Education and Early Career
Binet attended law school in Paris, and received his degree in 1878. He also studied Natural Sciences at the Sorbonne. His first formal position was as a researcher at a neurological clinic, Salpêtrière Hospital, in Paris from 1883–1889. From there, Binet went on to being a researcher and associate director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne from 1891–1894. In 1894, he was promoted to being the director of the laboratory until 1911 (his death). After receiving his law degree in 1878, Alfred Binet began to study science at the Sorbonne. However, he was not overly interested in his formal schooling, and started educating himself by reading psychology texts at the National Library in Paris. He soon became fascinated with the ideas of John Stuart Mill, who believed that the operations of intelligence could be explained by the laws of associationism. Binet eventually realized the limitations of this theory, but Mill's ideas continued to influence his work.
In 1883, years of unaccompanied study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles Fere, who introduced him to Jean-Martin Charcot, the director of a clinic called La Salpêtrière, Paris. Charcot became his mentor and in turn, Binet accepted a job offer at the clinic, working in his neurological laboratory. At the time of Binet's tenure, Charcot was experimenting with hypnotism. Binet was strongly influenced by this great man, and published four articles about his work in this area. Unfortunately, Charcot's conclusions did not hold up under professional scrutiny, and Binet was forced to make an embarrassing public admission that he had been wrong in supporting his teacher. Nevertheless he had established his name internationally in the field, Morton Prince for example stating in 1904 that "certain problems in subconscious automatism will always be associated with the names of Breuer and Freud in Germany, Janet and Alfred Binet in France".
When his involvement with hypnosis waned as a result of failure to establish professional acceptance, he turned to the study of development spurred on by the birth of his two daughters, Marguerite and Armande (born in 1885 and 1887, respectively), calling Armande a subjectivist and Marguerite an objectivist, and developing the concepts of introspection and externospection in an anticipation of Carl Jung's psychological types. In the 21 year period following his shift in career interests, Binet "published more than 200 books, articles, and reviews in what now would be called experimental, developmental, educational, social, and differential psychology" (Siegler, 1992). Bergin and Cizek (2001) suggest that this work may have influenced Jean Piaget, who later studied with Binet's collaborator Théodore Simon in 1920. Binet's research with his daughters helped him to further refine his developing conception of intelligence, especially the importance of attention span and suggestibility in intellectual development.
Despite Binet's extensive research interests and wide breadth of publications, today he is most widely known for his contributions to intelligence. Wolf (1973) postulates that this is the result of his not being affiliated with a major university. Because Binet did not have any formalized graduate study in psychology, he did not hold a professorship with a prestigious institution where students and funds would be sure to perpetuate his work (Siegler, 1992). Additionally, his more progressive theories did not provide the practical utility that his intelligence scale would evoke.
Binet and his coworker Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also recognized perceptual and emotional polarization. Binet and Fere thought their findings were a phenomenon and of utmost importance. After investigations by many, the two men were forced to admit that they were wrong about their concepts of transfer and polarization. Basically, their patients had known what was expected, what was supposed to happen, and so they simply assented. Binet had risked everything on his experiment and its results, and this failure took a toll on him.
In 1890, Binet resigned from La Salpêtrière and never mentioned the place or its director again. His interests then turned toward the development of his children, Madeleine and Armande, who were two years apart. This research presages that done by Jean Piaget just a short time later, regarding the development of cognition in children.
A job presented itself for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. He worked for a year without pay and by 1894, he took over as the director. This was a position that Binet held until his death, and it enabled him to pursue his studies on mental processes. While directing the Laboratory, Theodore Simon applied to do doctoral research under Binet's supervision. This was the beginning of their long, fruitful collaboration. During this time he also co-founded the French journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique, serving as the director and editor-in-chief.
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