ABSTRACT
Alfred Binet was born Alfredo Binetti in Nice on July 8th, 1857. His parents were wealthy, his father was a physician and his mother an artist, but the marriage was not a happy one, and they divorced when Alfred was quite young. Binet attended the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, Paris, which was named for King Louis XIV of France in 1682 and to this day plays a vital role in the education of elite French society. Binet’s work explored several areas; fetishism, hallucinations, perception and suggestion, visual imagery, memory, chess performance, music, fear and religion, depression, deaf-mutes and mental fatigue. Termed ‘Psychologie Individuelle’, Binet became the most powerful promoter and advocate of study of individual differences, and by 1899 was collaborating with the physician Theodore Simon. The first Binet-Simon test was published in 1908, and the later 1911 revision helped answer some of the issues around representation.
