Measuring emotion at the Burghölzli In July, 1907, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and American neurologist Frederick Peterson published the results of their investigations into the galvanometer and the pneumograph in BRAIN, the journal of neurology. The pair had subjected various people to these instruments—people they had identified as “normal” and “insane”—in an attempt […]

In the late nineteenth century, Sigmund Freud’s colleague Wilhelm Fleiss successfully diagnosed an illness in one of Freud’s relatives, without even having met them. Freud was so impressed by Fleiss’s “diagnostic acumen” that he went on to advocate the method in certain circumstances. Freud would write that diagnosing someone without personally examining them was acceptable […]

Models of scholarly success I assume that, on occasion, many early-career researchers are tempted, as I am, to reach for those kinds of books that offer a system or model for publishing success. After all, what better way to reassure oneself that an academic career is feasible than to learn about others’ achievements? Dean A. Shepherd’s The Aspiring […]

Academic blogging and the value of work Busywork, or work that keeps one busy but serves no value in and of itself, is variously familiar to us all. But busywork seems just as likely to affect the lives of researchers, of “knowledge workers,” as it is to bear upon those of other professionals—if not more likely. Indeed, […]