Mental Machinery: The Origins and Consequences of Psychological Ideas, 1600-1850 - Hardcover

Richards, Professor Graham

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801845440 ISBN 13: 9780801845444

Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992

Synopsis

Is it possible to write a "history of psychology" for the period immediately preceding its recognition as a separate discipline? How did the metaphorical construct we have come to call "the psychological" merge from the ideas of European thinkers from the 17th to the mid-19th centuries? In Mental Machinery, Graham Richards focuses on social constructionist and linguistic perspectives to record the diverse origins of what eventually became the field of psychology.
Writing a history of something that "did not exist," Richards suggests, can be approached in one of two ways. One is to redefine the problem as writing a history of "reflexive discourse" rather than of psychology. A second way is to re-examine the canonical texts - of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Hartley, Hume, Mill, and others - in an attempt to reveal what the authors themselves actually intended (and were understood by their contemporaries) to address. Mental Machinery employs both of these methods in a work that offers a radical challenge to received ideas regarding the origins of psychology.

About this title

Review

"Challenging and insightful... A panorama of psychological thinkers and thought from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century... Readers willing to sift and weigh the many interesting discussions in this book will be rewarded for their effort." -- American Historical Review

"Well organized, informative, and interestingly written." -- Isis

Edition details

• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0801845440
• ISBN 13: 9780801845444
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512