The Life Cycle of Psychological Ideas
The Life Cycle of Psychological Ideas: The idea for this book rst emerged from a symposium invited by - vision 1 of the American Psychological Association (APA) that was c- ceived by Lewis Lipsitt, who was president of the Division in . The symposium,“Re ectionsintheMirrorofPsychology’sPast,”chairedby co-editor, Thomas Dalton was organized to pay tribute to John Popp- stone and Marion McPherson, who founded the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron, Ohio in . The panel included John Popplestone, my co-editor, Rand Evans and Robert Wozniak, who have contributed chapters to this book. John and Marion, who both served as past presidents of Division 26 of the History of P- chology, retired in and turned the leadership of the collection over to its new director, David Baker. They were honored at that time by the APAwithaPresidentialCitationfortheirachievementsandweregivena FestschriftinAprilhostedbytheAkronarchivesattendedbyseveral distinguishedpsychologiststhatincludedLewisLipsitt,LudyT. Benjamin andJohnBurnham. Anhonoraryfundalsowasestablishedintheirnames for individual donations. Sadly, Marion passed away shortly afterward, butherspiritanddeterminationliveonattheAkronarchives. JohnandMarion’stirelesseffortstomakethisatrulygreatrepository areindicatedbythesheersizeofthecollection. Thearchivenowpossesses thepapersofmorethan700psychologistsandtherecordsofmorethan100 psychology journals. It has stored 700 kinds of psychological apparatus and testing instruments, rare photos and nearly 153 miles of child development lms,examplesofwhicharewonderfullydisplayedintheir popularbook,AnIllustratedHistoryofAmericanPsychology. LudyBenjamin, who spent countless productive hours researching the Akron archives, vii viii PREFACE perhapsbestdescribedJohnandMarion’spioneeringcontribution,when hewrote: So one can argue that the time was right for someone to have the historicalconsciousnesstorecognizetheneedforacentralarchivefor psychology. I want to emphasize the word vision... Vision is a rare commodity. Inthiscontextitmeanstoseethingsinwaysthatnoone elsedoes. Itmeanstobeabletoseeinlongstretches,tolookbeyond your own time and see needs that no one else may anticipate.