Torture of the Mind: Criminal Interrogation and Practical Psychological Knowledge, 1750-1850

Psychology is not only a matter of professional psychologists. Historians have shown that psychological knowledge has often not been created in laboratories or academies out of a theoretical interest, but as a solution to practical problems. However, we know little about practical psychology before the late nineteenth century. As a result, we continue to undervalue how practical purposes for knowledge of the human mind have influenced psychological knowledge. This project remedies this gap by using criminal interrogation manuals and interrogation transcripts in France and the German territories to study psychological ideas and techniques in a situation where the interpretation and influencing of others’ minds was an affair of vital importance.    
The main hypothesis of this project is that with the abolition of torture in many European countries in the late eighteenth century, interrogators developed increasingly sophisticated techniques to access suspects’ minds. They had to become skilful practical psychologists, able to manipulate and interpret minds, emotions and bodies. By retracing the techniques, suppositions and resistances in the criminal interrogation, the project will contribute not only to debates on the histories of psychology and criminal justice, but also to the broader histories of knowledge, truth, emotions and self in a transformative period of European history.