Psychologists in Word and Image

by Nicholas Wade

First published 1995

Nicholas Wade presents more than 100 psychological thinkers through an innovative combination of visual art and biographical text. Each figure receives a full page portrait where faces emerge from carefully crafted motifs drawn from their own work, inventions, or writings. Francis Bacon appears alongside René Descartes, Pierre Broca, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Ruth Benedict, Allen Newell, and David Marr among scores of others who shaped psychology into an empirical science. Wade arranges these pioneers chronologically by birth date, pairing each portrait with descriptive text that explains their contributions and reveals the connections between different schools of thought. The author employs various graphic and photographic techniques to embed faces within symbolic patterns, challenging readers to discover the hidden visages while learning about each person's ideas and legacy. This gallery format transforms the history of psychology into both visual puzzle and intellectual journey.

Genres: biography, psychology, 20th-century, non-fiction, 21st-century, art-history, academic, history-of-science

Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking, visual

Tropes: gallery-format, intellectual-journey, visual-puzzle

Period: 19th-Century, 20th-Century, 21st-Century

240 pages · Hardcover · Bradford Books

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