The realisation of his errors, and his admission of them tempered his later methods considerably. This eventually caused a split between student and teacher. He uncritically accepted, and vehemently defended Charcot's methods and his doctrines on hypnotic transfer and polarisation - until he was forced to accept the counterattacks of Delboeuf of the Nancy School. Fascinated by the work of Jean Martin Charcot (1825-1893) on hypnosis at the Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, Binet, became a student of Charcot's, remaining until 1891. Two years later he began working in the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where his training methods of science began in earnest. Binet’s interest was caught for a while by the subject of "animal magnetism" – "hypnosis" – and he published numerous papers detailing with how magnets could change emotions, influence perceptions, and accomplish all sorts of other things – "things that hypnosis is known to be able to accomplish." To Binet’s embarrassment, his findings would be shown to have been an artifact of poor experimental methodology. In 1880, Binet published a psychology-related article, though it was subsequently criticized as having been plagiarized. Although he read English almost as fluently as he his native French, he apparently didn't read German. Instead, he spent much of his time reading psychology, among other things, at the French National Library – apparently a very formal establishment, as he needed a letter of introduction to be let in. It is possible that his father's attempts to bully young Alfred into the medical profession by showing him a cadaver back-fired, to the extent that Binet found himself unable to consider the profession.Ī lawyer by age 21, his family's wealth made it unnecessary for him to practice law. After graduating from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, he studied law, becoming a licentiate in jurisprudence. As a youth he was not extraordinarily promising, although he showed talent and a willingness to work.
His mother was an artist, his father a physician, and Alfred was probably intended to follow in his footstep. If he had known what accusations would later be used against him and other psychometricians for their alleged "mismeasurement of man", for instance the row over The Bell Curve, he might as well have let it be.īinet was born in Nice an only child. Alfred Binet played an important role in the development of experimental psychology in France and made fundamental contributions to the measurement of intelligence.
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