ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the role of a number of periodicals in the development of psychological theory. Its broad argument is that, until the very close of the century, nineteenth-century psychology was largely an eclectic, generalist field, the nature and role of which was hotly debated. It lacked an established disciplinary identity, career structure, and specialist outlets for publication. New theorists, often drawn from non-traditional intellectual and social backgrounds, argued with those of established standing and disciplinary identity. In writing about nineteenth-century psychology one is therefore writing about the making of a discipline. For Victorian readers, its appeal was that of the new, the exciting, and the controversial. Psychology thus represents a particularly open and disputatious kind of scientific knowledge in which periodicals played a distinctive role. Throughout the period, the discourse of the soul and faculty psychology was supported by a powerful faction in the philosophy of mind.
