For a long time, history was a part of literature – a collection of verbal accounts, of stories, at times fascinating. It has been enriched by visual materials in the form of portraits, at first painted and drawn, then reproduced in print and, eventually, replaced by still photographs. Then came "motion pictures" in the form of silent and, later of speaking films. Here we shall consider three ways of "enriching words by visual images": illustrated books on the history of psychology, slides and videos, reminding readers (and ourselves) of the impressive series of filmed dialogues with notable contributors to psychology, produced in the 1960s by R. I. Evans. Filmed dialogues with notable contributors to psychology.

Most books on the history of psychology, including textbooks, are skimpy on illustrations or lack them altogether. In the early 1990s, large illustrated works on history of psychology appeared in print both in the United States (Popplestone & McPherson, 1992) and in Germany (Luck & Miller, Eds., 1993, 374 pp.). Most of the contributors to the latter volume are German, Austrian, or German Swiss. In addition to a handful of foreign contributors, lightly scattered throughout the text, the section on "regional developments" (pp. 203 – 241) contains contributions of individuals from Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany (2), Hungary, Peru, Spain, and USA (3).

A substantially enlarged edition (636 pp.) of the German volume appeared in the USA (Bringmann, Lück, Miller & Early, Eds., 1997). It is richly illustrated by portraits of individual psychologists, their carricatures, photographs of groups, title pages of numerous books and of journals, apparatus, tests and projective techniques, diagrams and tables, graphs and figures, studies, laboratories and their floor plans, tests and testing facilities, buildings, letters, research notes, as well as academic certificates and records.

These are valuable and interesting supplements of the text.

For use in classroom and for illustrating lectures in general, several sets of slides have been made available, varying both in content and quantity. Thus a set of 345 slides, supplemented by 51 pages of text, accompanies a volume on illustrated history of psychology in America (Popplestone & McPherson, 1992).

Recently a set of 34 slides, illustrating internacional history of psychological testing, was assembled by Peter van Drunen, director of The Archives of Dutch Psychology (Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, P. O. Box 1710, 9701BS Groningen, The Netherlands). The accomapying brochure, dated November 1997, was prepared in cooperation with Donald van Tol.

The brochure lists the slides under four categories:

1. Early History, from the physiognomy of Johann Caspar Lavater (1741- 1801) and Franz Joseph Gall´s (1758-1828) phrenology through Cesare Lombroso´s criminal anthropology (1887) and P. Broca´s craniometry to the "anthropometric laboratory" of Sir Francis Galton, installed in London in 1884.

2. Intelligence Testing, beginning with Alfred Binet (1857-1911) through the Army alfa and Army beta scales used in America in the first world war to D.Wechsler and the controversial volume, The Bell Curve (1994), written by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

3. Personnell Select and Psychotechnics, stressing the use of apparatus and illustrated by the testing of French pilots (cca 1916), the first aptitude-testing train car of Saxony´s railway company (cca 1921), and selecting workers in the psychotechnical laboratory of the Philips company in Eindhoven (The Netherlands, cca 1930). A driving simulator was used by the Dutch Postal Services (cca 1935).

4. Clinical Testing, focused on projective techniques and including the portrait of Herman Rorschach (1884-1922), the father of the "ink-blot test" of 1921. The section refers also to Henry Murray´s (1935) Thematic apperception test and Lipot Szondi´s test (1947).

Selectively, the slides can be used in a variety of contexts, including introductions to psychology and applied psychology, in addition to courses on the history of psychology.

Slides lack two components that were provided by the speaking films and the modern videos, readily displayed on television screens: Action and verbal content.

The reviewer was introduced to this approach to the history of psychology at a symposium entitled "Centenary of Mira y Lopez: A Psychologist between two Continents", chaired by Prof. Helio Carpintero (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain) and held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in the context of the XXVI Interamerican Congress of Psychology. The impressive video was presented by the symposium´s chairman and its presentation was followed by a lively discussion.

The Mira y Lopez video is the first of the three videos that have been produced in Spain so far. Additional five videos are in the pipeline and others are likely to be added. Each of them deals with one of the outstanding Spanish psychologists.

Who are the producers and who are the customers? The organization that generates the Spanish videos, at the rate of about one unit per year, is the Center for the Design and Production of Audiovisual Media, a unit of the Vicepresidency for Methodology, the Media and Technology of a unique Spanish academic institution – the National University for Education at a Distance. The idea was conceived by two Madrid historians of psychology, Helio Carpintero and Enrique Lafuente. So far three videos were released, accompanied by informative booklets.

The available videos deal with the following individuals and topics:

Video 1: Francisco Giner de los Rios and the Institute of Free Instruction in Spanish psychology (Lafuente & Carpintero, no date).

Video 2: Luis Simarro and the beginnings of scientific psychology in Spain (Lafuente and Carpintero, 1995).

Video 5: Emilio Mira y Lopez: A Spanish psychologist between two continents (Carpintero & Lafuente, 1994).

We shall note some common features of the accompanying booklets:

1) Each provides essential biographical information about its "hero".

2) Data and illustrative material available in the literature are supplemented by information obtained through intensive archival research, thus significantly contributing to the documentary value of the series.

3) Extensive "Chronological tables" cover events in a given individual´s life, developments in psychology, and historical events.

Importantly, the videos themselves portray the lives and activities of each individual not in isolation but against the social, political, intellectual and scientific back-ground.

The running time of the tapes is 36 minutes for Giner de los Rios, 31 for Simarro, and 25 for Mira y Lopez.

As na approach to the teaching of the history of psychology, the Spanish video project is impressive and, in its totality, unique. It is to be hoped that it will be a stimulus for historians of psychology in other countries.

The videotapes and the booklets are distributed by Libreria de la UNED, Bravo Murillo 38, Madrid, Spain.

Bringmann, W. G.; Luck, H. E.; Miller, R. e Early, Ch. E. (Eds.) (1997). A pictorial history of psychology. Chicago: Quintessence.

Carpintero, H. e Lafuente, E. (n.d.). Guia didática: Francisco Giner de los Rios. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia.

Carpintero, H. e Lafuente, E. (1994). Guia didactica: Emilio Mira y Lopez. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia.

Drunen, P. van e Tol, D. van. (1997). A visual history of psychological testing. Groningen: The Archives of Dutch Psychology.

Evans, R. I. (1969). Filmed dialogues with notable contributors to psychology. Psychological Reports, 23, 159-164.

Lafuente, E. e Carpintero, H. (1995). Guia didactica: Luis Simarro. Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia.

Lück, H. e Miller, R. (1993). Illustrierte Geschchte der Psychologie. Munich: Quintessenz.

Popplestone, J. A. e McPherson, M. W. (1992). An illustrated history of American psychology. Dubuque, IA: Brown & Benchmark.

Josef Brožek is a retired Professor of Psychology and Researcher at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, U.S.A. He was born in 1913, in the city of Melnik, in Bohemia, and became a North American citizen in 1945. He received his PhD at Charles University, in Prague, Czech Republic. Since 1936, he assumed teaching positions at important European and North American universities, such as the M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he worked from 1980 to 1981. Among his numerous published works, particular attention has been given to those regarding Behaviour in Undernourishment and History of Psychology. He is one of the pioneers in the research field of History of Modern Psychology. Contacts: Lehigh University, Department of Psychology, 27 Memorial Drive West, Bethlehem, Pa., USA, 18015.