Alfred Binet — L’Année Psychologique, 1899 — Gustav Aschaffenburg’s Personal Copy

Gustav Aschaffenburg’s personal copy of Alfred Binet’s L’Année Psychologique. Bearing his fully named, illustrated ex libris, this volume brings together two important figures in the history of the mind: Binet, a leader of experimental psychology, and Aschaffenburg, a physician who helped shape modern forensic psychiatry and the debate over criminal responsibility.

Aschaffenburg’s significance reached beyond the consulting room. A student of Emil Kraepelin and later professor of psychiatry in Cologne, he wrote Das Verbrechen und seine Bekämpfung and advocated recognition of diminished criminal responsibility. His work addressed questions with lasting consequences: how mental illness affects culpability, how courts should judge the individual, and how society responds to the offender.

This ownership matters because the book belongs to the intellectual field in which he worked. Binet’s study of suggestibility and individual psychology appears alongside research into perception, fatigue and scientific measurement. The surviving bookplate places this early experimental literature within Aschaffenburg’s personal library—a tangible connection between published inquiry and a figure who helped bring psychological understanding into the administration of justice.

Nazi persecution forced Aschaffenburg out of his German academic career in 1934. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 and continued his work at the Catholic University of America and Johns Hopkins. His ownership mark survives here across the upheaval that displaced him.

Published in Paris in 1899, the volume also includes Victor Henri’s applications of probability to psychology and Georges Demenÿ’s illustrated account of chronophotographic apparatus. Sequential photographic images and diagrams of scientific instruments preserve the visual language of a discipline taking shape.

Details

Paris: Librairie C. Reinwald, Schleicher Frères, Éditeurs, 1899. Fifth year of L’Année Psychologique, reporting work for 1898. Edited by Alfred Binet, with H. Beaunis and Th. Ribot named on the title page; Victor Henri identified as editorial secretary. French text. Leather spine and corners with marbled boards, raised bands and gilt spine lettering.

Provenance

Professor Dr. med. Gustav Aschaffenburg (1866–1944), with his illustrated ex libris on the front pastedown. The bookplate names him in full and combines a portrait motif with a staff entwined by two serpents.

Condition

Substantial rubbing and losses to the leather, pronounced splitting along the joints, worn edges, age toning and scattered spotting. The photographed interior pages retain clear text and illustrations. Aschaffenburg’s bookplate remains present.