Psychological Explanations of Congenital Word-blindness

Abstract

During the final years of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century the only discipline concerned with congenital reading difficulties was ophthalmology. This monopoly changed near the end of the first decade of the twentieth century when Lightner Witmer placed reading difficulties at the centre of the discipline of clinical psychology that he was attempting to establish. Over the course of the next two decades, reading difficulties were several times the subject of articles in The Psychological Clinic, and, later, congenital word-blindness became a specific area of research for those associated with the journal. The way the operation, fashioned by psychologists, differed from the ophthalmologists will be detailed in this chapter. To account for psychology’s growing jurisdiction over reading difficulties, the relationship between psychology and education during this period will be explored.