----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
I cannot repond to this question with respect to English economics of the 
19th C, but in America in the late 19th and early 20th C there was intense 
interest in how the work of psychologists might be applied to economics. 
The most obvious case is perhaps Thorstein Veblen who was interested in the 
psychology of William James and others (including Freud).  Another person 
who tried to analyse labor unrest in term of instinct theory was Carlton 
Parker (writing in around 1915-1917, and Parker had been turned onto this 
material by William Ogburn, later a well known sociologist at Columbia and 
Chicago, and a Columbia PhD in Sociology.  Wesley Mitchell was also 
interested in psychological applications to economics, although mainly 
McDougall and other instinct theorists.  F. C. Mills, a student of both 
Parker's amd Mitchell's, has spoken of his experience between 1915 and 1917 
as follows: 
 
  
When I was studying at California and later at Columbia, there was a 
feeling that exciting new prospects for economics had been revealed by 
recent work in psychology.  In seminar at California, and to a lesser 
degree at Columbia, the work of McDougall in social psychology, John B. 
Watson on behaviorism, Patrick on the psychology of relaxation, Trotter on 
instincts of the herd in peace and war, Crile and others working in 
psycho-physiological fields, James Harvey Robinson on the making of the 
mind, and of course Freud (but this, it seems in retrospect, only 
incidentally), struck us with tremendous impact.  That stream of thought in 
some ways supplemented the one flowing from Peirce, James and Dewey. . . . 
 Veblen again, particularly in raising questions as to why economics was 
not an evolutionary science, seemed to cut away other pillars.  All of this 
provided a climate thoroughly opposed to the rationalistic tenets of 
classical economic thought (F. C. Mills to Milton Friedman, 25 June 1951). 
 
 
 
Malcolm Rutherford 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]