European Yearbook of the History of Psychology

Bion embraced a meta-theoretical stance concerning the very essence of the epistemological issues involved in psychoanalysis, comparing to Kant’s concepts the significance of some of its core ideas. The present work is aimed at critically reviewing the literature on Bion’s reference to Kant’s transcendental philosophy, quoted by Bion in various occurrences in his theorization of psychoanalytic concepts. All articles included in review (n = 11) are theoretical in nature and point to the complexity of Bion’s (at times problematic) reference to Kant’s transcendentalism in formulating his psychoanalytic theory. Given that Kant and Bion belonged to different historical and conceptual backgrounds, Bion’s reference to Kant’s transcendental philosophy should be ultimately considered critically – in a Kantian sense.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the international scientific community embarked on a true process of pathologisation and criminalisation of all those individuals who, living their sexuality beyond the boundaries of potentially fertile heterosexuality, were designated as “deviants”. In this perspective, doctors, psychiatrists, and anthropologists constructed stigmatising diagnostic categories, within which they placed all those individuals whose sexual behavior was deemed perverse. This article, based on literary, scientific, and archival sources has two primary aims. First, to illustrate some of the assumptions underlying nineteenth-century scientific treatises on the concept of sexual perversion. Second, to show how some of these individuals who recognised themselves in the categories elaborated by the scientific community ended up perceiving themselves as unfit: true mistakes of nature, unworthy of living.

This research paper explores the rich history and present state of Hungarian Child Guidance Clinics (CGCs) over the past 40 years, within the unique Eastern European context of child welfare institutions. Building on the global recognition of child welfare and the spread of the Child Guidance Movement originating in the US after World War I, this study sheds light on the specific characteristics of CGCs in Hungary. The qualitative research utilizes semi-structured narrative interviews with CGC professionals, policy analysis, and relevant literature to investigate the shift from therapeutic to diagnostic approaches, the effects of institutional reorganizations, and the impact of socio-economic forces on state-supported psychological care. Findings reveal challenges such as resource inadequacy, limited collaboration opportunities, and a shortage of psychologists. The research highlights the need for comprehensive psychological care and fare access for disadvantaged children, making it particularly relevant in the unique Eastern European context of CGCs, while contributing to developmental psychology and social policymaking.

The 1960s were an exciting era of innovation in Hungarian psychology. Hungarian psychologists during the difficult ‘crossing-of-thedesert’ decade of the 1950as tried to maintain some level of professionalism through a sort of ‘subterfuge’ and camouflage. The central Pavlov Committee implemented by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in the 1950s played a dual role in this process: it restrained research but at the same time preserved the scientific spirit in contrast to the dominance of voluntaristic pedagogy. It fostered learning research and helped to save the Institute of Child psychology, initiated by Paul Ranschburg in 1906. This committee eventually became the Psychological Committee of the presidium of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1958. As this official Psychological Committee substantiated itself, it became a network of esteemed medical doctors interested in psychology, artists, and a small number of psychologists. This respected network allowed the burgeoning organization to quickly validate its credibility. This large committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (roughly with 100 members) presided over the relaunch of the Psychological Association and the Hungarian Review of Psychology. It also fostered ambitious research projects and the relaunch of university training of psychologists.

The first general assemblies of the Hungarian Psychological Association played a pivotal role in (re)establishing the identity of Hungarian psychology in the 1960s. They published research pertaining to a wide array of topics. The status of the Psychological Association was promoted by the visits of some leading figures of international psychology, such as Paul Fraisse and Henri Tajfel. The message brought by them was a move forward towards the reintegration of Hungarian psychology with the Western tradition.

Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), considered by many contemporaries to be the founder of modern experimental psychology, experienced the enormous successes of physics during his studies with the natural scientists of Heidelberg. Following their methods (and their methodology), Wundt successfully led the subject of psychology from a speculative to an empirical and experimental direction. I sketch the picture of a possible error that could have caused a wrong course to be set for psychology in general. Alternatives to the model of physics (e.g., the model of biology) have hardly prevailed to this day.

Over the years from 1898 to 1909, a quite intense epistolary exchange took place between the American psychologist William James (1842– 1910) and the Italian psychiatrist and psychologist Giulio Cesare Ferrari (1867–1932). The occasion was provided by Ferrari’s intention to publish the first Italian translation of James’ Principles of Psychology, which had appeared in 1890. Started as a dialogue focused primarily on the “so dull a piece of labor” to which Ferrari had willingly subjected himself, the correspondence evolved, over the years, in a more friendly and confidential direction. Reflections on James’ and Ferrari’s work were indeed interspersed with moments of colloquiality about James’ (often poor) state of health, travels, new professional opportunities, and family life. This contribution collects and publishes the totality of James’ letters to Ferrari, currently hosted at Aspi – Archivio Storico della Psicologia Italiana (Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca). The aim is to enable the reader interested in the relationship between the two thinkers, in the events surrounding the translation of James’ works, and in the Italian intellectual (including pragmatist) context, to overview, in a single publication, the entirety of James’ letters.

The history of psychotherapy constitutes an extremely problematic area, not least because the very identification of the field of study is not self-evident. The concept of psychotherapy itself has received different definitions, which illuminate partly different aspects of it. For some years now, a group of scholars led by Sonu Shamdasani has been investigating one of the most complex issues related to this kind of study, the relationship between different psychotherapies and the cultural context in which they take root. In order to define the problematic nature of this relationship, the group prefers to speak of ‘trans-cultural histories of psychotherapies’, emphasising from the very name the many voices of the contributors’ paths. This special section of the European Yearbook of the History of Psychology completes the publication of a series of articles on the theme of how psychotherapy, during its evolution, has been brought to and changed in different countries by refugees and migrants.

Marie Langer (1910–1987) was an Austrian-born psychoanalyst who died in Argentina, after collaborating with the Spanish Republic in the 1930s and the Nicaraguan Revolution in the 1980s. The first part of this article deals with her training years, her joining the Austrian Communist Party, her militant trip to Spain, her settling down in Buenos Aires – as one of the founding members of the first psychoanalytic association in the Spanish-speaking world – and her early writings on “women’s issues”. This second part focuses on her famous book, Maternidad y sexo [Motherhood and sexuality] (1951), and the three decades that followed, where Langer increasingly tried to apply psychoanalysis to different forms of social commitment, recovering the Marxist framework of her youth. In so doing, in the seventies, she broke up with the association she had contributed to create, before going again into exile, this time from Argentina to Mexico. In this stopover, Langer became acquainted with the Sandinista Revolution, with which she actively collaborated during her final years.

The protagonists of the Jewish diaspora from Germany following the rise of Nazism included not only many Freudian psychoanalysts but also several followers of Jung. Among them were Ernst Bernhard, who founded analytical psychology in Italy, and his wife Dora Friedländer. However, while studies have already been dedicated to Bernhard, little or nothing has been written about Dora, who was herself an important figure in the spread of Jungian culture in Italy. The article describes her cultural personality and the also mutually forming relationship she had with Bernhard.

This paper aims to trace how the art produced in Brazilian psychiatric hospitals gained a new identity from the interwar period onwards, becoming recognized as modern art amid a substantial circulation of psychoanalysis by artists and psychiatrists. For this purpose, I first examine early 20th-century Brazilian psychiatric and aesthetic texts on psychoanalysis and art. Then, I use the discourse of these actors as a framework to indicate how the cross-fertilization between psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and avant-garde art movements led to the fusion of madness and sanity in the arts. To develop the argument, I focus on Dr. Osório Thaumaturgo Cesar, a psychiatrist at the Juquery Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, and his studies of artistic expression.