Shepherd Ivory Franz and the

Invited Presentation in the Key Barkley Symposium on the History of Psychology, Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, April 1, 1999, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

The presentation was made, more or less, extemporaneously aided by material presented on overhead transparencies. The information presented was based on the biographical sketch below and on the translations of an article by Franz and one by Kalisher that are appended below.

Shepherd Ivory Franz was born in Jersey City, NJ on May 27, 1874. He earned his A.B. at Columbia University in 1894 and his Ph.D. in 1899. James McKeen Cattell was his dissertation supervisor, and Franz's immediate graduate student peers included C. Judson Herrick, Edward L. Thorndike, and Robert S. Woodworth. Franz also spent a semester at Leipzig in 1896, but he said that Wundt was seldom seen except during his lectures.

Immediately following receipt of his Ph.D. degree, Franz accepted an appointment to teach physiology at the Harvard Medical School (1899-1901). After two years he changed position for similar duties at the Dartmouth Medical School (1901-1904). It was during this Harvard-Dartmouth period that he began to do basic research on learning and memory using animals (cats and monkeys, primarily). From this research, he is generally recognized as having been the first (1902) to combine experimental brain ablation in animals with systematic behavioral testing. The systematic behavioral testing initially was done using the Thorndike puzzle box. It is about this research that the claim to priority in conjunction with the plagiarism issue arose; this will be addressed more fully below.

These researches also marked the beginning of a career in which Franz's primary research interests would be on the functions of the brain, and especially on recovery from brain damage. The basic research using nonhuman animals soon carried over into human clinical applications, work that would persist throughout his career.

In (1904) Franz was hired by Edward Cowles to establish a psychological laboratory at McLean Hospital, adjunctive to the Harvard Medical School. Some historians have listed the establishment of this laboratory in a hospital among Franz's "firsts," for example, Robert I. Watson recognized Franz for this in more than one publication, although Franz himself clearly attributed that accomplishment to Edward Cowles; see Franz's dedication to Cowles in the Handbook of Mental Examination Methods (New York, 1912).

In 1907, Franz accepted Superintendent William Alanson White's offer to fill the position, "Psychologist" at the Government Hospital for the Insane in Washington, D.C. (still in operation but known today, as it was known informally in 1907, as St. Elizabeth's Hospital). At St. Elizabeth's Franz gained recognition for being the first (1907) to implement routine psychological testing of patients in a psychiatric hospital. In 1908, Franz wrote a chapter on mental examination methods for White's highly successful textbook, Outlines of Psychiatry, that was expanded and published in 1912 as the previously mentioned, Handbook of Mental Examination Methods. Whipple's Manual of Mental and Physical Tests had been published in 1910, but Franz's appears to have been the first intended especially for use with psychiatric patients. He was also among the first psychologists to address rehabilitation of neurologically damaged patients. All these early contributions justify giving Franz a strong claim for recognition as being the first clinical neuropsychologist.

Franz's work on rehabilitation following brain damage was accelerated during the years immediately following World War I. Among other duties he performed in conjunction with the military's interest in addressing the problems of the brain damaged, Franz was given responsibility to develop a course in neurological psychiatry that was to provide such education for physicians in the U. S. Army. This work also contributed to his publishing his second book, Nervous and Mental Re-Education in 1923.

Franz's view about mental re-education had arisen earlier in his basic animal research where his experimentally brain-lesioned cats "lost the habit" of escaping from the Thorndike puzzle box, but they were able to relearn to original standards. In fact, twice, parts of the cat's brain were extirpated, each was followed by loss of the habit and each time the cat relearned to original standards. Not only did this influence Franz's views about rehabilitation in humans following brain damage, it also contributed to his theoretical view that brain functions are not localized. He reached this viewpoint for higher order functions such as learning and memory at a time when localization of function viewpoint was strongly prevalent (e.g., due to such events as Bouillaud/Auburtin/Broca's discovery of the speech center, Fritsch and Hitzig's localization of motor cortex, and Brodmann's nd others' histological maps that divided the cortex into numerous anatomically distinct areas that were proposed also to be functionally distinct).

Believing that he had made a strong case against localization for higher order functions, Franz gave a sarcastic presidential address at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in December, 1911, titled "New Phrenology." Among the new phrenologists, Franz singled out the histological phrenologists such as Brodmann. The presidential address was published under the same title as the lead article in the March, 1912, issue of Science.

Karl Lashley, who would become the world's best known antilocalizationist and neuropsychologist, got his start with Franz in 1915. Lashley learned animal surgery from Franz, and they collaborated on two articles that were published in 1917. Since Lashley had started out a localizationist, it is reasonable to assume that he was influenced early on by Franz's antilocalizationist views.

Franz stayed at St. Elizabeth's from 1907 until 1924, concurrently with professorships in physiology and psychology at George Washington University. White's early enthusiasm for Franz waned over the years (undoubtedly affected by Franz's disdain for White's "conversion" to psychoanalysis). On April 15, 1924, White in a letter written under somewhat contrived circumstances demoted Franz and reduced his salary. On May 3, 1924, Franz resigned effective June 1, 1924.

By Fall 1924, Franz was department head at the newly founded University of California, Los Angeles where he also chaired the committee that planned the establishment of UCLA's graduate school. Franz died in 1933 a few months after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The psychology department today at UCLA today is housed in Franz Hall, named in his honor. Franz was also Chief of the Psychological and Educational Clinic at Children's Hospital in Hollywood.

Franz's final books, Psychology (New York, 1933) with Kate Gordon and Persons One and Three: A Study in Multiple Personalities (New York, 1933), were published in the year of his death caused by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Persons One and Three, according to reviewer H. Meltzer (Journal of Educational Psychology, 1934), differed from previous works on multiple personality in being "largely on a descriptive, observational level." Franz avoided speculative Freudian and organic explanations, preferring to explain the observed dissociations in terms of specific amnesias which in this patient had begun during military service in World War I.

Franz was well recognized during his career as editor of Psychological Bulletin (1912-1924) and Psychological Monographs (1924-1927) and associate editor of Journal of General Psychology (1927-1933). He was president of the American Psychological Association (1920), the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology (1911), and the Western Psychological Association (1927-1928), and he was a Fellow in the American Medical Association and in the American Association for Advancement of Science.

1. The author has previously published two biographical sketches of Franz; please see them for references.

Thomas, R. K. (1999). Shepherd Ivory Franz (1874_1933). In J. A. Garraty (Editor_in_Chief), American National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, R. K. (2000). Shepherd I. Franz (1874_1933). In A.E. Kazdin (Editor_in_Chief), Encyclopedia of Psychology, Washington: American Psychological Association.

Franz, S. I. (1932). Shepherd Ivory Franz. In C. Murchison. (Ed.). A history of psychology in autobiography, Volume II. Worcester, MA: Clark University Press.

3. The author has an extensive file of material (e.g., correspondence between Franz and White and between Franz and others) photocopied from the National Archives and from the St. Elizabeth’s Museum in Washington, DC, as well as from Franz’s personnel files as they were maintained by the United States Office of Personnel Management and made available under the Privacy Act of 1974.

4. The author owns photocopies or original reprints of much of Franz’s published works, including three of his four published books (exception being, Persons One and Three).

The following translations of S. I. Franz’s (583-584) article, "About the So Called Training Method for the Study of the Central Nervous System" and O. Kalischer’s (585-586) article, "Some Comments About My Training Method," both published successively, in Zentralblatt für Physiologie, 1907, 21, 583-586, were provided in 1995 by Dr. George W. Windholz (deceased), who was then Professor Emeritus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Dr. Windholz was a highly accomplished historian of psychology with numerous publications to his credit. He specialized primarily in Ivan Pavlov and other Russian physiologists/psychologists. Dr. Windholz's translations of Franz's and Kalischer's articles were done at my request. With one exception (see bracketed sentence denoted by "RKT"), Dr. Windholz’s translations and parenthetical comments are presented here without comment or alteration.

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About the So Called Training Method for the Study of the Central Nervous System

In the protocols of the Session of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences, Physical-Mathematical Class, on the February 21, 1907, is a speech delivered by Dr. 0. Kalischer, titled: Toward the Functioning of the Temporal Lobes of the Cerebral Cortex. A New Auditory Test Method with Dogs; and in the Same Time a Contribution to Training as a Physiological Method of Investigation. (Speech in the No. 6 "Dies Zentralblatt"). It is necessary for me to make a rejoinder in a more detailed manner to the one of the author's statements found in his presentation.

Kalischer writes: "The method that I have described is in its simplicity useful for the general use in physiological investigations" and then "through those trainings we have received a way to answer the questions about the paths and processes that have as yet not been decidedly [clarified] in humans and animals." The author states to have used, as he states, a "new" so called training method. However, I have described 8 years ago such a method for the investigation of the work of the cerebral hemispheres.

The training method, used to test the intelligence of animals without [the use of] extirpation, has been for the first time used by Lloyd Morgan from Bristol, England and later by Thorndike from New York, on, among other animals, cats, dogs, and apes. The consequences of extirpation of certain parts of the brain of trained animals have been used for many years by Hitzig, Horsley and Schäfer, Bianchi and others, but training was not a special method when used with their animals.

I am, I believe, the first person, who used together training and extirpation as a special method. I have described this method in several periodicals and presented some results, especially pertaining to the frontal lobes. The first work of mine is in Amer. Jour. Physiology, Vol. VIII (October 1902) and a preliminary notice before the Amer. Psychological Association in Psychological Review, Vol. VIII (March 1901). Recently I wrote about the function of the frontal lobes in apes Jour. Amer. Medical Association, Vol. XLVII (November 1906), and in a monograph (Science Press Publishing, New York, March 1907).

It is to be pointed out that I have not only considered the training and extirpation method only for the study of frontal lobes, but also to study the sensory abilities of the brain. In Science, Vol. XVIII (December 1903), there is an abstract of my report about the localization of the kinesthetic [???] sense in the brain. However, the method to do this was not adequately described. In connection with that it is interesting to know that Dr. Jolly from Edinburgh delivered a speech at the Seventh International Physiology Congress held in Heidelberg in August 1907 about the function of parietal lobes and that Jolly was making a test with a similar method as this one that I was using for the last 6 years.

I think that this method is very useful for the investigation of the so called association centers, but this method is also, as I and lately Kalischer have shown, to be used in the investigation of sensory area. I will not point out the special problems, but I would like to say that this method is preferable in the study of the spinal column, of the small brain and the large hemispheres in comparison of the older method of mere observation. Almost everything that one can do with the older method has been already made. The new training and extirpation method opens new fields of inquiry. I am certain that in the nearest future there will be findings using the method that I have described not only to study the brain, but also of the small brain and the spinal column.

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In view of the previous paper, I see myself to be prompted to respond as follows:

The training of animals for the purpose of physiological investigation of the central nervous system is already in use for a longer time period. Yes, one can say: Since that time it was commenced to use systematic extirpation of the cerebral hemispheres, it was also a start to train animals to perform more or less complex movements in order to determine after the extirpation of certain parts, the specific loss of the acquired movements and in this way to determine the function of the specific parts of the brain. For instance, the "lifting of the leg" is one of the simplest and most often used training methods. But also more complex movements were systematically taught to animals that were chosen for brain surgeries. Just to mention some experimenters, so Gaule should be remembered. In his 1890 experiments, a dog had to open with the foreleg to by lifting a lid of a box in which were located pieces of meat. H. Munk taught in 1878 dogs, in order to perform extirpation of temporal lobes to determine the hearing center in response to such calls as "pst, komm, hoch, schön" connected with the performance of different movements. [RKT – Professor Windholz translated the calls as "pst, come, high, lovely" but it may be more appropriate in this case to show the actual calls.]

Therefore, I cannot conclude that the method of Franz, which is used to test the intelligence of cats and monkeys with complex, learned tricks [tasks] in order to determine after the extirpation of frontal lobes what kind of behaviors the animals are missing, differs greatly from the existing methods. Even if that method is an improvement over the others, it is not of fundamentally decisive difference.

In my method, which was solely used to test animal's sensory responses to a variety of stimuli, I did not train the animals some complex behaviors or some tricks. Just the opposite--and this is the gist of my method--I use a motor reaction in response to stimuli. This behavioral act is the simplest and most natural one: the dogs' grab with their mouth food objects. This is a movement which even the most severely injured animals are capable of performing.

It is true that in all others training methods the alimentary drive is involved but only indirectly so as the food acts as an attraction to stimulate the animals during the training of tricks, and to gain their attention.

I permit myself to use an example, which during the introduction of my method (see Protocols of the Royal Prussian Academy of Science of February 21, 1907) 1 have used to explain the principles of my method. I wanted to determine whether a dog's leg differentiates between cold and warm. I placed the dog's right foreleg in warm water and allowed it to grab the meat, and would not allow this dog to grab the meat when its right fore leg was in cold water. Soon the dog learns, without further training on my part, to react accordingly to the temperature. And so a way was found to determine the sensory modalities after its central nervous system was extirpated.

What is very important, what differentiates this method from the difficult training method, is the simplicity and surprising rapidity by which one can established minute sensory discriminations even in cases when to make such a differentiation is very difficult. In about 2 weeks this training is completed, and the daily test lasts about 3 to 5 minutes.

I am not so much interested in training as such, but in the specific way that is easy to use and lends itself well to determine the sensory aspects in animals. And today when I continue to experiment to explore other sensory characteristics, this method can be easily used allowing a thorough understanding of these sensory characteristics. I can say with conviction that this method can be used for physiological and psychological experimentation.

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