New York State of Mind

culture, history, and psychology in New York City

Abstract

Place is important for understanding knowledge and scientific practices. In turn, knowledge and practice influence the place they occur.  Place is not simply the stage where the real action happens, but it is itself constitutive of systems of human interaction, thus ideas are produced and shaped in resonance with their environments. Here the author argues that New York City was an important site for the growth and diversification of application of psychology during the decade of the 1920s. The city both shaped the science and practice that grew there and was shaped by it.