XIIIth Annual Conference of Cheiron-Europe Paris, 7-11 September 1994
by Ingemar Nilsson, University of Göteborg
The meeting took place at La Cité Universitaire Internationale and was sponsored by the Institut de Psychologie, Université René Descartes. Local organizer was Régine Plas with the assistance of Jacqueline Carroy.
"Unfortunately the great number of participants and submitted papers had froced the
programme committee to organize parallel session during most of the meeting. The programme
consisted of a total of 46 papers (a few of these were cancelled), and besides, we had a poster
session and six invited speakers.
The sessions opened on Thursday September 8th. In the room where I happened to be absent, one could follow five papers on the psychology of Alfred Binet. Jacqueline Cunningham (South Dakota) dealt with Binet's contextual study of memory. Serge Nicolas (Paris) presented Binet's study of extraordinary memory performances and mathematical calculations, and John Carson (London) discussed Binet's experimental and clinical use of his own daughters. Diana Faber (Liverpool) presented the often overlooked social psychology of Binet, and Juan Antonio Mora's (Malaga) paper dealt with the foundations of Binet's intelligence tests.
The other choice of papers, which I was able to listen to, consisted of a session on the history of social psychology and on interactions between the Dreyfus Affair and the human and social sciences. Richard Ronald (Nottingham) presented Graham Wallas' attempt to connect the two disciplines of social psychology and political science to the needs of social organisation. Malcolm Vout (Nottingham) traced the concept of political behavior in Graham Wallas' ideas. Ian Lubek and his colleagues (Guelph, Canada) gave another chapter of their ongoing presentation of research practices of social psychologists-a social psychological study of social psychology itself. Jacqueline Corroy and Régine Plas (Paris) discussed the well-known somnambulist Léonie and her influence on the physician Joseph Gilbert's position in the Dreyfus affair. The portions in the affair of the sociologists of the Durkheim school were treated in a paper by Laurent Mucchielli (Paris).
After lunch the participants moved on to the Université René Descartes for a much appreciated tour around the Museum of the History of Medicine, where psychological instruments form the early 20th century were displayed. After that, the conference had its formal opening in the Grand Amphithéatre at the faculty of Medicine. Welcoming words from the president of the University and the director of the Institute of Psychology were followed by a speech (in French) delivered by professor Georges Lanteri-Laura on psychology and psychiatry in early 19th century France. After returning to the Cité Universitaire we enjoyed an evening presentation by the French historian Pierre Sorlin on the Dreyfus Affair. The film used the politician Léon Blum as a fictional frame and lead to a discussion of the pedagogical effects of historical films.
One of the parallel sessions on Friday September 9th returned to Alfred Binet. There were six further papers on Binet, his ideas as a teacher and dramatist and his influence abroad. Guy Avanzi (Lyon) present Binet's educational ideas. Anne Marie Drouin-Hans (Bourgogne) discussed Binet's interest in the theatre, his attempt to relate emotion to the psychology of actors and to understand the theatre as a laboratory for metaphysics. Agens Pierron (Paris) continued the theme of drama in a paper on "Grand Guignol et psychopathologie". Geoffrey Bunn (York) traced the aesthetical ideas of Edward Bullough through Valentine and Burt back to Binet's studies of intelligence. Enrique Lafuente and his colleagues (Madrid) gave an overview of Binet's influence on Spanish psychology. Wilfred Schmidt (Alberta) talked about the relations - continuities and priorities - between Binet and William Stern, a presentation which resulted in a most lively discussion. Another parallel session (I missed that too) treated the history of psychological journals in different countries: Alison Turtle (Sydney) on the Australian Journal of Psychology; Civera & Pastor (Valencia) on Spanish journals; Saiz & Saiz (Barcelona) on the journal of the Institut d'Orientacio Professional in Barcelona. A paper session was also included in the morning sessions.
On the afternoon of September 9th a session celebrated the journal L'Année Psychologique. The journal's editors Paul Fraisse and Juan Segui opened the commemoration. We then could follow presentations of different asepcts of the journal's history. Guy Avanzini, the president of the Société Alfred Binet, started with a paper on the history of this society. The historian Bernard Andrieu (Bordeaux) put Binet and Beaunis' creation of the journal in 1894 in its historical context. Genevieve Vermes Chapuis (Paris) gave a detailed bibliographical analysis of the content of the journal. Elisabeth Chapuis (Paris) discussed the use of enquete methodology in child psychology from the early history of l'Année Psychologique. Annick Ohayon (Paris) treated the role of psychoanalysis and the negative attitude towards Freud's work in the evolution of the journal between 1913 and 1945 from a bibliographical analysis.
Saturday September 10th opened with two parallel sessions on Psychoanalysis and clinical
psychology. First I followed paper by Gordana Jovanovic (Belgrade) arguing for a Cartesian
heritage within psychoanalysis. Ruud Abma (Utrecht) treated the idea of a psychologization
process within modern society and the role played by psychoanalysis in this. Burno Waldvogel
(Munich) explored possible relations between the theories of Gestalt psychology and
psychoanalysis. Magnus Johannsson (Göteborg) presented a case study of a Swedish historian of
psychoanalysis (Ola Andersson) that gave insight in how to become a psychoanalyst within an
academic culture. Iwona Dehnel (Wroclaw) presented the, perhaps too little known, Polish
psychologist Edward Abramowski's ideas on the unconscious.
The sessions I unfortunately could not follow on Saturday dealt with Experimental psychology and psychotechnics and with Psychology, politics, and anthropology. Pieter van Strien (Groningen) discussed the assumptions behind early psychotechnics from Dutch material. Eric Haas (Rotterdam) presented the function of the psychological report in the foundation of psychotechnics in the Netherlands. Jerome Friesen and Paul Voestermans (Nijjmegen) gave an analysis of the mental measurement movement in the 1920s based on the epistemological approach of Ludwig Fleck. Wolfgang Bringmann (Mobile, Alabama) presented new material dealing with Wilhelm Wundt's political activities and ideas. Irmingard Staeuble (Berlin) presented a case of decolonizing anthropology from indigenous anthropologists in Papua New Guinea. Johann Louw (Cape Town) discussed how through discourse and architecture in a colonial asylum social relationships were structured.
After lunch I missed the session on Sexuality, biological determinism and eugenics with presentations on relationships between the sexes in German literature and philosophy 1750-1815 by Isabel Suarez (Leiden), on Clifford Wright and Alfred Kinsey's ideas of hormones and homosexuality by Stephanie Kenen (Berkeley), and on Wilhelm Weygandt's position within the eugenic movement before the First World War by Paul Probst (Hamburg).
Instead I chose the session on History of experimental psychology, where Trudy Dehue (Groningen) opened iwth a critique of Ian Hacking's study from 1988 in which he made a case for parapsychology as a model for the experiment with control and randomization. Jean Pierre Petard (Nantes) presented the international questionnaire on hallucination from the early 1890s. Gerloff Verwey (Nijmegen) discussed Gerard Heymans' equilibrium model in a broad philosophical setting.
Later that afternoon we at last went to a joint session, on Epistemology, psychology and history. Herman Kalkofen (Göttingen) gave us video demonstrations of visual perception, e.g. the Necker's cube phenomenon. André Flieller (Nancy) discussed the evidence for the historicity of behavior and the underlying epistemology. 'On the disciplining of social psychology' was the title of James Good's (Durham) paper where he contined, from the last Cheiron meeting, his mutualist approach, this time with the history of social psychology as his case study. As we had a late start in the morning due to problems in finding our breakfast, and some of the presentations going on a bit too long, many of us were quite exhausted. We rushed through eh business meeting to be in time for the evening banquet hel din the restaurant Le train blue, a truly memorable experience for us.
There were still six papers left for Sunday./ The first session started with two general programmatic presentations by Kees Bertels (Leiden) on The transformation of the soul into psyche and Willem van Hoorn (Leiden) on The subject matter of psychology. Sandor Veres and colleague (Budapest) presented Fairairn's ideas on the moral personality. After a coffee break Irina Sirotkina (Moscow) presented an informative picgure of Nikolai Osipov and the early humanistic trend in Russian and Central European psychology. Leszek Kockzanowicz (Wroclaw) compared the concepts of dialogue and meaning in G.H. Mead, Vygotsky and Bakhtin. Andrzej Pankala (Poznan) made an attempt to reinterpret and reestimate the theory of primitive personality of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl. A small group of Cheiron people were guided by Régine and Jacqueline to a local restaurant for a closing lunch. We were all very happy after an interesting programme and a nice meeting!