But Binet was more than just the “IQ test guy.” His career spanned from hypnosis experiments gone wrong to analyzing child development, playing chess blindfolded, and even co-writing horror plays. So let’s dig into the life and legacy of the man who changed the way we think about intelligence.
1. Early Life and Career: From Law to Psychology
Alfred Binet wasn’t one of those child prodigies who knew from day one that he wanted to revolutionize psychology. In fact, his career started in a completely different direction—law. Born Alfredo Binetti in 1857 in Nice, which was still part of the Kingdom of Sardinia at the time, he grew up in a world where science and psychology weren’t exactly mainstream career choices. So, like many others, he took the “safe” route and went to law school in Paris, earning his degree in 1878.
But something about law didn’t quite do it for him. Whether it was the rigid nature of legal studies or simply a gut feeling that he was meant for something else, Binet started looking elsewhere for intellectual excitement. That’s when he discovered psychology, a field that was still in its infancy. He became fascinated by the idea that intelligence wasn’t just something you were born with but could be shaped by experience. This idea came from John Stuart Mill, a British philosopher who argued that mental processes could be explained through learning and association rather than purely innate abilities. This perspective directly challenged the idea that intelligence was fixed at birth—a theme that would later become central to Binet’s work.
Self-Taught and Obsessed with the Mind
Now, here’s where Binet did something pretty unusual. Instead of enrolling in another formal program to study psychology (which wasn’t really an established academic field yet), he took matters into his own hands. He taught himself psychology by devouring books at the National Library in Paris. Imagine someone binge-watching entire seasons of a show in one sitting—that’s basically how Binet consumed psychology texts.
He read everything he could get his hands on, from experimental studies to philosophical theories. At a time when there was no “official” route into psychology, Binet crafted his own education. And honestly? It worked.
From Amateur to Professional: His Big Break at La Salpêtrière
Binet’s obsession with psychology eventually paid off in 1883 when he got a position at La Salpêtrière, a well-known neurological clinic in Paris. This was a huge deal because Jean-Martin Charcot, one of the biggest names in neurology at the time, was running the show there.
Charcot was something of a celebrity in the medical world, famous for his studies on hysteria and hypnosis. He believed that people with “weaker nervous systems” (a broad and questionable category that often included women and those deemed mentally unstable) were more susceptible to hypnosis. Binet, eager to make a name for himself, fully embraced Charcot’s ideas and jumped into hypnosis research with enthusiasm.
He co-authored several papers claiming that hypnosis could reveal deep psychological truths, and for a while, it seemed like he was on the cutting edge of science. Binet and his colleague Charles Féré even claimed to have discovered something they called “transfer”—the idea that hypnotized people could transfer sensations from one side of their body to another. They also believed in perceptual and emotional polarization, suggesting that hypnosis could cause people to see and feel things differently.
Everything was going great for Binet. That is, until Joseph Delboeuf came along and ruined the party.
The Hypnosis Disaster: A Humiliating Public Failure
Delboeuf, a Belgian scientist, was skeptical of Charcot’s grand claims about hypnosis. He re-examined the experiments and found that the subjects weren’t actually experiencing what Binet and Charcot claimed. Instead, they were just playing along because they had picked up on subtle cues from the researchers. Basically, the patients had figured out what they were “supposed” to do under hypnosis and acted accordingly.
It turned out that Charcot, Binet, and the rest of their team had been fooled. Binet, who had staked his early career on this research, was now caught up in a scientific scandal. His findings were dismissed, his credibility took a major hit, and he had to publicly admit he had been wrong—which, let’s be real, is a tough pill to swallow for anyone.
After this humiliating professional setback, Binet left La Salpêtrière in 1890 and never spoke of it again. Seriously, he erased this chapter of his life like a bad breakup. No mentions, no references—just moved on as if it never happened.
Reinvention: From Hypnosis to Child Psychology
But here’s where Binet’s story takes an interesting turn. Instead of letting this disaster define him, he completely shifted his focus. No more hypnosis, no more neurological theories. Instead, he turned to something much closer to home: child development.
What sparked this change? His two daughters, Marguerite and Alice. Born in 1885 and 1887, they became Binet’s new research subjects—not in a creepy way, but in the sense that watching them grow and learn made him rethink intelligence. He started observing how they processed information, how they solved problems, and how their personalities shaped their thinking. He even described them in psychological terms: Alice was a “subjectivist”, while Marguerite was an “objectivist”—basically, one was more introspective and emotional, while the other was more logical and externally focused.
His studies on his daughters led him to a bigger realization: intelligence wasn’t just about inherited ability—it was about attention, suggestibility, and how children interacted with their environment. This idea was radically different from the dominant theories of the time, which saw intelligence as something you either had or didn’t.
This new direction would ultimately lead him to develop the first real intelligence test, setting the stage for everything that came next.
Why Binet’s Early Career Matters
Looking back, Binet’s early career was kind of like a wild psychological experiment in itself. He started as a law student, became obsessed with psychology, got caught up in a hypnosis scandal, and then completely reinvented himself as a child psychologist.
And honestly? That makes him even more interesting. A lot of people would have quit after a professional failure like the hypnosis debacle. But Binet pivoted, learned from his mistakes, and went on to make some of the most important contributions to psychology—proving that intelligence isn’t just about raw ability, but about adaptation, persistence, and growth.
And if that’s not poetic justice, I don’t know what is.
2. Binet and Child Psychology: Testing Intelligence Before It Was Cool
By the 1890s, Alfred Binet had fully transitioned into experimental psychology, ditching hypnosis scandals for something way more impactful—understanding how children think and learn. He became the director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne, where he spent years observing how kids processed information, solved problems, and interacted with the world.
But Binet wasn’t just experimenting for the sake of science. He wanted his work to matter, to have real-world applications. That’s why, in 1905, when the French government needed a way to identify children who needed extra help in school, Binet stepped up. This was a big deal because, at the time, schools were not built for kids with learning difficulties. If a child struggled in class, the common “solution” was to send them to an asylum or a boarding school for the intellectually impaired—a decision often made solely by psychiatrists, based on medical exams that had nothing to do with actual cognitive ability.
Binet hated this system. He believed that intelligence wasn’t just something you were born with—it was something that could change and develop. So instead of letting psychiatrists decide a child’s future based on subjective medical opinions, he proposed an objective way to assess intelligence: a standardized test.
Enter the Binet-Simon Test: The First Practical IQ Test
Teaming up with his collaborator Théodore Simon, Binet developed the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale, first published in 1905 and later revised in 1908 and 1911. This test was groundbreaking because it introduced the idea of mental age—the concept that a child’s intellectual abilities could be compared to the average performance of children at different ages.
Binet and Simon designed their test by actually studying children—which, believe it or not, wasn’t the standard approach back then. Instead of relying on abstract theories, they observed real kids and created tasks that reflected how children naturally think and problem-solve.
How the Binet-Simon Test Worked
The test was structured as a series of tasks, each increasing in difficulty. Some were basic and easy, designed to be solvable by most kids, while others were more complex, meant to challenge older or more cognitively advanced children. The goal wasn’t to rank children as “smart” or “not smart” but to figure out who needed extra support in school.
Some of the tasks included:
✅ Simple sensory tasks: Following a moving light, pointing to named body parts
✅ Memory tests: Repeating digits or short sentences
✅ Basic reasoning: Explaining the difference between two objects (e.g., “How is an apple different from a banana?”)
✅ More abstract thinking: Answering questions that required logic (e.g., “My neighbor has had visits from a doctor, a lawyer, and a priest. What’s happening?” Answer: A funeral.)
Why This Was Revolutionary
At the time, no one else had developed a structured, systematic way to measure intelligence. It was the first real attempt to quantify cognitive ability without relying on vague assumptions or subjective judgment.
But here’s what really set Binet apart from later intelligence researchers:
🧠 He never believed intelligence was fixed.
Unlike some of the psychologists who came after him, Binet was not obsessed with ranking intelligence as an unchangeable trait. Instead, he saw it as fluid—something that could be shaped, nurtured, and improved over time.
🧠 He warned against using IQ scores as rigid labels.
Binet worried that people would take his test too literally—that schools and institutions would start using IQ scores as permanent markers of ability rather than just a tool for helping kids who needed extra support. He strongly emphasized that intelligence was influenced by the environment and that a low score didn’t mean a child was doomed to failure.
🧠 He believed in education, not exclusion.
Unlike many later intelligence researchers, who used IQ tests to justify segregation, eugenics, and elitism, Binet saw his test as a way to help struggling children succeed in school. His goal wasn’t to weed kids out but to identify their needs and give them the resources to improve.
The Irony of Binet’s Work
Despite his progressive views on intelligence, Binet’s test took on a life of its own after his death. Once the test was brought to the United States, it was transformed into something he never intended—a rigid IQ classification system that ranked people’s intelligence as if it were set in stone. The Stanford-Binet Test, developed in the U.S. by psychologist Lewis Terman, was widely used to categorize people, from school children to military recruits, and even influenced immigration policies and eugenics programs.
Had Binet been alive to see it, he probably would have been horrified by how his test was misused. His entire philosophy was about growth, adaptability, and helping kids succeed, not boxing them into rigid categories.
3. The Stanford-Binet Test: How America Hijacked Binet’s Work
Binet’s intelligence test was never meant to be a tool for ranking people, let alone a weapon for discrimination. But once it crossed the Atlantic, things took a sharp turn. In the early 20th century, the test landed in the hands of Lewis Terman, a psychologist at Stanford University, who saw its potential for something much bigger—and much more rigid—than Binet ever intended.
In 1916, Terman revised, standardized, and expanded Binet’s original intelligence test, creating what he called the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale—the version that would go on to shape the modern IQ test. This was the beginning of IQ testing as we know it today. But while Binet’s version was designed to help struggling kids succeed in school, Terman had a very different vision for it.
From a Tool for Support to a Tool for Segregation
Terman wasn’t just interested in identifying children who needed extra help in school—he was obsessed with the idea that intelligence was inherited and fixed at birth. To him, an IQ test wasn’t just a measure of academic potential; it was a ranking system for human worth. He firmly believed that some people were naturally “superior” while others were genetically destined to be unintelligent—and that society should be structured accordingly.
And here’s where it gets dark.
Instead of using IQ tests to improve education for all children, Terman and his followers pushed the idea that intelligence scores should determine people’s opportunities in life. If you scored high, great—you were destined for success. If you scored low? Well, according to Terman, you were part of a societal problem that needed to be “managed.”
IQ Tests and the Eugenics Movement: A Disturbing Legacy
In the early 1900s, eugenics—the idea of “improving” the human race by controlling reproduction—was gaining traction in America. Many influential people, including politicians, scientists, and social reformers, believed that “undesirable” traits (like low intelligence, criminal behavior, or poverty) were hereditary and should be bred out of the population.
Terman’s version of Binet’s test became a key tool in this movement. IQ tests were used to:
🔴 Restrict Immigration – The U.S. government began using IQ tests to decide who was “fit” to enter the country. Low scores were cited as proof that certain ethnic groups—particularly Southern and Eastern Europeans, Mexicans, and Asians—were inherently “inferior” and should be barred from entering the U.S. This directly influenced the Immigration Act of 1924, which placed strict quotas on people from certain countries.
🔴 Justify Forced Sterilizations – In the 1920s and 1930s, thousands of people in the U.S. were forcibly sterilized because they were labeled as “feebleminded” based on IQ tests. Many of these individuals were poor, disabled, mentally ill, or from marginalized racial groups. Laws across dozens of states allowed government institutions to sterilize people against their will, under the belief that preventing them from having children would “protect” society.
🔴 Segregate and Institutionalize People – IQ tests were used to classify people as “unfit for mainstream society,” leading to mass institutionalization of people with intellectual disabilities. Many were placed in asylums, often in inhumane conditions, simply because their test scores labeled them as “low intelligence.”
This was not what Binet had intended when he created his test. He had explicitly warned against using IQ scores as fixed labels, emphasizing that intelligence was malleable and influenced by environment. But in America, that nuance was completely ignored in favor of a rigid, elitist view of intelligence.
Terman’s Belief in the “Gifted” Elite
On the flip side, while Terman was pushing IQ tests as a way to limit opportunities for those deemed “inferior,” he also saw them as a way to identify and elevate the so-called intellectual elite.
Terman coined the term “gifted” and started one of the first major long-term studies on high-IQ individuals, tracking children with exceptionally high IQs (135 and above) to see how their lives played out. He firmly believed these children were born to be leaders, innovators, and high-achievers. In his view, intelligence was destiny, and his research aimed to prove that those with high IQs were naturally superior in every way.
His study, which tracked over 1,500 gifted kids, found that many did go on to achieve success, but—ironically—not as overwhelmingly as Terman had expected. While some became doctors, lawyers, and scientists, others led completely ordinary lives, proving that IQ alone wasn’t the defining factor of success.
Still, Terman’s legacy shaped how intelligence was perceived in the U.S. for decades. The belief that IQ scores defined a person’s potential—and that intelligence was mostly inherited—became embedded in American psychology, education, and even social policy.
Binet vs. Terman: Two Completely Opposite Visions
When you compare Binet’s vision for intelligence testing with Terman’s, the contrast is stark:
🔵 Binet: Intelligence is not fixed—it can change over time, and education plays a crucial role in its development. The IQ test should be used to help children who need extra support, not to categorize people permanently.
🔴 Terman: Intelligence is mostly genetic and determines a person’s fate. IQ tests should be used to identify society’s most capable individuals while limiting opportunities for those deemed “unfit.”
It’s safe to say that Binet would have been horrified at how his test was used in the U.S. His humanistic approach to intelligence—one that emphasized growth, opportunity, and education—was twisted into a tool for exclusion, discrimination, and social engineering.
The Lasting Impact of the Stanford-Binet Test
Even though modern IQ testing has moved away from its eugenics-era applications, the legacy of the Stanford-Binet scale still lingers in education and psychology today. Standardized tests, gifted programs, and even some hiring assessments still reflect the idea that intelligence can be quantified by a single number—an idea that originated with Terman, not Binet.
4. Beyond Intelligence Testing: Binet’s Other Work
Alfred Binet was, in the best way possible, a psychology geek. He wasn’t the type to get stuck in one area of research—his curiosity took him everywhere, from memory and handwriting analysis to horror theater and even the psychology of sexual fetishes. His work extended far beyond intelligence testing, touching on topics that were way ahead of his time. Let’s talk about some of his lesser-known (but equally fascinating) contributions.
4.1 Chess and Memory Studies: How Did Blindfolded Chess Players Do It?
Today, we know that elite chess players don’t just rely on intelligence—they use specific memory techniques and pattern recognition to outplay their opponents. But back in Binet’s time, no one really understood how chess masters could play multiple games blindfolded. It seemed like pure magic.
Binet, of course, had to investigate. He conducted a series of experiments to figure out how these chess players managed to visualize and remember entire chessboards without seeing them. What he found was groundbreaking:
🔹 Different players had different memory strategies. Some visualized an exact replica of the chessboard in their mind, as if they were still looking at it. Others used an abstract, conceptual system, relying on patterns and strategic principles rather than picturing individual pieces.
🔹 Memory in chess wasn’t about intelligence—it was about experience. Binet discovered that expert players weren’t necessarily “smarter” than average people; they just had more exposure to chess positions and had trained their brains to recognize patterns faster. This idea became one of the earliest insights into expertise and cognitive psychology, later influencing research on skill acquisition and expertise development (like Anders Ericsson’s famous “10,000 hours rule”).
His research on chess and memory laid the groundwork for studies on how we store and retrieve complex information, shaping what we now know about cognitive psychology and expertise development.
4.2 The Science of Handwriting: Can Your Handwriting Reveal Your Personality?
Binet also dipped into graphology, the idea that handwriting can reveal personality traits. This might sound like something out of a BuzzFeed quiz today, but back in the late 19th century, it was a serious question in psychology.
He studied whether factors like letter shape, pressure, and slant could provide clues about a person’s intelligence, emotions, and character. His experiments, however, didn’t find any solid evidence that handwriting was a reliable indicator of personality. In other words, graphology didn’t hold up as a science—but that didn’t stop people from believing in it.
Even though Binet’s findings debunked a lot of the handwriting-personality hype, his research still contributed to early psychological forensics and the study of motor control and fine motor skills. Plus, handwriting analysis did go on to play a role in criminal investigations and psychological profiling—though not in the way Binet originally hoped.
4.3 Erotic Fetishism: Yes, Binet Studied Fetishes Before Freud Did
Long before Freud made psychology all about sex, repression, and Oedipus complexes, Binet was already investigating the origins of sexual preferences and fetishes. In fact, he was the one who coined the term “erotic fetishism.”
His theory? Sexual interests are shaped by early childhood experiences—something Freud would later expand on with his own theories about psychosexual development. Binet studied cases of people who developed intense attraction to non-human objects, like articles of clothing, and he suggested that these preferences weren’t random—they were conditioned by early emotional and sensory experiences.
This was pretty radical for the time. In the late 1800s, discussions about sexuality and deviant behavior were still deeply taboo, and many people assumed that fetishes were a sign of mental illness. But Binet approached the topic from a scientific, non-judgmental perspective, treating it as a psychological phenomenon rather than a moral failing.
His work helped lay the foundation for later research into paraphilias, sexual development, and the psychology of attraction. Freud might have stolen the spotlight when it came to sex and psychology, but Binet was quietly ahead of the game.
4.4 Horror Playwriting: The Father of Intelligence Testing Was Also a Horror Writer?!
In a plot twist no one saw coming, Alfred Binet had a side hustle as a horror playwright.
Yes, you read that right. In addition to being one of the most influential psychologists of all time, he co-wrote several horror plays with the playwright André de Lorde for Grand Guignol, the infamous Parisian theater known for its shocking and grotesque horror performances.
If you’ve never heard of Grand Guignol, think of it as the Saw franchise of the early 1900s—except instead of movies, it was live theater, with graphic, unsettling, and psychologically disturbing stories. The performances were designed to provoke strong emotional reactions, often featuring themes of madness, murder, and psychological torment.
Binet’s involvement in horror storytelling actually made a lot of sense when you think about it. He was obsessed with the human mind, subconscious fears, and irrational behaviors—all elements that make for great psychological horror.
His plays explored themes like:
🔪 The psychology of fear—How do people react under extreme stress or terror?
🔪 Insanity and madness—What drives someone to lose their grip on reality?
🔪 The dark side of the human psyche—What happens when people are pushed to their psychological limits?
4.5 Binet: The Ultimate Psychology Nerd
What’s amazing about Binet’s career is that he never let himself be boxed in. He wasn’t just the IQ guy—he was obsessed with the mind in every form, whether it was how chess players strategize, how people develop sexual preferences, how handwriting reveals motor function, or how horror stories tap into primal fears.
His work wasn’t always perfect—some of his theories didn’t hold up, and some were overshadowed by later psychologists like Freud and Piaget. But his curiosity, open-mindedness, and willingness to explore unconventional topics made him one of the most fascinating figures in psychology.
If Binet were around today, he’d probably be conducting cognitive studies on esports players, analyzing digital handwriting from iPads, writing psychological horror screenplays for Netflix, and studying the neuroscience of kinks—because that’s just the kind of brilliant, endlessly curious thinker he was.
5. Binet’s Legacy: The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated
Alfred Binet passed away in 1911 at just 54 years old, but his impact on psychology has lasted more than a century. While he didn’t live to see how his work evolved, the intelligence test he created became one of the most influential (and controversial) psychological tools of all time.
5.1 The Good: How Binet’s Ideas Shaped Psychology
✅ The Birth of IQ Testing (for Better or Worse)
Binet’s test was the first practical attempt to measure intelligence, and its influence on education, cognitive science, and psychology is undeniable. It paved the way for aptitude testing, educational psychology, and modern intelligence research. Today, intelligence testing is used in schools, the military, clinical psychology, and even corporate hiring—all areas that owe a debt to Binet’s original vision.
✅ Influencing Jean Piaget and the Study of Child Development
One of Binet’s biggest intellectual heirs was Jean Piaget, who would go on to become one of the most famous child psychologists in history. Piaget actually worked under Binet’s collaborator, Théodore Simon, in the 1920s and was heavily influenced by Binet’s approach to studying children. Many of Binet’s ideas—that intelligence is fluid, that cognitive abilities develop over time, and that children think differently than adults—were foundational to Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, which is still taught in psychology courses today.
✅ Recognition in France and Beyond
In France, Binet’s contributions to psychology were formally recognized when the psychological society he co-founded was renamed La Société Alfred Binet. While his name isn’t as famous as Freud or Pavlov, he is still respected in academic psychology circles as a pioneer in intelligence research and child psychology.
5.2 The Bad: How Binet’s Work Was Twisted
Unfortunately, Binet’s test took a dark turn after his death. While he designed it as a tool to help struggling children in school, it was quickly transformed into a method for ranking, excluding, and even oppressing people.
🚨 IQ Scores as Fixed Labels
Binet specifically warned against treating intelligence scores as rigid indicators of a person’s potential. He believed that intelligence was flexible—that with the right education, training, and environment, anyone could improve their cognitive abilities. But once his test was adapted in the United States (via the Stanford-Binet Test), that nuance was completely ignored. Instead, IQ scores were treated as permanent, defining characteristics, determining who got access to education, jobs, and opportunities.
🚨 Used to Justify Eugenics
Perhaps the darkest misuse of Binet’s work was its role in the eugenics movement—the belief that society should selectively “breed out” undesirable traits, including “low intelligence.” In the early 20th century, psychologists like Lewis Terman and Henry Goddard used IQ tests to argue that certain groups—especially immigrants, the poor, and racial minorities—were genetically inferior. This led to:
– Immigration restrictions (like the Immigration Act of 1924, which blocked entry to “low IQ” populations).
– Forced sterilizations (thousands of people, especially women, were sterilized because they were deemed “unfit” based on IQ scores).
– Discriminatory policies in education and employment.
🚨 Gatekeeping Opportunities
IQ tests became a way to justify social inequality. High scores were associated with intelligence and leadership potential, while low scores were used to justify segregation, exclusion, and lack of upward mobility. This directly contradicted Binet’s original mission, which was to use intelligence testing to help children succeed, not to limit their futures.
5.3 The Complicated: Binet’s Work Still Sparks Debate Today
Fast forward to today, and Binet’s legacy is still a mixed bag. On one hand, intelligence testing has helped educators, psychologists, and researchers better understand how people think and learn. On the other hand, the way IQ scores have been used to rank, categorize, and divide people remains a controversial issue.
🧠 IQ Tests Are Still Widely Used
IQ testing is still a major tool in psychology, used in schools, job assessments, neuropsychology, and even online “brain training” programs. Many modern tests (like the WAIS, WISC, and Raven’s Progressive Matrices) evolved from Binet’s original model. While they have improved in fairness, the debate over whether IQ tests truly measure intelligence continues.
🔬 The Nature vs. Nurture Debate
Binet believed that intelligence was shaped by environment, but some psychologists (even today) still argue that IQ is mostly genetic. The truth? It’s both. Modern research supports Binet’s idea that education, nutrition, social environment, and even stress levels can influence cognitive ability over time.
📊 The Future of Intelligence Research
New research suggests that IQ isn’t the only measure of intelligence. Today, psychologists study emotional intelligence (EQ), creative intelligence, and multiple intelligences—areas Binet would have likely supported. If he were alive today, he’d probably be pushing for even better ways to measure human potential, rather than relying on a single test score.
6. Final Thoughts: What We Can Learn from Binet Today
Alfred Binet’s story is a reminder that psychology, like any science, is a tool—it can be used for good or misused. His original goal was to help kids succeed in school, not to rank people’s intelligence as a fixed trait.
Even today, intelligence testing is a hot topic. Schools, companies, and even dating apps (yes, some use IQ as a factor) still debate its value. But the key takeaway from Binet’s work? Intelligence is not set in stone. It can grow, adapt, and change based on experience, effort, and environment.
So if you’ve ever felt boxed in by a test score, just remember: even the guy who invented the IQ test thought intelligence was more than just a number.
