You could ask nearly anyone about Ivan Pavlov to get some version of "The guy with the dogs?". They may include details like 'The Russian' or 'drool'. As in: "The Russian guy who made dogs drool with a bell?". For the average person, it's all about Pavlov's dogs; little about Pavlov, the man and his works.
For all of that, Ivan Pavlov was a remarkable scientist and a talented physiologist. So precise were the surgical skills that he could dissect even the delicate cardiac nerves. In fact, the work that earned him the Nobel Prize had nothing to do with Pavlovian conditioning. Take a look at an abbreviated summary of what he's done:
- he perfected the Heidenhain pouch (Pavlov pouch), an external 'stomach' connected to the nervous system.
- he directed (and organised) the Institute of Experimental Medicine's Physiology department
- he chaired the physiology department at the Military Medical Academy
- he made extensive contributions to physiology as well as neurology
- he conducted many experiments on canines, not just the 'Pavlov dog experiment'
- He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology for his work on the physiology of digestion
Considering all of that, it's downright ignoble to think of him only as 'the Russian scientist who famously worked with salivating dogs.' Ivan Pavlov generated an impressive body of work. He had a tremendous impact on physiology. His Laws of Conditioned Reflex revolutionised psychiatric care, though he was not primarily a doctor of the mind. We need to take a closer look at this groundbreaking psychologist, his life and his work.
Ivan Pavlov: Early Life and Education
Pavlov was the first of 11 children born to Russian Orthodox priest Peter Pavlov and his wife, Varvara. The large, happy family lived in Central Russia, in Ryazan. Young Ivan cheerfully did his chores, cared for his siblings and tended the garden. When not so occupied, cycling was a favourite activity. Rowing, swimming and playing team sports filled his summers.
Clever though he was, he didn't start school until age 11. A fall from up high onto stone pavement demanded several years of rest and recuperation. When he finally entered the classroom, he discovered just how keen his intellect was, particularly in science and maths. He finally gave up on the prospect of a priestly career midway through seminary.
He left home to enrol in the physics and maths program at the University of St Petersburg. He took natural science courses to round out his curriculum. He won a coveted university award for his research in physiology; specifically, for his paper on pancreatic nerves. Those studies focused his passion. He settled on a career as a physiologist, transferring to the Military Medical Academy.
At the time, it was known as the Imperial Academy of Medical Surgery. There, he honed his surgical skills under Dr Elias von Cion's watchful eye. Later, Pavlov would become his mentor's teaching assistant. It didn't take long before word of young Ivan's talent as a surgeon and physiologist made the rounds. Eight years after he left the seminary, while still working on his dissertation, renowned clinician Sergey Botkin offered him the lead position in the physiological laboratory.
In many respects, Ivan Pavlov and Wilhelm Wundt had much in common. They both came from religious families and initially planned to make their living in the church. Both had an irrepressible curiosity and a keen, analytical mind. Both were pioneers in their fields and worked to establish their disciplines as legitimate areas of scientific inquiry apart from other areas of study.
Ivan Pavlov, Physiologist
To be sure, physiology was an established discipline long before Ivan Pavlov entered the field. His efforts served to define the extent of physiological study. Only six years after his first formal laboratory forays, Physiological Societies started popping up as far away as the US (1877) and the UK (1876). It's not clear how much influence Dr Pavlov's work had on any of those bodies.
We do know that, after earning his Doctorate, he went to Germany to study under Rudolf Heidenhain. That worthy had sectioned a small part of a dog's stomach outside its body to study the animal's digestive processes. His conclusions remained incomplete until Pavlov devised a way to extend the stomach's nerves to the pouch. Today, we call those sacs Heidenhain or Pavlov pouches.
His tenure in Breslau ended after two years. He returned to Russia, where he was offered several positions. He demurred until he was appointed as Professor of Pharmacology at his alma mater. Five years later, he received an invitation to lead the Physiology Department at the Institute of Experimental Medicine. He served there for the rest of his career.
Jean Piaget, the Swiss psychologist, focused on child development and studies of the mind from the outset of his career. By contrast, Pavlov began his professional life intent on understanding how the body works. He stumbled into the theory of classical conditioning by sheer happenstance. That theory and his Laws of Conditional Reflex would propel him into psychiatry.
Pavlovian Conditioning
Now secure in his profession, Pavlov dove into his study of digestion in earnest. He focused on gastric functions - how food gets digested. He isolated a dog's salivary gland - relocated it outside of the animal's body, as he learned to do in Germany. That way, he could measure how much saliva the animal produced and under which conditions. That's when he noticed that the dogs salivated even before any food was present. He wanted to explore the causes of this psychic secretion, as he called it.
Finally, we find the stimuli! Pavlov trained his dogs to expect food after they 'hear a bell ring'. At least, so the legend is told (more on that later). This phase of Dr Pavlov's work saw him measure his animals' salivary reactions to any stimulus. Some that had previously been associated with receiving food; others not. He would pursue this line of inquiry for over 30 years. Ultimately, He distilled all of his observations into what he called the Laws of Conditioned Reflex.
American psychologist B. F. Skinner found Pavlov's work fascinating. He wanted to test the possibilities of such conditioning as a form of learned behaviour. Thus, the conditioned reflex - or, to use Pavlov's more accurate term, the conditional reflex became a key concept in comparative psychology.
Understand that Pavlov never set out to make dogs drool. The experiments he conducted were not designed to test the classical conditioning theory. It just so happened that, as he conducted experiments on digestive functions, he noticed his test subjects salivating before any food was present. That accidental discovery led to a series of trials apart from those designed to test digestion.
The Pavlovian Response
Many mistakenly believe that Pavlov only ever used a bell to stimulate the renowned Pavlovian response. In fact, he used a variety of stimuli. Some auditory - like the famous bell, some visual (cue flashing lights) and some physical. Electric shocks and aggressive prods were not excluded. The dogs even salivated when the person who usually fed them appeared, even if they presented without food. Those lab assistants thus also served as a stimulus.
We must remember that his work's goal was to measure gastric secretion, not to train the dogs to a programmed response. Still, the changes in saliva secretion prompted Pavlov to question whether his Laws of Conditioned Reflex could explain human psychosis. He had long established that the nervous system provokes reflexes. And what are reflexes, but physical manifestations of response to stimuli?
Pavlov believed that psychotic patients exhibited psychosis in response to a chaotic world. The more chaotic the environment, the greater the psychotic reflex. Not long after he expounded on that concept, Russian hospitals started treating psychotic patients in calm, non-stimulating environments. They reported astounding success. Gradually, the world followed suit. Today, reducing or eliminating environmental stimuli is standard practice in psychiatric care.
Ironically, Pavlov's work underpins the classical conditioning theory used in education today. He focused his studies on the physiology of non-human animals. However, he did test his conditioning theories on orphaned children. There was more than a bit of brutality involved. He needed reasonably healthy subjects to test. Much evidence exists that he fed and housed his dogs well but he also submitted them to painful stimuli and unnecessary surgery. The children weren't spared those aspects of his research.
When we consider Pavlov's methods today, the word 'inhumane' comes to mind. Nobody will dispute that he must have cared for his dogs. There's proof that he fed and housed his test subjects well. However, the charity one might suppose he showed them, animals and children alike, is marred by indications that he cared about them only insofar as he needed them to be healthy for experiments. Just as Albert Bandura's bobo doll experiment was later deemed controversial, Pavlov would face heavy criticism for his methods today.
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