A.A.Roback
(1890-1965)
A.A.Roback was an experimental psychologist who studied for a Ph.D. in philosophy under Hugo Münsterberg at Harvard University, where he later taught for several years.
Roback wrote an insightful
History of American Psychology in 1952 which documented the movement away from the introspective psychology of Wilhelm Wundt and
William JamesJohn B. Watson and
B.F.Skinner.
It was in the 1950's that Behaviorism began its decline, to be replaced by cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and finally computational neuroscience - the now popular idea that the brain is a neural network processing information like the then newly invented digital computer.
Roback wrote an acerbic review of the behaviorist's claim that since the mind could not be directly observed it might as well not exist. He said psychology was out of its mind!
Psychology Out of Its Mind
[B]ehaviorism, as it developed in the second decade of the present century [aimed] to divorce itself completely from what had come to be regarded as psychology, and it effected a complete revolution in its own province. Indeed, the rift between the “new” psychology of the experimentalists, and the speculative intellectual philosophies of the Scottish School and its offshoots was not as great as between radical behaviorism and traditional psychology, inasmuch as, whether you call the matter “pneuma,” “soul,” or “mind,” you have reference to just- one thing, viz., consciousness, whereas behaviorism was intent upon consigning consciousness to the sphere of mythology or the rubbish heap of science.
History of American Psychology, 2nd ed. 1964, p.264
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