Théodule-Armand Ribot (18 December 18399 December 1916) was a French
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and explanation, interpretatio ...
. He was born at
Guingamp,
and was educated at the Lycée de St Brieuc. He is known as the founder of scientific psychology in France,
and gave his name to
Ribot's Law regarding
retrograde amnesia
In neurology, retrograde amnesia (RA) is the inability to access memories or information from before an injury or disease occurred. RA differs from a similar condition called anterograde amnesia (AA), which is the inability to form new memories f ...
.
In 1856 he began to teach, and was admitted to the
École Normale Supérieure
École or Ecole may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
in 1862.
He passed his
agrégation
In France, the () is the most competitive and prestigious examination for civil service in the French public education
A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all stu ...
in philosophy, this allowed him to teach in high school. He worked as a high school teacher in Vesoul (1866–1868), and then in Laval (1868–1872).
On the 9 April 1888 at The Collège de France he gave the first lecture in psychology in France.
In 1885 he gave a course of lectures on
Experimental Psychology
Experimental psychology is the work done by those who apply Experiment, experimental methods to psychological study and the underlying processes. Experimental psychologists employ Research participant, human participants and Animal testing, anim ...
at the
Sorbonne, and in 1888 was appointed professor of that subject at the
College of France. His thesis for his doctors' degree, republished in 1882, ''Hérédité: étude psychologique'' (5th ed., 1889), was his most important and best known book.
L'Hérédité psychologique is considered to have introduced Darwinian and Spencerian evolutionary ideas to France.
Following the experimental and synthetic methods, he brought together a large number of instances of inherited peculiarities. He paid particular attention to the physical element of mental life, ignoring all spiritual or nonmaterial factors in man. In his work on ''La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine: l'école expérimentale'' (1870), he showed his sympathy with the sensationalist school, and again in his translation of
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...
's ''Principles of Psychology''.
Ribot was in 1889 the co-president (with
Jean-Martin Charcot
Jean-Martin Charcot (; 29 November 1825 – 16 August 1893) was a French neurology, neurologist and professor of anatomical pathology. He worked on groundbreaking work about hypnosis and hysteria, in particular with his hysteria patient Louise A ...
) of the first international congress for experimental psychology and in 1890 the president for the fourth congress. From the first 12 such international congresses, the
International Union of Psychological Science eventually emerged.
Besides numerous articles, he wrote on
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...
, ''Philosophie de Schopenhauer'' (1874; 7th ed., 1896), and on the contemporary psychology of Germany (''La Psychologie allemande contemporaine'', 1879; 13th ed., 1898), also four little monographs on ''Les Maladies de la mémoire'' (1881; x3th ed., 1898); ''De la volonté'' (1883; 14th ed., 1899); ''De la personnalité'' (1885; 8th ed., 1899); and ''La Psychologie de l'attention'' (1888), which supplied useful data to the study of
mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
.
In 1896 he introduced the term
Anhedonia
Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. While earlier definitions emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is currently used by researcher ...
describing the inability to feel pleasure.
Bibliography
Works
*''La Psychologie anglaise contemporaine: l'école expérimentale'' (1870)
''La philosophie de Schopenhauer''(1874)
*''Psychologie de l'attention (1889)''
(1896)
*''L'Evolution des idées générales'' (1897)
*''Essai sur l'imagination créatrice'' (1900)
*''La Logique des sentiments'' (1904)
*''Essai sur les passions'' (1906)
English editions
''English Psychology''(1873)
*''Heredity: a Psychological Study of its Phenomena, Laws, Causes, and Consequences'' (1875)
''Diseases of Memory: An Essay in the Positive Psychology''(1882)
''Diseases of the Will''(New York, 1884), (tr. MM Snell, Open Court Publishing, Chicago 1894; 1903)
''German Psychology of to-day'' tr. JM Baldwin (New York, 1886)
''The Psychology of Attention'' Archive.org
''Diseases of Personality''(Chicago, 1895)
''The Psychology of the Emotions''(1897) Internet Archive
*''The Evolution of General Ideas'', tr. FA Welby (Chicago, 1899)
''Essay on the Creative Imagination'' tr. AHN Baron (1906). Librivox audio in English
See also
*
A Clinical Lesson at the Salpêtrière
References
External links
*
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ribot, Theodule-Armand
1839 births
1916 deaths
People from Guingamp
Academic staff of the University of Paris
Academic staff of the Collège de France
French psychologists
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Members of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques
Fellows of the British Psychological Society
Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery
Scientists from Brittany