Making up intelligence scales: De Sanctis's and Binet's tests, 1905 and after.

Sante De Sanctis (1862-1935) and Alfred Binet (1857-1911), the latter in collaboration with Théodore Simon (1873-1960), introduced their intelligence tests to the scientific community at the Fifth International Congress of Psychology, held in Rome in 1905 on April 26-30. The cultural and political contexts within which De Sanctis and Binet developed their respective intelligence tests showed certain similarities. Nevertheless, De Sanctis's intelligence test and Binet's test did differ in certain respects. The objective of this article is to understand the differences and similarities between the Parisian and the Roman contexts in relation to mental testing, and to investigate the theoretical-methodological contributions of each. In addition, the article analyzes the "diversity" of De Sanctis's context and test, which did not influence the international psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

[Alfred Binet and the first 'measures' of intelligence (1905-1908)]. / Alfred Binet e le prime 'misure' dell'intelligenza (1905-1908).

Alfred Binet (1857-1911) is considered the most representative exponent of the second generation of French experimental psychologists. His scientific work was inspired both by the experimentalism that Théodule Ribot and Hippolyte Taine introduced in France at the end of the 1870s, and by that of Wundt. Drawing from numerous sources, Binet was able to elaborate a psychology that focused on experiments and a controlled observation of pathological phenomena, with the objective of differentiating them from normal phenomena. His scientific production was moreover characterized by the emphasis placed upon the experimental study of "superior" psychic phenomena and, in particular, on their measurement. The aim of this paper is to describe the stages and sources of the "psychological" study of intelligence, which constituted precisely the fil rouge that had indispensably to be followed in order to fully understand the originality of all of Binet's research, whose most mature product was undoubtedly represented by the development of the Echelle métrique de l'intelligence, the first intelligence test in the history of psychology.

[The letters preserved by Vittorio Benussi 'Fund Sante de Sanctis']. / Le lettere di Vittorio Benussi conservate nel 'Fondo Sante de Sanctis'.

Through the publication of a previously unpublished exchange of letters, this paper examines the relations between the Italian psychologists Sante De Sanctis and Vittorio Benussi. The collaboration between the two scholars, which emerges from the 23 letters presented here, was solid and long-lasting both on the scientific plane and on the personal one. It began in 1905 on the occasion of the Fifth International Congress of Psychology held in Rome, and it terminated more than 20 years later, in 1927, with the death of Benussi, who took his own life. The Benussi-De Sanctis correspondence (1905-1927) is part of a archive, denominated the "Sante De Sanctis (1893-1935) Archive," which has been recently constituted on the basis of commonly shared archival criteria. In order to facilitate a better understanding of the general context of Sante De Sanctis's scientific relations, the Appendix contains an analytical list, divided into 170 files, of all those who sent letters to him between 1893 and 1935.

Politics and naturalism in the 20th century psychology of Alfred Binet.

Alfred Binet is internationally recognized as the "father" of the first intelligence test as well as the most faithful French representative of laboratory experimentalism. A historical analysis of his work is therefore necessary to get to a thorough comprehension of 20th century psychology. The present article, starting from Binet's intellectual path and from the suggestions of the previous historical literature, aims at providing fresh insights into Binet's work by trying to capture the intersections between Binet, his naturalistic culture and the political context in which he worked in the early 20th century, when he actively tried to apply experimental psychology to the pedagogical area. In fact, it is possible to underline, with reference to those years, an evident turn towards applications in Binet's psychological production. The article reconstructs the political and institutional background of Binet's research and shows how the naturalism and experimentalism he promoted were complementary to the solidarist conceptions that were particularly prevalent among those who supported his work during the Third Republic.

The notion of "double consciousness" in Alfred Binet's psychological experimentalism.

Between 1889 and 1892, Binet published two remarkable essays, On Double Consciousness and Les alterations de la personnalité, which marked the end of a period of researches and interests closely linked to the doctrines on hypnosis and hysteria elaborated by the Ecole de la Salpêtrière. Later on, Binet was to abandon the utilization of hypnosis as a technique of experimentation, after he realized that the suggestibility of the "subjects" of these experiences had led to major experimental mistakes. However, during the years of his work at the Salpêtrière, he elaborated the notion of "double consciousness," which can be considered an alternative both to Ribot's idea of dissociation and to Janet's idea of disaggregation. The notion of double consciousness reveals both the originality of Binet's psychology--which was elaborated at the end of the nineteenth century--and its verifiable link to twentieth-century psychology. Unlike Janet, in fact, Binet did not support a theory of psychological deficiency or "misery," or of the retraction of the sphere of consciousness, which a normal capacity for psychological synthesis would oppose. On the contrary, Binet's psychology resulted in a theory stating that the duality of consciousness works in a perfect and autonomous way within the individual and, thanks to hypnosis, can be investigated in a laboratory.

The clinical differential approach of Sante De Sanctis in Italian "scientific" psychology.

Sante De Sanctis, a psychiatrist and psychologist, is one of the most representative figures of Italian "scientific" psychology. He is considered one of the founders of the discipline as well as one of its main protagonists in the years between the two World Wars. Both with his extensive scientific productions (which include more than three hundred works) and with his uninterrupted institutional activity, he has left his significant mark on the history of Italian psychology. He was the first professor of Experimental Psychology and was internationally known: some of his works have been published in French, Swiss, American, German, Scandinavian, and English journals, and some of his volumes have been translated into English and German. Together with the other psychologists of the second generation (Binet, Külpe, Münsterberg, Stern, Claparède, Ebbinghaus), he was the Italian psychologist who decided to enrich the classical paradigm of Wundt's physiological psychology, by developing during the twentieth century the program of methodological and epistemological enlargement of the discipline. In his fundamental treatise Psicologia Sperimentale, written in 1929-30, a clear modern conception of psychology emerged: it jointly included both the generalist aspect (with some studies on psychophysical proportionality, thought mimicry, dreams, attention, emotions, etc.) and the applicative one, which included psychopathology, labor psychology, educational psychology, and criminal psychology, all seen in a general experimental framework. The present paper aims precisely to highlight the originality of De Sanctis' experimentalism that applied the differential clinical approach to the discipline of psychology, causing it for the first time in Italy to be seen in a unitary way as both general and applied psychology.