For much of the 20th century, scholars of American and European applied psychology and psychiatry have concerned themselves with the concepts of progress and power. In an effort to revisit the character of 19th-century psychiatry and to use the results as a means of evaluating 21st-century practice, this paper explores the relationship between power and progress in two popular but chronologically distinct approaches to caring for the mad: 19th-century moral treatment and late 20th-century psychiatric rehabilitation. Using the theoretical framework of Foucault (1979), moral treatment (as developed by Thomas Story Kirkbride, for example, [1854] 1973) and psychiatric rehabilitation (as developed by William A. Anthony and colleagues, for example, Anthony, Cohen, and Farkas 1990) are compared for the degree to which each is structured by disciplinary interests and technologies. Based on this textual analysis, important differences emerge. Not only do these differences cast moral treatment in a new, and perhaps more positive light, but they also shed light on how disciplinary structures might affect a psychiatric approach's ability to carry out expressly humanitarian goals. To the extent that both propositions are accurate, the traditional view equating psychology and psychiatry's progress with a diminished reliance on power is brought into question.

Nineteenth-century phrenology is often presented as a failed or pseudoscience. Based on erroneous anatomical assumptions and indirect observation, phrenology as such offers historians of psychology an object lesson in what scientists ought not do (e.g., Boring, 1929). As a practical profession, however, phrenology presents a more complicated narrative. This is particularly true in the United States where in the hands of practitioners including and influenced by the Fowler family, phrenology maintained a cultural presence long after being rejected by the scientific and medical mainstream (Janik, 2014). The prevalence of women practitioners, whose work and lives have yet to be adequately explored, represents another complication. Abigail Ayers Doe Fowler-Chumos, third wife of America's "great gun of phrenology" Orson Squire Fowler, is one practitioner worthy of closer examination (Davies, 1955, p. 46). Using the separate spheres concept (Kerber, 1988) and newspaper announcements, articles, and advertisements spanning the 1870s to 1920s, this article explores Abigail Ayers Doe Fowler-Chumos' development as a practical phrenologist. Her story suggests much about the unrecognized capacity of practical phrenology to create concepts and practices of selfhood capable of moving women beyond the private and domestic, while also preparing all Americans for modern psychology.

In this article, we address the vital, yet largely ignored role conversations among researchers play in furthering qualitative research projects. We identify conversations as vital when they foster creativity and afford the researchers an opportunity for clearer focus. Through a close examination of four distinctly different qualitative research experiences, we show how these conversations open and deepen reflective relationships among the researchers and with the phenomenon being studied, both of which lead to a reformulation of the research process. Finally, we suggest that these kinds of conversations emerge out of relational contexts that honor personal meaning, care, openness, and even vulnerability among researchers.

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