Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:01:33.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Meaning of “Inhibition” and the Discourse of Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Roger Smith
Roger Smith
Affiliation:
Department of HistoryUniversity of Lancaster
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The history of psychology, like other human science subjects, should attend to the meaning of words understood as relationships of reference and value within discourse. It should seek to identify and defend a history centered on representations of knowledge. The history of the word “inhibition” in nineteenth-century Europe illustrates the potential of such an approach. This word was significant in mediating between physiological and psychological knowledge and between technical and everyday understanding. Further, this word indicated the presence of a common discourse structuring ways of thought about order, whether in technology, moral activity, or experimental psycho-physiology. Writing history as the history of discourse suggests several difficulties; these are considered briefly. Nevertheless attention to language and meaning makes it possible to integrate the history of psychology with intellectual history and thereby to broaden its potential audience.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1992 , pp. 237 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baldwin, J. M., ed. [1901–1905] 1960. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 4 vols. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith.Google Scholar
[Barlow, W. F.]. 1839–1840. “The Influence of Volition over the Excito-motory Function of the Spinal Cord.” Lancet Part 1:572–74.Google Scholar
Barrows, Susanna. 1981. Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bernard, Claude. [1872] 1965. De la physiologie générale. Brussels: Cultures et Civilisation.Google Scholar
Bernstein, R. J. 1976. The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Breese, B. 1899. “On Inhibition.” Psychological Review, Series of Monograph Supplements 3, no. 1.Google Scholar
Brown-Séquard, C.-É. 1889a. “Champ d'action de l'inhibition en physiologie, en pathogénie et en thérapeutique.” Archives de physiologie normale et pathologique 5th series 1: 1–23.Google Scholar
Brown-Séquard, C.-É.1889b. “Quelques mots sur la découverte de l'inhibition.” Archives de physiologie normale et pathologique 5th series 1:337–39.Google Scholar
Brown-Séquard, C.-É. 1889c. “De quelques règles générales relatives à l'inhibition”. Archives de physiologie normale et pathologique 5th series 1:751–61.Google Scholar
Brunton, T. Lauder. 1874. “Inhibition, Peripheral and Central.” West Riding Lunatic Asylum Medical Reports 4:179–222.Google Scholar
Brunton, T. Lauder. 1883. “On the Nature of Inhibition, and the Action of Drugs upon It.” Nature 27:419–22, 436–39, 467–68, 485–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bubnov, N., and Heidenhain, R. 1881. “Ueber Erregungs- und Hemmungsvorgänge innerhalb der motorischen Hirncentren.” Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie 26:137–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bubnov, N., and Heidenhain, R. 1944. “On Excitatory and Inhibitory Processes within the Motor Centers of the Brain.” Translated by von Bonin, G. and McCulloch, W. S.. Illinois Monographs in Medical Science 4:173–210.Google Scholar
Bucknill, J. C., and Tuke, D. H.. 1858. A Manual of Psychological Medicine. London:John Churchill.Google Scholar
Burnham, J. C. 1988. Paths into American Culture: Psychology, Medicine, and Morals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Canguilhem, Georges. 1955. La Formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar
Carpenter, W. B. [1874] 1896. Principles of Mental Physiology, 7th ed. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner.Google Scholar
Clarke, Edwin, and Jacyna, L. S. 1987. Nineteenth-Century Origins of Neuroscientific Concepts. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Clouston, T. S. 1906. The Hygiene of Mind. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Cohen, Stanley. [1972] 1980. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of Mods and Rockers. Oxford: Martin Robertson.Google Scholar
Coleman, William. 1985. “The Cognitive Basis of the Discipline: Claude Bernard on Physiology.” Isis 76:49–70.Google Scholar
Cross, Stephen J., and Albury, W. R.. 1987. “Walter B. Cannon, L. J. Henderson, and the Organic Analogy.” Osiris 2nd series 3:165–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danilevskii, B. 1881. “Die Hemmungen der Reflex- und Willkürbewegungen. Beiträge zur Lehre vom thierischen Hypnotismus.” Archiv für die gesammie Physiologie 24:489–525, 595–96.Google Scholar
Danziger, Kurt. 1982. “Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Psycho-physiology: A Neglected Chapter in the History of Psychology.” In The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought, edited by Woodward, W. R. and Ash, M. G., 119–46. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Danziger, Kurt. 1983. “Origins of the Schema of Stimulated Motion: Towards a Pre-history of Modern Psychology.” History of Science 21:182–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danziger, Kurt. 1990. “Generative Metaphor and the History of Psychological Discourse.” In Metaphors in the History of Psychology, edited by Leary, D. E., 331–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, Solomon, Balvin, Richard S., and Diamond, F. R.. 1963. Inhibition and Choice: A Neurobehavioral Approach to Problems of Plasticity in Behavior. New York: Harper & Row.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickens, Charles. [1853] 1971. Bleak House. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Dodge, Raymond. 1926. “The Problem of Inhibition.” Psychological Review 33:1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckardt, Georg, Bringmann, Wolfgang G., and Sprung, Lothar. 1985. Contributions to a History of Developmental Psychology: International William T. Preyer Symposium. Berlin: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eckhard, C. 1881. “Beiträge zur Geschichte der Experimentalphysiologie des Nervensystems: Geschichte der Lehre von dem Reflexerscheinungen.” In Beiträge zur Anatomie und Physiologie, 9:29–192. Giessen: Emil Roth.Google Scholar
Eisler, Rudolf. 1927. Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe: Historisch quellenmassig Bearbeitet, 4th ed., vol. 1. Berlin: E. S. Mittler und Sohn.Google Scholar
Ellenberger, H. F. 1970. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.Google Scholar
Fearing, Franklin. [1930] 1964. Reflex Action: A Study in the History of Physiological Psychology. New York: Hafner.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrier, David. 1876. The Functions of the Brain. London: Smith, Elder.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences.London: Tavistock.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. [1895] 1966 “Project for a Scientific Psychology.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated and edited by Strachey, James. 1:281–397. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Gay, Peter. 1984–1986. The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud, 2 vols. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Golinski, Jan. 1990. “Language, Discourse and Science.” In Companion to the History of Modern Science, edited by Olby, R. C., Cantor, G. N., Christie, J. R. R., and Hodge, M. J. S., 110–23. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gordon, Colin. 1990. “Histoire de lafolie: An Unknown Book by Michel Foucault.” History of the Human Sciences 3:3–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griesinger, Wilhelm. [1867] 1965. Mental Pathology and Therapeutics. Translated by Robertson, C. L. and Rutherford, J.. New York: Hafner.Google Scholar
Gutting, Gary. 1989. Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, Ruth. 1989. Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin de Siècle. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Head, Henry. 1921. “Croonian Lecture: Release of Function in the Nervous System.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 92B: 184–209.Google Scholar
Heidenhain, R. 1880. Animal Magnetism: Physiological Observations. Translated by Woolridge, I. C.. London: C. Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Heinroth, J. C. 1975. Textbook of Disturbances of Mental Life or Disturbances of the Soul and Their Treatment. Translated by Mora, George, 2 vols. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Herbart, J. F. [1824–1825] 1890–1892. Psychologie als Wissenschaft neu gegründet auf Erfahrung, Metaphysik und Mathematik. In Sämtliche Werke, edited by Karl, Kehrbach, vols. 5 and 6. Langensalza: Hermann Beyer und Sohne.Google Scholar
Hoff, Hebbel E. 1940. “The History of Vagal Inhibition.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 8: 461–96.Google Scholar
Huxley, T. H. [1893] 1894. “Evolution and Ethics.” In Evolution & Ethics and Other Essays: Collected Essays, 9: 46–116. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Jackson, John Hughlings. [1888] 1958. “Discussion at the Neurological Society on Dr. Mercier's Paper on ‘Inhibition’.” In Selected Writings, edited by Taylor, James, 2: 476–81. London: Staples.Google Scholar
Jacyna, L. S. 1981. “The Physiology of Mind, the Unity of Nature, and the Moral Order in Victorian Thought.” British Journal for the History of Science 14:109–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaeger, S. 1982. “ Origins of Child Psychology: William Preyer.” In The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought, edited by Woodward, W. R. and Ash, M. G., 300–321. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
James, William. [1890] 1950. The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Joravsky, David. 1989. Russian Psychology: A Critical History. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1974. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Gregor, Mary J.. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaCapra, Dominick, and Kaplan, Steven L., eds. 1982. Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, G. T. 1894. A Treatise of the Phenomena, Laws, and Development of Human Mental Life. London: Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
Leary, David E., ed. 1990. Metaphors in the History of Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Le Bon, Gustave. [1896] 1952. The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. London:Ernest Benn.Google Scholar
Lister, Joseph. 1858. “Preliminary Account of an Inquiry into the Functions of the Visceral Nerves, with Special Reference to the So-called ‘Inhibitory System‘.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 9: 367–80.Google Scholar
Marcuse, Herbert. [1955] 1962. Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Markus, Gyorgy. 1987. “Why Is There No Hermeneutics of Natural Science? Some Preliminary Theses.” Science in Context 1: 5–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, M. E., and Wendt, R. A.. 1980. “Wilhelm Wundt, Spiritism, and the Assumptions of Science.” In Wundt Studies: A Centennial Collection, edited by Bringmann, W. G. and Tweney, R. D., 158–75. Toronto: C. J. Hogrefe.Google Scholar
Maudsley, Henry. [1867] 1868. The Physiology and Pathology of Mind, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maudsley, Henry. [1895] 1979. The Pathology of Mind: A Study of Its Distempers, Deformities and Disorders. London: Julian Friedmann.Google Scholar
Mayr, Otto. 1970. The Origins of Feedback Control. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayr, Otto. 1971. “Adam Smith and the Concept of the Feedback System.” Technology and Culture 12:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercier, Charles. 1888. “Inhibition.” Brain 11:361–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meynert, T. 1888. “Ueber hypnotische Erscheinungen.” Wiener klinische Wochenschrift 1:451–53, 473–76, 495–98.Google Scholar
Morgan, C. Lloyd. 1890–1891. Animal Life and Intelligence. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Morgan, C. Lloyd. 1894. An Introduction to Comparative Psychology. London: Walter Scott.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nye, R. A. 1975. The Origins of Crowd Psychology: Gustave La Bon and the Crisis of Mass Democracy in the Third Republic. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Paicheler, Geneviève. 1988. The Psychology of Social Influence. Translated by James-Emler, Angela St. and Emler, Nicholas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Paicheler, Geneviève. 1989. “Through the Looking-Glass: Science and Applications in Early American Psychology.” Paper presented to the Seventh Conference of Cheiron:The European Society for the History of the Behavioural and Social Sciences,Goteborg.Google Scholar
Pavlov, I. P. 1928 and 1941. Lectures on Conditioned Reflexes. Translated and edited by Horsley Gantt, W., 2 vols. New York: International Publishers.Google Scholar
Pflüger, Eduard. 1857. Ueber das Hemmungs-Nervensystem für die peristaltischen Bewegungen der Gedärme. Berlin: August Hirschwald.Google Scholar
Plato, . 1961. “Phaedrus.” In The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, edited by Hamilton, Edith and Cairns, Huntington, 475–525. Bollingen Series, no. 71. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Preyer, William T. 1878. Die Kataplexie und der thierische Hypnotismus. Jena:Gustav Fischer.Google Scholar
Preyer, William T. [1888] 1893. The Mind of the Child. Translated by Brown, H. W., 2 vols. New York: D. Appleton.Google Scholar
Rabinbach, A. 1986. “The European Science of Work: The Economy of the Body at the End of the Nineteenth Century.” In Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice, edited by Kaplan, Steven L. and Koepp, C. J., 415–513. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rabinbach, A. 1990. The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Rapp, Dean A. 1988. “The Reception of Freud by the British Press: General Interest and Literary Magazines, 1920–1925.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 24:191–201.3.0.CO;2-X>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rapp, Dean A. 1990. “The Early Discovery of Freud by the British General Educated Public, 1912–1919.” Social History of Medicine 3:217–43.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ribot, T. 1890. The Psychology of Attention. Chicago: Open Court.Google Scholar
Richards, Graham. 1987. “Of What Is the History of Psychology a History?” British Journal for the History of Science 20:201–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Richards, Graham. 1989. On Psychological Language and the Physiomorphic Basis of Human Nature. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Richards, R. J. 1987. Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ritter, Joachim. 1974. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 3. Basel:Schwabe.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 1985. The Psychological Complex: Social Regulation and the Psychology of the Individual. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Rose, Nikolas. 1990. Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Rudwick, M. J. S. 1985. The Great Devonian Controversy. The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge among Gentlemanly Specialists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rupke, N. A., ed. 1987. Vivisection in Historical Perspective. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Sechenov, I. M. 1965. Autobiographical Notes. Translated by Kristan Hanes, edited by Lindsley, Donald B.. Washington: American Institute of Biological Sciences.Google Scholar
Sechenov, I. M. [1863] 1968a. “Physiologische Studien über die Hemmungsmechanismen für die Reflexthätigkeit des Rückenmarks im Gehirne des Frosches.” In Selected Works, 153–76. Amsterdam: E. J. Bonset.Google Scholar
Sechenov, I. M. [1935] 1968b. “Reflexes of the Brain.” Translated by Subkov, A. A.. In Selected Works, 263–336. Amsterdam: E. J. Bonset.Google Scholar
Sherrington, C. S. [1940] 1951. Man on His Nature: The Gifford Lectures, Edinburgh 1937–38, 2nd ed. London: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shuttleworth, Sally. 1984. George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make- Believe of a Beginning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Roger. 1981. Trial by Medicine: Insanity and Responsibility in Victorian Trials. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Roger. 1992. Inhibition: History and Meaning in the Sciences of Mind and Brain. London: Free Association Books: Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. [1860] 1868. “The Social Organism.” In Essays: Scient Political and Speculative, 1:384–428. London: Williams and Norgate.Google Scholar
Spencer, Herbert. 1870–1872. The Principles of Psychology, 2nd ed., 2 vols. London: Williams and Norgate.Google Scholar
Sturdy, Steve. 1988. “Biology as Social Theory: John Scott Haldane and Physiological Regulation.” British Journal for the History of Science 21:315–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sully, James. 1892. The Human Mind: A Text-book of Psychology, 2 vols. London:Longmans, Green.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tennyson, Alfred. 1987. The Poems of Tennyson, 2nd ed. Edited by Ricks, Christopher. 3 vols. Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar
Thompson, Margaret S. 1988. “The Wages of Sin: The Problem of Alcoholism and General Paralysis in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh.” In The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, edited by Bynum, W. F., Porter, R., and Shepherd, M., 3:316–40. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Todes, D. P. 1981. “From Radicalism to Scientific Convention: Biological Psychology in Russia from Sechenov to Pavlov.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Tredgold, A. F. 1914. Mental Deficiency (Amentia), 2nd ed. London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Ginneken, Jaap. 1992. Crowds, Psychology, and Politics, 1871–1899. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Verworn, Max. 1899. General Physiology: An Outline of the Science of Life. Translated and edited by Lee, F. S.. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. [1934] 1962. Thought and Language. Translated and edited by Hanfmann, Eugenia and Vakar, Gertrude. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, L. S. 1986. Thought and Language. Translated and edited by Kozulin, Alex. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Warnke, Georgia. 1987. Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason. Oxford:Polity Press.Google Scholar
Watson, Stephen. 1988. “The Moral Imbecile: A Study of the Relations between Penal Practice and Psychiatric Knowledge of the Habitual Offender.” Ph.D. diss., University of Lancaster.Google Scholar
Weber, E. F. W. 1846. “Muskelbewegung.” In Handwörterbuch der Physiologie mit Rücksicht auf physiologische Pathologie, edited by Wagner, Rudolf, vol. 3, part 2, pp. 1–122. Braunschweig: Friedr. Vieweg und Sohn.Google Scholar
Weber, E. F. W., and Weber, E. H.. 1846. “Expériences physiologiques faites dans le musée anatomique de Leipsik.” Archives générales de médicine, 4th series 21, supplementary vol.: 9–17.Google Scholar
Weindling, Paul. 1981. “Theories of the Cell State in Imperial Germany.” In Biology, Medicine and Society 1840–1940, edited by Webster, Charles, 99–155. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wise, Norton M., in collaboration with Crosbie Smith. 1989–1990. “Work and Waste:Political Economy and Natural Philosophy in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” History of Science 27:263–301, 391–499; 28:222–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodward, W. R. 1982. “Wundt's Program for the New Psychology: Vicissitudes of Experiment, Theory, and System.” In The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought, edited by Woodward, W. R. and Ash, M. G, 167–97. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Wundt, Wilhelm. 1874. Grundzüge derphysiologischen Psychologie. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann.Google Scholar
Wundt, Wilhelm. 1893. “Hypnotismus und Suggestion.” Philosophische Studien 8:1–85.Google Scholar
Wundt, Wilhelm. [1910] 1969. Principles of Physiological Psychology, vol. 1. Translated by Titchener, E. B.. New York: Kraus Reprint.Google Scholar
Zola, Émile. 1970. L'Assommoir. Translated by Tancock, Leonard. Harmondsworth:Penguin Books.Google Scholar