The nature of love: Harlow, Bowlby and Bettelheim on affectionless mothers

Harry Harlow, famous for his experiments with rhesus monkeys and cloth and wire mothers, was visited by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby and by child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in 1958. They made similar observations of Harlow’s monkeys, yet their interpretations were strikingly different. Bettelheim saw Harlow’s wire mother

A tale of four countries: How Bowlby used his trip through Europe to write the WHO report and spread his ideas

Attachment theory, developed by child psychiatrist John Bowlby, is considered a major theory in developmental psychology. Attachment theory can be seen as resulting from Bowlby's personal experiences, his psychoanalytic education, his subsequent study of ethology, and societal developments during the 1930s and 1940s. One of those developments was the outbreak of World War II and its effects on children's psychological wellbeing. In 1950, Bowlby was appointed WHO consultant to study the needs of children who were orphaned or separated from their families for other reasons and needed care in foster homes or institutions. The resulting report is generally considered a landmark publication in psychology, although it subsequently met with methodological criticism. In this paper, by reconstructing Bowlby's visit to several European countries, on the basis of notebook

To Moscow with Love: Partial Reconstruction of Vygotsky’s Trip to London

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) left the Soviet Union only once to attend a conference on the education of the deaf in London. So far almost nothing was known about this trip, which took place in a period when Vygotsky was still completely unknown as a psychologist, both inside his own country and abroad. Making use of a newly discovered notebook, it proved possible to partially reconstruct Vygotsky’s journey and stay in London. Vygotsky’s very personal remarks show him to have been a very sensitive and spirited man, who was prey to strong emotions during the conference and afterwards. Rather surprisingly, Vygotsky’s own paper about the education of the deaf was never presented during the conference and the stay in London appears to have had a limited value for his own scientific development

Vigotski como filósofo da ciência

The Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) is now generally accepted as a major figure in the history of psychology. Selections from his work have been translated into many languages and his ideas have inspired contemporary thinkers as Jerome Bruner (e.g. Bruner, 1985), Stephan Toulmin (1978), and Roman Jakobson (1985). He published articles and books on such diverse topics as schizophrenia, thought and language, intelligence testing, and disabled children (Van der Veer, 1985). It is less generally known, however, that he was also a methodologist in the Russian sense of the word, that is, one who analyzes basic assumptions and concepts of various psychological currents and psychology in general. Such a methodologist thus has to be both a knowledgeable historian of psychology and a philosopher of science. Vygotsky combined these qualities and it is our conviction that his importance for psychology lies precisely in his methodological work. It is the way Vygotsky tackled psychology's age-old problems, such as the nature-nature issue and the mind-body problem that makes him one of the major psychologists of this century.O psiclogo sovitico Lev Vigotski (1896-1934) aceito atualmente como uma figura importante na histria da psicologia. Selees de seu trabalho foram traduzidas em vrias lnguas e suas ideias inspiraram pensadores contemporneos, como Jerome Bruner (por ex. Bruner, 1985), Stephan Toulmin (1978) e Roman Jakobson (1985). Ele publicou artigos e livros sobre temas diversos, como esquizofrenia, pensamento e linguagem, teste de inteligncia e crianas com deficincia (Van der Veer, 1985). Mas, comumente, desconhece-se que ele era igualmente um metodlogo no sentido russo da palavra, ou seja, algum que analisou vrias hipteses e conceitos de diversas correntes psicolgicas e da psicologia em geral. Um metodlogo desse estilo precisa ser igualmente um historiador da psicologia e um filsofo da cincia. Vigotski combinava tais qualidades e nossa convico que sua importncia para a psicologia fundamenta-se precisamente em seu trabalho metodolgico. a maneira pela qual Vigotski lidou com os problemas antigos da psicologia, como os das relaes natureza-cultura e mente-corpo que fez dele um dos maiores psiclogos de nosso sculo

A tale of four countries: How Bowlby used his trip through Europe to write the WHO report and spread his ideas

Attachment theory, developed by child psychiatrist John Bowlby, is considered a major theory in developmental psychology. Attachment theory can be seen as resulting from Bowlby's personal experiences, his psychoanalytic education, his subsequent study of ethology, and societal developments during the 1930s and 1940s. One of those developments was the outbreak of World War II and its effects on children's psychological wellbeing. In 1950, Bowlby was appointed WHO consultant to study the needs of children who were orphaned or separated from their families for other reasons and needed care in foster homes or institutions. The resulting report is generally considered a landmark publication in psychology, although it subsequently met with methodological criticism. In this paper, by reconstructing Bowlby's visit to several European countries, on the basis of notebooks and letters, the authors shed light on the background of this report and the way Bowlby used or neglected the findings he gathered

Vygotsky in English: What Still Needs to Be Done

At present readers of English have still limited access to Vygotsky’s writings. Existing translations are marred by mistakes and outright falsifications. Analyses of Vygotsky’s work tend to downplay the collaborative and experimental nature of his research. Several suggestions are made to improve this situation. New translations are certainly needed and new analyses should pay attention to the contextual nature of Vygotsky’s thinking and research practice

70-Gene Signature as an Aid to Treatment Decisions in Early-Stage Breast Cancer.

The 70-gene signature test (MammaPrint) has been shown to improve prediction of clinical outcome in women with early-stage breast cancer. We sought to provide prospective evidence of the clinical utility of the addition of the 70-gene signature to standard clinical-pathological criteria in selecting patients for adjuvant chemotherapy. In this randomized, phase 3 study, we enrolled 6693 women with early-stage breast cancer and determined their genomic risk (using the 70-gene signature) and their clinical risk (using a modified version of Adjuvant! Online). Women at low clinical and genomic risk did not receive chemotherapy, whereas those at high clinical and genomic risk did receive such therapy. In patients with discordant risk results, either the genomic risk or the clinical risk was used to determine the use of chemotherapy. The primary goal was to assess whether, among patients with high-risk clinical features and a low-risk gene-expression profile who did not receive chemotherapy, the lower boundary of the 95% confidence interval for the rate of 5-year survival without distant metastasis would be 92% (i.e., the noninferiority boundary) or higher. A total of 1550 patients (23.2%) were deemed to be at high clinical risk and low genomic risk. At 5 years, the rate of survival without distant metastasis in this group was 94.7% (95% confidence interval, 92.5 to 96.2) among those not receiving chemotherapy. The absolute difference in this survival rate between these patients and those who received chemotherapy was 1.5 percentage points, with the rate being lower without chemotherapy. Similar rates of survival without distant metastasis were reported in the subgroup of patients who had estrogen-receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, and either node-negative or node-positive disease. Among women with early-stage breast cancer who were at high clinical risk and low genomic risk for recurrence, the receipt of no chemotherapy on the basis of the 70-gene signature led to a 5-year rate of survival without distant metastasis that was 1.5 percentage points lower than the rate with chemotherapy. Given these findings, approximately 46% of women with breast cancer who are at high clinical risk might not require chemotherapy. (Funded by the European Commission Sixth Framework Program and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00433589; EudraCT number, 2005-002625-31.)