, Mind, and the Double Brain: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought, will be forthcoming.

This book chronicles the conceptual and methodological facets of psychiatry and medical psychology throughout history. There are no recent books covering so wide a time span. Many of the facets covered are pertinent to issues in general medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and the social sciences today. The divergent emphases and interpretations among some of the contributors point to the necessity for further exploration and analysis.

In the 1860s and 1870s, leading neurologists used animal experimentation to establish that discrete sections of the brain regulate specific mental and physical functions. These discoveries had immediate medical benefits: David Ferrier's detailed cortical maps, for example, saved lives by helping surgeons locate brain tumors and haemorrhages without first opening up the skull. These experiments both incited controversy and stimulated creative thought, because they challenged the possibility of an extra-corporeal soul. This book examines the cultural impact of neurological experiments on late-Victorian Gothic romances by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, H. G. Wells and others. Novels like Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde expressed the deep-seated fears and visionary possibilities suggested by cerebral localization research, and offered a corrective to the linearity and objectivity of late Victorian neurology.

This is a 2001 study of the emergence of physiognomy as a form of popular science.

Psychoanalysis, Science and Power reexamines the current state of psychoanalysis and science and technology studies as they have been influenced by Robert Maxwell Young’s work. Robert Maxwell Young, a Texas émigré to Britain, was a scholar, publisher, TV documentarian, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, journal editor, conference organizer and political activist. Young urged that psychoanalysis, particularly in its Kleinian incarnation, illuminated new aspects of science and technology studies, and vice versa. This volume not only provides an overview of Young’s life and interests by a stellar cast of scholars and practitioners but also commemorates the many and intersecting streams of his contributions, reasoning for their continuing relevance in the contemporary studies of psychoanalysis, biological sciences, technology and Darwinian thought. Presenting perspectives that are rigorously analytical and yet often poignant, Psychoanalysis, Science and Power will be an important read for students, analysts and analytic therapists of all orientations who are interested in broadening their understanding of their practice.

Leading historians introduce the most influential trends in thought which originated or developed in the nineteenth century.