Anne Harrington

Anne Harrington (born June 20, 1960 ) is a science historian and director of the Institute for the History of Science at Harvard University . Her areas of expertise include the history of psychiatry , neuroscience, and psychology . She mainly focuses on the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Life

Harrington obtained her PhD in 1986 from Oxford University and subsequently held research positions at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London and at the Albert Ludwigs University of Freiburg . She is on the board of the Mind and Life Institute and co-editor of the journal Biosocieties .

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In Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler , Harrington analyzes the holistic thinking in the sciences of the interwar period , which asserted a mechanization and disenchantment of the world by modern natural sciences. According to Harrington, contemporary holism in the German-speaking world cannot be understood as a homogeneous movement. In addition to nationalistic irrationalism, holistic thinking was also taken up by liberal scientists, for example in the context of Gestalt psychology and the neuropsychology of Kurt Goldstein . The connection between holistic thinking that is critical of science and National Socialist ideology therefore requires a differentiated presentation.

In other publications, Harrington deals with the history of research into the hemispherical structure of the brain, the placebo effect, and meditation .

literature

• Medicine, Mind, and the Double Brain , Princeton University Press, 1987, ISBN 0691024227
• Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler , Princeton University Press, 1999, ISBN 0691050503
  • German translation: The search for wholeness. The history of biological-psychological holistic teaching. From the Empire to the New Age Movement , rororo, Reinbek 2002, ISBN 3-499-55577-8
• The placebo effect: an interdisciplinary exploration , Cambridge, Mass. [u. a.], Harvard Univ. Press, 1997

• The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine , WW Norton & Co, 2008, ISBN 0393065634

Web links

• Literature by and about Anne Harrington in the catalog of the German National Library
• Harvard website
• Boston Globes interview