Friday 6 September 2013

Why study Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

I expect that this will be covered either in the editorial or one of the earlier articles.

The position is the one that Dai Jones has developed writing in our books, and that I teach to in the current year three module.

Even if Psychology were a natural science there would still be good reasons for studying historical and conceptual issues.

  • Interest - historical gossip, who did what to whom and how it affects the academic discipline.
  • Understanding - Why did theory (x) being and why did it drop out of fashion.
  • Learning past lessons - There are lots of examples of poor psychology, how can we avoid that in future,
  • Critical understanding - Trying to understand psychology in its social context.
Different reasons for studying history need different types of historical writing.

However if psychology is not a natural science, because of the reflexivity issue (what psychologists say about human psychology directly and indirectly changes human psychology) then it becomes more important to study historical and conceptual issues.

There are also a bunch of reasons to do with current psychology and a need to understand how things have reached this position.


There is an historical precedent, with the way that psychotherapists lobbied to become part of the medical profession in the 1910s, this had several impacts on the discipline and on the practice of psychotherapy in the USA.
  • Upon formation of the Coalition the current government set up the 'Nudge Unit' using insights from psychology to change people's behaviour without recourse to legislation.
  • Seligman the founder of positive psychology has met the PM. Positive psychology techniques have been used by the Nudge Unit.
  • What networks does psychology as a discipline tie into, how might this affect the discipline?
Psychology has long tried to have influence with government, and some of things psychologists do seem to tie into this, but also governments (mis)use psychological findings a process which needs to be critically interogated.
  • The American Psychological Association excuses psychologists working with the CIA and US military from normal ethical processes. "Enhanced interrogations" normally have a psychologist present.
  • How have ethical codes developed and why are they important?
  • What is the relationship between psychology and the military? 
Psychology has long had relationships with the military, from the Great War forwards. The military often have protected budgets and can be a good source of research funding.

I argue that part of the reason for this is the mechanical way that methods in psychology are understood, arguably a lingering affect of methodological behaviourism.

Historical understanding helps to open up these questions, and in addition helps to tie psychology back into its philosophical background.

Wednesday 4 September 2013

Emebedding Conceptual and Historical issues in the Psychology curriculum

Opportunity for a possible paper, just about to send an abstract off for this, after chance to review and revise it for a special issue of of History and Philosophy of Psychology, coming out of some workshops on teaching CHiP Dai and I have contributed to over the last two years.

As it seems to help my process of writing I intend to blog about the paper as I write it.

Here is the first draft of the abstract.

For over a decade the CHiPs coverage at the University of Gloucestershire was isolated in three stand alone modules. The optional year two module recruited poorly, losing out to traditional applied modules, and although the compulsory year three module always had enthusiastic support from a minority of students, module evaluations revealed a group of students who felt that the coverage came too late in the degree. Spurred by University wide changes following the new fees regime in England the whole degree was redesigned for the 2012 academic year. A commitment to teach CHiPs across the whole of the first year provision was established. Integrating conceptual and historical issues into first term research methods teaching, in particular, has led to the opportunity to consider how psychological knowledge production works, rather than teaching research methods as a set of procedures to follow. In addition combining this with material on critical thinking has enabled us to move beyond seeing critical thinking as merely the application of scientific methods to everyday life and towards helping our students be critical about the ways that psychology operates in society. Initial student evaluation of this material has been much more positive than for the stand alone modules.

Any comments welcome. The abstract needs to be submitted by 30 September.