The Spanish Journal of Psychology (2016), 19, e71, 1–14. © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid doi:10.1017/sjp.2016.73 On January 4 th 1971, Christian Astrup, a Professor of Psychiatry from Norway, addressed a letter to the Nominating Committee for The Nobel Prizes supporting William Horsley Gantt’s candidacy for the Nobel Prize of Physiology/Medicine for his contributions to the understanding of higher nervous activity of man and animals under normal as well as pathological con- ditions. In Astrup’s words: (…) Gantt’s work covers a vast field from the anat- omy of conditional reflexes, cardiac conditioning and interoceptive conditioning to experimental neuroses in animals, studies of psychiatric patients, psychopharmacology and principles of psycho- therapy… His concepts of organ-responsibility, schizokinesis and autokinesis… offer new ways of understanding the mechanisms of psychoso- matic and psychiatric diseases and treatment pro- cedures. Furthermore they open perspectives for prophylactic psychiatry 1 . Besides explaining the reasons why Gantt deserved the Prize, Astrup reminded the Committee of the importance of one of the Gantt ‘patients’: “Gantt’s dog, Nick, is as important for conditional reflex psychopa- thology as Anna O. was for the development of psy- choanalytic theory”. 2 This neurotic mutt thus became part of the exclusive group of distinguished patients in the history of Psychopathology. Why was Nick’s case so significant? Gantt did not discover the phenomenon of “experimental neurosis”, which had long been well known. Departing from the pioneering studies of Maria Erofeeva and Nadezhda Shenger-Krestovnikova in I. P. Pavlov’s Laboratory at Leningrad (Pavlov, 1941, p. 341–342; see also Todes, 2014, especially chapter 36), many American psychologists and psychiatrists had published about this topic before the story of Gantt’s dog was widely known and valued (Bijou, 1943; Cook, 1939; Dimmick, Ludlow, & Whiteman, 1939; Dworkin, 1939; Jacobson, Wolfe, & Jackson, 1935; Karn, 1940; Liddell, 1938; Maier, 1939; Masserman, 1946). To understand the importance of Nick’s case, we must take into account several factors concerning Gantt’s scientific approach and the social context in which he worked: 1) Gantt’s methodological innovations–his novel combination of the Pavlov’s physiological technique of conditional reflexes with Adolf Meyer’s psychiatric method of writing the “life-chart” of an individual; 2) Gantt’s concentration upon a single individual, which made his book recognizable and W. Horsley Gantt, Nick, and the Pavlovian Science at Phipps Clinic Gabriel Ruiz and Natividad Sánchez Universidad de Sevilla (Spain) Abstract. William Horsley Gantt is well known as one to the principal proponents of Pavlovian methodology in the U.S. After a long stay at Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s laboratory in Leningrad from 1925 to 1929, Gantt was invited by Adolf Meyer to join the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, where he founded and directed the Pavlovian Laboratory from 1930 to 1964. Soon after his arrival at Phipps Clinic in 1931, Gantt began a Pavlovian research program that included the investigation of nervous disturbances in dogs and clinical researches with psychiatric patients. In these studies, Gantt combined a physiological method (the conditional reflexes approach), with a psychiatric problem (nervous disorders) in the context of Meyer’s psychobiology that established the person or individual as unit of analysis. This fact, concen- trating upon a single individual, made Gantt studies with dogs recognizable and interesting to physicians, psychologists, and psychiatrists who also worked on individuals. In this paper, we use archival materials –including correspondence, notebooks, and unpublished autobiographical material- to present a case study, that of William Horsley Gantt and his dog Nick. We will explore the reasons why Gantt’ studies on nervous disturbances with this dog captured the interest of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. Received 14 April 2016; Revised 2 August 2016; Accepted 4 August 2016 Keywords: experimental neurosis, history of psychology, Nick, William Horsley Gantt. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Gabriel Ruiz. Departamento de Psicología Experimental. Universidad de Sevilla. C/ Camilo José Cela S/N. 41018. Sevilla (Spain). E-mail: gruiz@us.es 1 Astrup to Nominating Committee for the Nobel Prize, January 4 th , 1971, Box 17, Folder 33, Gantt Papers, The Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (hereafter AMC). 2 Astrup to Nominating Committee for the Nobel Prize, January 4 th , 1971, Box 17, Folder 33, Gantt Papers, AMC. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/sjp.2016.73 Downloaded from http:/www.cambridge.org/core. Universidad de Sevilla, on 25 Oct 2016 at 09:04:35, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at http:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms.