Debunking the Self. Jastrow, Münsterberg and the Automatograph
- Submitting institution
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University of Plymouth
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 12
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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-
- Book title
- A Treasure Trove. Friend of the Photoplay – Visionary – Spy? New Trans-disciplinary Approaches to Hugo Münsterberg‘s Life and Oeuvre
- Publisher
- Leipzig University Press
- ISBN
- 9783960231813
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This book chapter emerged towards the latter part of a larger body of research that used media-archeological reconstruction to reproduce an early psychological instrument known as an 'automatograph'. Based on the illustration in an 1890s psychological instrument catalogue, the author recreated the device, with the aim to restage pioneer psychologist Joseph Jastrow's experiments with ideomotor movement. Over a number of years the device framed conversations and collaborations with colleagues and students ideomotor movement and its meaning in both early and contemporary popular psychology. Based in the TTIROL lab at Plymouth, these included colleagues in Psychology's Action Prediction lab (now at Edinburgh) through which the author was invited to comment on doctoral transfer documents, and collaborated on posters for the ESRC research festival at the university where the device was displayed and demonstrated regularly over a number of years from 2015-17 as part of the Imagery In Action event. Inspired by Jastrow's collaboration with magician Harry Houdini, another collaborative workshop on ideomotor drawing with research magician Stuart Nolan was held for the CogNovo, 'Off the Lip Manufactory', in 2016. Nolan later developed this work into 1000 Mindreaders. Versions of the argument were accepted into and presented at two international conferences, in film history and in cognitive science and philosophy. The chapter was peer reviewed by the editor before publication. As an exemplary example of media archaeological enquiry the reconstructed device encapsulates the notion of a reified theory, the automatograph produces a specific illusion to reinforce a set of ideas and expectations – in this case regarding the meaning and feeling of 'self-willed action'. Through the recreation of the device itself, familiarity with its use, and the various actions undertaken with it, the automatograph helped to sensitise the author to specific forms of 'sleight of hand' that persist in present-day psychological discourse.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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