PubMed1997
This paper is concerned with an important and original chapter in the history of experimental psychology in Italy, at the end of the nineteenth century. The first growth of the new science was connected with the possibility of using the methods of experimental psychology to study insanity problems. The limits of anatomical investigations were overcome by neurophysiological researches, but also by studies on reaction time. The measurement of time taken by a given mental operation showed the importance of attention in every mental act. These experiments, carried out on lunatics, showed considerable fluctuations of reaction time, an indication of the diminished power of attention. Great variations were due to different forms of mental disease, which could be better known thanks to this study. The first laboratory of experimental psychology in Italy was established in the Psychiatric Institute of Reggio Emilia, and Gabriele Buccola, a young psychiatrist, was the first to make use of lunatics to study the problems of normal psychology. An exact description of his psychometric researches, which used recent scientific instruments like Hipp's chronoscope, made it possible to verify the validity of the most important psychological laws and to go deep into the study of mental disease. In this way many problems-like the distinction between illusions and hallucinations, the existence of fixed ideas or particular maniacal forms-could be considered from a different point of view. Through the description of the Buccola's work, this paper aims to assess the relationship between experimental psychology and psychiatry: if the study of mental pathology has given rise to the growth of psychological researches, a new explanatory model has made it possible to overcome the conflicts between medico-organic and psychic approach in insanity studies.
Academies and Institutes↗