La psychologie physiologique de Charles Richet dans JHBS

Article issu du chapitre 5 de mon livre, qui a mis du temps à trouver sa place, mais a bénéficié de l'aide précieuse de Stéphane Gumpper, Bevis Beauvais et Carlos S. Alvarado

Evrard, R., Gumpper, S., Beauvais, B., Alvarado, C.S. (accepté 2019). “Never sacrifice anything to laboratory work”: The “physiological psychology” of Charles Richet (1875-1905). Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.

Le titre fait référence à une expression de Richet, qui mettait en avant sa passion de la recherche en laboratoire. Mais la vraie question est celle de la place des travaux psychologiques de Richet dans son époque, dans son oeuvre propre (qui aboutit à fonder la "métapsychique") et aussi dans l'histoire de la psychologie.

Abstract

Whilst best known as a Nobel laureate physiologist, Charles Robert Richet (1850-1935) was also a pioneer of scientific psychology. Beginning in 1875, Richet played a leading role in the habilitation of hypnosis, in the institutionalization of psychology in France, and in the introduction of methodological innovations. Authoring several psychology books, Richet’s works contributed to the recognition of the scientific nature of the discipline. This role is often underplayed by some historians and psychology textbooks in favour of his later position as proponent of the controversial discipline he christened metapsychics in 1905, which today lies within the province of parapsychology. In this article we show how his psychological approach guided by physiology and known as physiological psychology favored the reception of psychology as a science. We hypothesize a strong continuity between his physiological psychology and his metapsychics since he himself had considered metapsychics to be an advanced branch of physiology and therefore an outpost of psychology.