In examining the “lost social psychologies” of Gabriel Tarde, a research format and set of guiding hypotheses are offered to historians, sociologists and social psychologists of science (Lubek 1993a) interested in studying Tarde, other “lost” social psychologists, or more generally, any branch of a discipline that has “disappeared” from historical accounts (Lubek 1983a; Lubek and Apfelbaum 1979, 1987). After a brief overview of Tarde's life work and style of intellectual system-building, four specific attempts to create a Tardean social psychology are examined, including his final formulation of an interpsychology. But his ideas had little impact in France and North America (Lubek 1990). Five hypotheses are offered to guide research about the historical and institutional factors at work: (1) the debate with Durkheim represented a clash of “paradigm/exemplars”; (2) there was a lack of a Tardean paradigm/community to promote and institutionalize his ideas; (3) Tarde's perspective may not have been compatible with the sociopolitical ethos; (4) linguistic and cultural barriers may have prevented transatlantic migration of the ideas; and (5) interactionist theories had an epistemologically vague status within the positivistic social sciences.

The search for “lost” systematic social-psychological analyses may help correct some of what Samelson (1974) called “origin myths” in the history of a discipline. In examining more closely a “forgotten” research enterprise in terms of its own sociocultural– historical context, one may get a better understanding of certain key turning points in the development of a scientific discipline. In other studies, explanations have been sought about why certain minority (or dissident) ideas, theories or paradigm/exemplars (Lubek and Apfelbaum 1979, 1987; Lubek 1980) have become lost or defeated in debate, often against a stronger “paradigm/community” that support what eventually will become the mainstream formulations or paradigm/exemplar. One purpose of this chapter is to highlight the use of primary archival sources in historiography. At the time of the original work in the 1970s, there was a renaissance in scholarship in France about the history of sociology and the social sciences, and archival research began in earnest.