[EdwardCoffin]

In section 17, Stress-Influence Tendency (p21-22), he mentions some final work by Pavlov, but doesn't provide a citation. I spent some time trying to find it when I first read this years ago, but was unable to. I'm wondering whether it's even reliable: I'd think that work by Pavlov could be found with him as an author, rather than in a "popular paperback" written by an un-named psychiatrist. If anyone knows what book he must have been talking about, or can point to the particular papers by Pavlov, I'd like to know.

[dfsegoat]

Not sure if it is the case here at all. But sometimes those old Soviet-bloc "original research" documents can be hard to find. An example of this elsewhere is the Levenshtein distance -- everybody knows what this is, but the actual original document was a Soviet-era journal: Влади́мир И. Левенштейн (1965). Двоичные коды с исправлением выпадений, вставок и замещений символов [Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals]. Доклады Академий Наук СCCP (in Russian) 163 (4): 845–8. Appeared in English as: Levenshtein, Vladimir I. (February 1966). "Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions, and reversals". Soviet Physics Doklady 10 (8): 707–710.

[niftich]

Given the productivity of Russian academics and the difficulty in obtaining a lot of these journals, has there been a concentrated effort to make these available for a modern, web-enabled audience?

[dfsegoat]

That would be quite interesting to know actually.

[EdwardCoffin]

Another possibility that occurred to me is that the subject matter of this particular paper is pretty unpleasant, perhaps any potential translators simply shied away from it.

[treme]

""...popular paperback, written by some Rockefeller-financed psychiatrist, when I was trying to figure out..""

https://www.amazon.com/Battle-Mind-Brainwashing-Evangelists-...

"In 1938 Sargant was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship" says author's wiki. I think this book fits the bill.

[EdwardCoffin]

It does indeed seem to be the book. Thanks.

The author seems to be controversial. The Wikipedia entry on him [1] says things like "his reliance on dogma rather than clinical evidence have confirmed his reputation as a controversial figure whose work is seldom cited in modern psychiatric texts.", and others "described him as 'autocratic, a danger, a disaster' and spoke about 'the damage he did'".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sargant

[Enzolangellotti]

Rom Harre's Pavlov's Dogs and Schrödinger's Cat (Oxford University Press) covers some of his experiments.

Daniel Todes' Biography of Pavlov presents some of the material as well.