– September 29, 1940 in Geneva) was a Swiss neurologist

Neurologist

A neurologist is a physician who specializes in neurology, and is trained to investigate, or diagnose and treat neurological disorders.Neurology is the medical specialty related to the human nervous system. The nervous system encompasses the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nerves. A specialist...

 and child psychologist.

Studies of science and medicine, later of psychology under Théodore Flournoy

Théodore Flournoy

Théodore Flournoy was a professor of psychology at the University of Geneva and author of books on spiritism and psychic phenomena...

; 1897 MD from the University of Geneva

University of Geneva

The University of Geneva is a public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland.It was founded in 1559 by John Calvin, as a theological seminary and law school. It remained focused on theology until the 17th century, when it became a center for Enlightenment scholarship. In 1873, it...

; 1897-98 at La Salpêtrière hospital in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

; 1901 foundation of the Archives de psychologie with Flournoy, which he edited until his death; from 1904 onward at the University of Geneva; 1904 General Secretary at the Second International Congress of Psychology; 1909 General Secretary at the Sixth International Congress of Psychology; 1912 founder of the Rousseau Institute

Rousseau Institute

Rousseau Institute is a private school in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1912, Édouard Claparède created an institute to turn educational theory into a science...

; 1915-1940 professor of psychology at the University of Geneva in succession to Flournoy; Permanent Secretary at the International Congress of Psychology; Life President of the Comité de l'Association Internationale des Conferences de Psychotechnique.

He focused on infant psychology, teaching, and memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

.

He was married to Hélène Spir, daughter of the Russian philosopher African Spir

African Spir

Afrikan Aleksandrovich Špir was a Russian Neo-Kantian philosopher of German descent who wrote primarily in German...

.

Trauma experiment

Claparède performed a fairly well known experiment in which he would test whether or not the trauma of a painful event would be retained if short term memory was lost. His experiment involved a woman who suffered from a form of amnesia. She had all of her old memories as well as her basic reasoning skills, but the recent past was not remembered. Claparède had greeted her every day, each time she could not remember his face at all. Then during one session of the experiment, Claparède hid a pin in his hand and reached to shake the woman's hand, pricking her. The next day, sure enough, she did not remember him. But when Claparède went to shake her hand, he found that she hesitated, recognizing a threat when her memory had been severely damaged.

Works

• L’association des idées (1903)
• Psychologie de l’enfant et pédagogie expérimentale (1909)
• L’éducation fonctionnelle (1931)
• La genèse de l’hypothèse (1933)

External links

• Short biography, bibliography, and links on digitized sources in the Virtual Laboratory
  Virtual Laboratory
  The online project Virtual Laboratory. Essays and Resources on the Experimentalization of Life, 1830-1930, located at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is dedicated to research in the history of the experimentalization of life...
  
   of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
  The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin was established in March 1994. Its research is primarily devoted to a theoretically oriented history of science, principally of the natural sciences, but with methodological perspectives drawn from the cognitive sciences and from...