Sciences Of The Mind with Courtney Thompson and Alicia Puglionesi

Perspectives on Science

Held in partnership with the American Philosophical Society, this discussion brings together historians Courtney Thompson and Alicia Puglionesi to discuss the fascinating world of the mind sciences in the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. During this time period, the human mind captured the imagination of the American public. Efforts to reveal the subconscious and to understand mental physiology inspired the creation of new technologies, modes of experimentation, and collaborations that aspired to make visible the inner workings of the brain. These developments had a profound impact on the production of scientific and medical expertise that continues to influence conceptions of race, gender, and mental illness in the present. Dr. Thompson focuses on the history of phrenology, exploring its connection to popular and elite theories of criminality. As she explains both in her presentation and in her book An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century America, phrenology constructed scientific ways of identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions - ways which often recruited and justified folk notions and stereotypes of what criminals looked like and how they acted. Dr. Puglionesi recounts how and why psychologists and others interested in the mind investigated seances, clairvoyance, and telepathy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although some researchers were interested in debunking frauds and con artists, most were interested in reconciling the mind sciences with the supernormal. Dr. Puglionesi's book, Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science, tells this history and highlights the ways in which psychical research troubled the boundaries of science and its relationship to democracy and popular ways of experiencing the world. To cite this content, please use footnote: "Sciences of the Mind," Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine, accessed Month Day, Year, https://www.chstm.org/video/121.