Théodule-Armand Ribot

Théodule-Armand Ribot (born Dec. 18, 1839, Guingamp, Fr.—died Dec. 9, 1916, Paris) was a French psychologist whose endeavor to account for memory loss as a symptom of progressive brain disease, iterated in his Les Maladies de la mémoire (1881; Diseases of Memory), constitutes the most influential early attempt to analyze abnormalities of memory in terms of physiology.

Ribot received his doctorate from the École Normale Supérieure. He taught at the Sorbonne from 1885 to 1888, and from 1889 to 1896 he held a chair of experimental and comparative psychology at the Collège de France. After studying the works of English and German psychologists, Ribot began his analysis of abnormal psychology. His published works on the subject, in addition to Diseases of Memory, included studies of diseases of will, personality, and attention. In later years Ribot became interested in affective and emotional factors in psychology.