American and European scholars from various disciplines illustrate the historical shaping of psychological discourse as it touches the fields of emotion, cognition, development, psychotherapy and gender differences. The book questions the ability of a psychological science to make positive affirmations that are historically-independent.

List of contributors; 1. Psychological discourse in historical context: an introduction Kenneth J. Gergen and Carl F. Graumann; Part I. Disciplining Psychological Discourse: 2. The practice of psychological discourse Kurt Danziger; 3. From tools to theories: discovery in cognitive psychology Gerd Gigerenzer; 4. Metaphor and monophony in the twentieth-century psychology of emotions Kenneth J. Gergen; 5. Psyche and her descendants Carl F. Graumann; Part II. History as Culture Critique: 6. Power and subjectivity: critical history and psychology Nikolas Rose; 7. Cultural politics by other means: gender and politics in some Americans psychologies of emotions Catherine Lutz; 8. Principles of selves: the rhetoric of introductory textbooks in American psychology Jill G. Morawski; Part III. Early Antecedents: 9. The naturalized female intellect Lorraine Daston; 10. Sources of redemption in psychoanalytic developmental psychology Suzanne R. Kirschner; 11. The historic vicissitudes of mental diseases: their character and treatment Harry F. M. Peeters; 12. Women as mothers and the making of the European mind Brigitte Niestroj-Kutzner; Part IV. Lived History: 13. Emancipation - a failed project? Remarks on the discourse of radical critique Irmingard Staeuble; 14. The transcendental alarm William Kessen; Author index; Subject index.