Édouard Claparède
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Édouard Claparède (; 24 March 1873 – 29 September 1940) was a Swiss
neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...
, child psychologist, and educator.


Career

Claparède studied science and medicine, receiving in 1897 an MD from the
University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...
, and working 1897–98 at La Salpêtrière hospital in
Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
. In 1901 he founded the ''Archives de psychologie'' with his cousin, Théodore Flournoy, which he edited until his death. He was based from 1904 onward at the University of Geneva, where he became director of the experimental psychology lab. Among the positions he held were: 1904 General Secretary at the Second International Congress of Psychology; 1909 General Secretary at the Sixth International Congress of Psychology; 1912 founder of the Rousseau Institute; Founder and President (1920-1940) of the Association Internationale de Psychotechnique (now the
International Association of Applied Psychology The International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) was created in 1919 by Édouard Claparède under the name of International Association of Psychotechnics (Association Internationale de Psychotechnique) and the secretary general was Jean ...
); co-founder of the International Bureau of Education (IBE) in 1925; 1915-1940 professor of psychology at the University of Geneva in succession to Flournoy; Permanent Secretary at the International Congress of Psychology; Life President of the Comité de l'Association Internationale des Conferences de Psychotechnique. Claparède was married to Hélène Spir, daughter of the Russian philosopher African Spir.


Trauma experiment

Claparède performed an influential experiment demonstrating how the trauma of a painful event could be retained even if short-term memory was lost. His experiment involved a woman who suffered from a form of amnesia. She had all of her old memories as well as her basic reasoning skills, but the recent past was not remembered. Claparède had greeted her every day, each time she could not remember his face at all. Then during one session of the experiment, Claparède hid a pin in his hand and reached to shake the woman's hand, pricking her. The next day, sure enough, she did not remember him. But when Claparède went to shake her hand, he found that she hesitated, recognizing a threat when her memory had been severely damaged.


Freudianism

Claparède was briefly a member of the Zurich Freud Group marshalled by C. G. Jung, but he shunned what he saw as the movement's dogmatism, and in 1909 joined Pierre Janet in differentiating the clinical concept of the subconscious from what was termed Freud's ''philosophical'' concept of the unconscious. However he retained an interest in psychoanalysis in general, and in 1926 provided an introduction to the first French translation of Freud's '' Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis''.


Works

Claparède wrote several books concerning the fields he studied including the following: * ''L’association des idées'' (1903) * ''Psychologie de l’enfant et pédagogie expérimentale'' (1909) * ''L’éducation fonctionnelle'' (1931) * ''La genèse de l’hypothèse'' (1933)


See also

* Cryptamnesia *
Operant conditioning Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process in which voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition (or removal) of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior ma ...


References


Further reading

* *


External links


Short biography, bibliography, and links on digitized sources
in the Virtual Laboratory of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science {{DEFAULTSORT:Claparede, Edouard 1873 births 1940 deaths Child psychologists Fellows of the British Psychological Society