Article ID: CBB670172565

Picturing Ethnopsychology: A Colonial Psychiatrist’s Struggles to Examine Javanese Minds, 1910–1925 (2019)

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This article explores C. F. Engelhard’s struggles to construct psychometric devices for the Netherlands Indies between 1910 and 1925. A young Dutch psychiatrist, Engelhard moved to the Netherlands Indies in 1916, where he applied his clinical experience to subject Javanese individuals to mental assessment devices. He imagined that basic picture tests and one’s orientation in time provided apt solutions to the cross-cultural challenges facing him. To turn his prototypes into actual tests, Engelhard had to leave his daily work environment and move into the surrounding villages. Aided by local chiefs and his assistant, Soekirman, he managed to set up temporary testing sites, where he examined hundreds of Javanese individuals. Yet despite his attempts to transform Javanese farmers into subjects capable of taking a psychological test, the Javanese remained free to make—or fail to make—meaning out of Engelhard’s images. Even though the psychiatrist went to great lengths in taking into account the particular social and cultural features of psychological practice in a colonial context, a vast chasm remained to exist between him and his test takers. This article examines Engelhard’s practices against the backdrop of his training as a Western psychiatrist, colonial ideology in the Netherlands Indies, and the reception of his research by other colonial scientists with a wide range of attitudes about “the native mind.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

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Article Hans Pols; Harry Yi-Jui Wu (2019) Psychology and Psychiatry in the Global World: Historical Perspectives. History of Psychology (pp. 219-224). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB670172565/

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Authors & Contributors
Pols, Hans
Pieters, Toine
Moon, Suzanne Marie
Hoogte, Arjo Roersch van der
Bergen, Leo van
Ko, Kevin E.
Journals
Technology and Culture
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Medicina Historica
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
History of Psychology
Publishers
University of Adelaide Press
Northwestern University
Vossiuspers UvA - Amsterdam University Press
United Nations University
National University of Singapore Press
Lexington Books
Concepts
Netherlands, colonies
Colonialism
Agriculture
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Medicine
Botany
People
Mohr, Johan Maurits
Kraepelin, Emil
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
18th century
20th century
Places
Java (Indonesia)
East Indies
Indonesia
Netherlands
United States
Indochina
Institutions
Red Cross Societies
Dutch Red Cross
Rockefeller Foundation
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