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In this lucidly written and erudite book, Rick Rylance reconstructs the turbulent, contested discursive world of nineteenth-century British psychology. He chooses to focus on three decades, 1850-1880, before psychology became firmly rooted in the experimental laboratory, before—most traditional histories of psychology would claim—it became a proper science. One of Rylance's aims is to break down hard-and-fast distinctions between psychology's "long past" and its "short history," between the "Victorian" and the "modern," and to show the persistence of Victorian problems—albeit in different contexts—well into the twentieth century. Another of his aims is to portray a culture in flux, one moving from the comfortable settled world of natural theology and discourse about the "soul," toward a serious engagement with relativism, materialism, and new forms of government. As centers of intellectual ferment shifted from Anglican Oxbridge to the provinces, and as communication with a broadening public became valued, certain hierarchies began to be broken down, while others (namely those of race and gender) were maintained as strictly as ever.
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