Théodule Armand Ribot, the French psychologist, was a professor of psychology at the Sorbonne and from 1889 was the director of the psychological laboratory at the Collège de France. A philosophical disciple of Hippolyte Taine and Herbert Spencer (whose Principles of Psychology he translated), Ribot, with Taine, initiated the study in France of a positivistic and physiologically oriented psychology. His interest in philosophy was inseparable from his interest in concrete psychological problems and persisted throughout his life. He founded and edited the Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger, one of the first French philosophical journals. Ribot influenced not only French positivists and physiological psychologists but even some thinkers who, like Henri Bergson, rejected his epiphenomenalism.

Ribot's work falls into three main periods, but he remained loyal throughout his life to the program...