Experimental Neurosis

1912

Mariya Yerofeyeva (1867–1925), Nataliya Shenger-Krestovnikova (1875–1947)

Ivan Pavlov’s laboratory of physiology at the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was a busy place in the early twentieth century. The laboratory was a massive enterprise, with hundreds of employees working in a factorylike setting. Pavlov demonstrated that animals can be conditioned to salivate in response to a stimulus other than food.

After the Classical Conditioning paradigm was developed, Pavlov assigned research scientists to explore its possible variations. Two women scientists were assigned the task of investigating disruptions in the conditioned response. In this set of experiments, dogs were conditioned to respond (salivate) to a circle that had been paired with food, but to not respond when an ellipse was presented (the ellipse was not paired with food). Once conditioning was established, then the ellipse was altered to look more and more like a circle in successive conditioning trials. At first, the dogs could discriminate between the two stimuli and would only salivate when the circle was presented. As the ellipse was altered and discrimination became more and more difficult, the dogs became visibly upset, barked repeatedly, and acted aggressively. Pavlov believed that these results had implications for human mental disorders.

Two Americans, W. H. Gantt of Johns Hopkins University and H. S. Liddell of Cornell University, took up the study of what was by then called experimental neurosis. The same response was found in a number of species, including goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits, and cats. Both Gantt and Liddell wrote extensively about the implications of the results for human mental disorders. The field of Psychosomatic Medicine was then just beginning, and many thought it possible to connect psychoanalytic theory and experimental neurosis research to explain psychosomatic disorders. Out of this pioneering research, the research field known as experimental psychopathology emerged. One of its major findings was the theory of Learned Helplessness.

SEE ALSO Classical Conditioning (1903), Learned Helplessness (1975)

H. S. Liddell induced experimental neurosis in a variety of species. In this image, he is working with a goat.