“Streng genommen reflexartig”. Ivan Michajlovič Sečenov und die Gründungsmythen des ‘russischen Reflex‐Imperiums’

Abstract

This paper aims to reconstruct Ivan Michajlovik Secenov's impact on reflex theory by looking at the different narratives which constitute his specific position in the history of science, where he is considered the Russian founder of a purely materialist framing of consciousness and behaviour, the father figure of objective psychology, and the predecessor of the 'great' Ivan Pavlov. I argue that Secenov himself was very much aware of the symbolic significance of the term "reflex" and that the rhetorical strategies in his opus magnum, The Reflexes of the Brain (1863), deliberately enforce the precarious twofold potential of reflexological conceptions as psycho-physiological structures as well as social programs. Also within the cultural and political settings of the 19th and 20th century, Secenov's comprehensive and multifaceted research work in the field of nerve physiology was gradually reduced to a strong, ideologically interpretable message: "All movements bearing the name of voluntary in physiology are reflex in a strict sense".