The beginnings of psychology in France: who was a "scientific" psychologist in the nineteenth century?

During the last thirty years of the nineteenth century in France, a psychology calling itself "positive," "experimental," or "physiological" was developing in opposition to the official philosophy, eclectic spiritualism. Its bases were set forth by Hippolyte Taine and Théodule Ribot, who popularised foreign models among the academic and scientific public, opposing spiritualism on the one hand, and Auguste Comte's positivism on the other. At the end of the century, Pierre Janet put into practice Ribot's programme for psychology, while differentiating himself from Ribot on the question of the relationship between psychology and physiology. Meanwhile, Alfred Binet, influenced by Taine in the first part of his work, went on to develop "individual psychology," and Gabriel Tarde tried to establish "interpsychology," which never managed to become recognised as a discipline in its own right. We intend to reposition these "scientific" psychologists and their works in that intellectual, institutional, and political context existing in late-nineteenth-century France. We aim to show that "scientific" psychology was able to find its place in that context only within philosophy, by means of a strategy of co-existing insertion and differentiation. If a new discipline did emerge, it was only after compromise, and with limited institutionalisation.