Levens, Joshua P. (Author)
Psychobiology was an emerging interdisciplinary subject on the border of psychology and biology in the United States in the early twentieth century. Its development during the interwar decades and the ways in which psychobiologists promoted the study of sexual behavior is the subject of this dissertation. Psychobiology had many adherents and took diverse forms. One of the most important advocates of psychobiology was Adolf Meyer at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who was influenced by William James and the Darwinian tradition that James himself drew upon. An overview of the evolutionary framework of modern psychological theory leads to a survey of American psychobiological programs, with particular emphasis on the work of Meyer. Two programs in American psychobiology are chosen for closer analysis: the research programs of W. Horsley Gantt and Frank A. Beach, each of whom made pioneering studies of sexual behavior and of the differences between males and females. Part of a larger psychobiological tradition that attempted to integrate the sciences of physiology, psychology and psychiatry for mutual benefit, Gantt and Beach were among those who proposed innovative methods for describing and explaining sexuality from a comparative and evolutionary perspective during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Gantt, a Pavlovian physiologist, described sexuality in terms of conditional reflexes, acquired response patterns that adapted an organism to its environment. Beach, a pioneer in the study of hormones and behavior, likewise studied sexuality in terms of acquired response patterns and evolutionary fitness. Both argued that new physiological approaches were necessary for rethinking the science of sexuality, for identifying the unique attributes of the sexes, and for determining the characteristics of sexual pathology throughout the animal kingdom. Their research provided the biological evidence that supported the controversial claims of Alfred Kinsey, America's foremost sexologist in the mid-twentieth century.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/12 (2006): 4509. UMI pub. no. 3197186.
Book
Hegarty, Peter;
(2013)
Gentlemen's Disagreement: Alfred Kinsey, Lewis Terman, and the Sexual Politics of Smart Men
(/isis/citation/CBB001213145/)
Book
Gathorne-Hardy, Jonathan;
(2000)
Sex the Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey
(/isis/citation/CBB000111942/)
Article
Drucker, Donna J.;
(2013)
Keying Desire: Alfred Kinsey's Use of Punched-Card Machines for Sex Research
(/isis/citation/CBB001200307/)
Book
Reumann, Miriam G.;
(2005)
American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity inthe Kinsey Reports
(/isis/citation/CBB000820033/)
Article
Schulkin, Jay;
(2007)
Curt Richter: Psychobiology and the Concept of Instinct
(/isis/citation/CBB000774008/)
Article
Matthew Tontonoz;
(2017)
Sandor Rado, American Psychoanalysis, and the Question of Bisexuality
(/isis/citation/CBB696195805/)
Thesis
Gorchov, Lynn Karen;
(2003)
Sexual Science and Sexual Politics: American Sex Research, 1920--1956
(/isis/citation/CBB001562258/)
Article
Clement Levallois;
(2018)
The Development of Sociobiology in Relation to Animal Behavior Studies, 1946–1975
(/isis/citation/CBB162818555/)
Thesis
Drucker, Donna J.;
(2008)
Creating the Kinsey Reports: Intellectual and Methodological Influences on Alfred Kinsey's Sex Research, 1919--1953
(/isis/citation/CBB001561148/)
Book
Drucker, Donna J.;
(2014)
The Classification of Sex: Alfred Kinsey and the Organization of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB001510051/)
Article
Chiang, Howard Hsueh-Hao;
(2008)
Effecting Science, Affecting Medicine: Homosexuality, the Kinsey Reports, and the Contested Boundaries of Psychopathology in the United States, 1948--1965
(/isis/citation/CBB000930181/)
Article
Anna Klassen;
(2021)
Methodological Signatures in Early Ethology: The Problem of Animal Subjectivity
(/isis/citation/CBB504631735/)
Book
Vicedo, Marga;
(2013)
The Nature and Nurture of Love: From Imprinting to Attachment in Cold War America
(/isis/citation/CBB001213142/)
Article
Gordon L. Miller;
(2021)
The rain calls of frogs and the reigning paradigm of American herpetology
(/isis/citation/CBB960366223/)
Article
Wilson, Robert M.;
(2002)
Directing the Flow: Migratory Waterfowl, Scale, and Mobility in Western North America
(/isis/citation/CBB000200425/)
Article
Pettit, Michael;
Serykh, Darya;
Green, Christopher D.;
(2015)
Multispecies Networks: Visualizing the Psychological Research of the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex
(/isis/citation/CBB001550737/)
Article
Maayan Sudai;
(February 2022)
‘A woman and now a man’: The legitimation of sex-assignment surgery in the United States (1849–1886)
(/isis/citation/CBB859295291/)
Article
Wilson, Emily K.;
(2012)
Modeling Man: The Monkey Colony at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Embryology, 1925--1971
(/isis/citation/CBB001221002/)
Article
Matthew Lavine;
(2021)
“Advanced Marriage Technique”: Sex as a Perfectible Skill in Mid-twentieth-century American Marriage Manuals
(/isis/citation/CBB686896153/)
Article
Brad Bolman;
(2022)
Critical Periods in Science and the Science of Critical Periods: Canine Behavior in America
(/isis/citation/CBB307853900/)
Be the first to comment!