Which history of humanistic psychology to write?

Unlike its predecessors (History and Theories of Psychology, and Psychology in Social Context) Jones, Elcock and Tyson is going to be a history of psychology as well as a book about conceptual issues in psychology using history as a way of unpicking why certain conceptual issues continue to be problematic for the discipline. This parallels the way our (well at least mine and Dai's) teaching has changed. It does however open up some dilemmas about how we write some of the historical material. I am going to be writing the 'pre-history' of psychology and the challenge there is to write it in such a way that it doesn't seem there was an inevitable and unbroken chain of ideas from antiquity to the nineteenth century C.E. that led to the modern discipline.

There is a similar dilemma with the history of Humanistic Psychology.

The history as written by humanistic psychologists is, not surprisingly, the sort of old fashioned history we are trying not to do. There is the linking of modern ideas with a very select reading of philosophy. While there is some acknowledgement of what was happening in 1930s European psychotherapy the focus is on the great men (with none of the women mentioned at all) and their ideas are presented without any social context. I find it curious that someone who claims to be interested in a 'holistic' account of humanity writes as if intellectual ideas are forged in a culture free vacuum.

Grogan has written both popular and academic accounts of the cultural context of Humanistic Psychology and in part that is the story that I want to tell, but it is of course a story with a particular lens of the USA. One of the truly fascinating things for me are the looping effects, the ways that ideas in psychology are translated into everyday concepts through (for, example) the lens of popular psychology books and then go on to change the way that people understand themselves and each other. (Dai will be writing more about that in his chapter on everyday psychology)

In reading around the history of Humanistic Psychology over the last couple of days I came across a paper by Kriz and Längle (2012).

Although HP [Humanistic Psychology] is commonly referred to as the third force in American psychotherapy, it is considered the second force within Europe, starting as early as the 1930s (represented by such theorists as Viktor Frankl, Karl Bu ̈hler, Jacov Moreno, and Frederick Perls [see Bonin, 1983]) as a response to, and in dialogue with, psychoanalytic depth psychology in addition to being broadly inspired by philosophy (e.g., Frankl, 1938, 1939). This particular humanistic approach to psychotherapy was, however, soon decimated by the inhumanity of Nazi social policy. (p 475)

Also of interest, to me at least, is the idea the authors raise that in the 1970s when Humanistic Psychology was re-introduced into German universities it was the USA version, without an acknowledgement of the work in pre WWII Germany.

So my manifesto for this chapter is:

1. Include some of the influential female humanistic psychologists in the USA
2. Talk about the looping effects as elucidated by Grogan.
3. Talk about the European history of humanistic psychology.
4. Include something on the way that the export of USA based ideas acts as a form of cultural imperialism.

The last idea will form the core of my half chapter on how psychology becomes a psychology of adjusting people to fit a culturally specific idea of humanity rather than anything else.

Hopefully next week I will make progress on the writing.

Psychology and Social Class a possible way forward

 Welcome to the final part of the series on social class and psychology which contains the concepts I will be writing about for the new Jones, Elcock and Tyson book. In the first two parts I looked at why psychology should care about social class, and how and why this might have come about.

To some extent the sort of social outcomes in the UK that we see are typical of groups that are being discriminated against, poorer health outcomes, poorer educational outcomes and more involvement in the criminal justice system. However, especially in the current political climate, there are advantages (for politicians and those who gain by oppressing the working class) to blaming the individuals affected for the discrimination they face.

Walsh and Gokani (2014) end their Marxist analysis by stating that psychologists shouldn't try and engage in struggles for social justice as psychologists, as the position of being a psychologist is too compromised.

In sum, many psychologists believe that our discipline can contribute to social justice. We are skeptical. Although occasionally psychologists have been a force for emancipation, for example, in the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision on school segregation (Herman, 1995), we have tended to enact the role of “arm-chair radicals” rather than engaging collectively in solidarity with marginalized peoples to overcome injustice and achieve freedom and dignity for all.

(Walsh & Gokani, 2014, p52)

So is there a way that psychologists, as psychologists can be more than armchair radicals.

One possible way forward is given by the work of Stoudt, Fox and Fine (2012). This involved how young people were being treated in New York city, rather than social class. But the project is a good example of how psychologists could get involved in genuine participatory and emancipatory research. The project was called Polling for Justice (PFJ)

Drawing upon and extending the participatory commitments of Kurt Lewin’s action research (Torre & Fine, 2011), PFJ was conceived and implemented by a broad based research collective including traditionally recognized experts (e.g., PhD researchers, public health specialists, lawyers), as well as a diverse group of youth activists and students (e.g., from private schools, General Educational Development (GED) programs, immigrants, youth identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or queer/questioning (LGBTQ), formerly incarcerated youth, young people who had intimate knowledge of foster care/homeless shelters). (Stoudt, Fox & Fine, 2012 p180)

The creation of the research collective is key here, the people being discriminated against are trained to do research into the phenomena, rather than psychologists holding tight to their expertise. Another point is that as part of the research collective other academics from outside of psychology were brought in. Finally there were a range of outcomes:

Our products (e.g., academic papers, expert testimony, organizing brochures, testimony for city council, youth performances) were created for varied purposes from theory reconstruction and critique of “adolescence” in the social sciences to organizing campaigns and public policy debates on the criminalization of youth. In the end and all throughout, opportunities were sought to design and engage critical inquiry, by researchers who imported distinct forms of knowledge and expertise, to challenge, resist, critique and transform conditions of injustice. (p180)

Of course this might be easier to talk about than to do.

Why Psychology has (mostly) ignored Social Class

Until some very recent work by feminist psychologists with an interest in intersectionality there has been a near complete absence of work on social class in USA based psychology. In the UK there has been some work (most notably by Michael Argyle)on social class, but that which has been produced reminds me of the early work in 'Race' Psychology and gender difference research, trying to show differences on a range of psychological phenomena 'caused' by social class. While there has been some work outside of anglophone psychology (some Russian and German work as well as Liberation Psychology work). So after considering why social class might be of interest to psychologists in the last blog post in this post I am going to look at a couple of stories about why social class has been neglected.

A Marxist Perspective

Walsh & Gokani (2014), in a paper in the Journal Of Theoretical And Philosophical Psychology present a Marxist analysis.

Walsh and Gokani point out that while psychologists often invoke the concept of social justice when talking about issues like racism, gender stereotyping and homophobia that they consistently ignore one threat to social justice, inequality based on wealth and social class. Psychologists are thus being inconsistent with regard to social justice, only applying it to some forms of oppression but not all forms. One of the main reasons for this is that psychologists tend not to define social justice aims in relation to the concrete political-economic structures. Instead the focus tends to be on the individual who discriminates, rather than a system which (at times) encourages discrimination against particular groups. They go on to suggest that psychologists (at least in mainstream anglophone psychology) are reluctant to reality test their theories with political engagement and the creation of an emancipatory (social) psychology. Finally psychologists are unwilling to view themselves as part of a privileged group, and so act from the point of view of upholding (certain) social divisions rather than tackling them.

Walsh & Gokani contend that this is, at least in part, because psychology has sort alliances with the nation state in order to help build the prestige of psychology. This can be seen with the effort of psychologists in the USA to help the state during both world wars (and alliances with the military beyond that). And the way that in the early history of psychology in the USA the way that the promise of practical applications, both for government and business, led to an alliance with those whose privilege is maintained by exploiting the working class.

Citing from Herman (1995) Walsh and Gokani (2014) that psychologists make no distinction between service to the state, employment by government, social responsibility and advancement of the science and the discipline.

This limits the potential of psychology and psychologists to contribute towards social justice, except in the ways useful to early 21st century capitalism. To some extent this is reflected in the relative lack of research into the impact of socioeconomic conditions on psychological functioning. Walsh and Gokani describe this as a taboo in a North American context. It is less true in a UK and European setting.

While I have some sympathy for this approach I don't think it provides a good enough account of how and why psychology became interested in tackling issues of racism when and how it did (although it does account for some of the impetus to post world war two work), and I think they way that heteronormativity was tackled also provides a challenge for the Marxist perspective. While I do think that the story of how psychology allied with the state is worth telling with a slightly different spin.

The constituencies approach

Richards in the summary to his 1997 book on ‘Race’ Racism and Psychology offers up some assumptions about psychology and the nature of historical change in psychology.

1. Psychology as a discipline is a product of the ‘psychologies’ of those within it; thus, psychology is necessarily reflexive in character.
2. Psychologists represent specific constituencies in the discipline’s host societies, and until the mid-20th century, these were predominantly white, male and middle- or upper class.  While there has always been a degree of heterogeneity within this group, this was a restricted sample of the constituencies in society as a whole.

The constituencies approach is powerful in dealing with how and why psychologists became self aware of the racism within the discipline in the 1930s. It also help explain how this changed with the changing nature of who were psychologists in the 1950s and 1960s and onwards. As I mused in the last post it may be that even when higher education becomes more open to people of lower social class (which it arguably has become, although with various caveats in the UK since new fees regimes) the socialisation processes of higher education make it difficult for someone to remain working class if they become part of the academia or psychology professions.

The historical evidence of alliances with the state, the striving for a particular sort of practical psychology remain the same, as does the neglect of work about social class.

I think that the consequences that Richards suggest still hold true, especially for work on social class.

1. As Psychology is one of the social arenas in which the psychological issues affecting a host society are formulated, discussed and (temporarily) resolved the historical changes within the discipline both reflect and help constitute the change itself.
2. The psychological issues facing a particular constituency can only be addressed within Psychology in a fashion, which is satisfactory for the members of that constituency only, insofar as it is itself represented with the discipline.
3. Conversely, excluded constituencies can only be considered, by the discipline at the time, in terms of their psychological significance for those included.

And while the working class remains either excluded from the profession and academic psychology or are made into the middle class by the socialisation processes of becoming a psychologist then the working class are liable to be only considered in terms of the psychological significance of 'them' by us.

The final part will be to suggest some ways of possible engagement with issues around social class that try to do more than just reinforce current oppressions.

Psychology and Social Class

 Introduction

I intend this to be a three part series of psychology and social class. Social class is one of things I will be writing about in the next book. In this part I will look at why psychology should engage with social class. In the next part I will look at why psychologists have tended not to engage with social class (or have done so badly). In the final part I will look at prospects for a solution to the problems I identify in the second part.

Why psychology should care about class.


Overall psychology as a discipline can look back over its history of engagement with 'race' and racism in a fairly optimistic way. While the anglophone discipline in the 1910s was a bulwark of scientific racism that consensus broke down in the 1920s with the discussion of the results of 'Race Psychology' in the 1920s that led many in psychology to question their own racist assumptions. By the 1930s psychology was studying racism, prejudice and discrimination and while the Pioneer Fund funded Jensen work in the late 1960s created a home for racist psychology that has had negative consequences to the current day, the consensus has shifted so that there is much more research effort into racism rather than trying to show differences between 'races'.

The disciplines engagement with gender and sexism is less positive overall. For over a century prominent voices in psychology, including some early pioneering women psychologists, have pointed out that the differences within men and women swamp the psychological differences between men and women. Despite this plenty of psychologists do naive work on sex and gender differences that suggest no engagement with the high quality critical work. Some evolutionary psychology seems determined to try and make cultural expectations of men and women into biological laws, and this seems to have caught the popular imagination. Some of the work on development of masculinity and femininity makes people sound like mindless drones and refuses to engage with issues of power, other work is more critical, however there does not seem to be a dialogue between the critical (often feminist) psychology and the more naive psychology. There is, it would be fair to say, lots of engagement with issues around sex and gender.

With sexuality there is an even more mixed story. Everyone knows the broad brush story, psychology acting as a hand maiden to psychiatry when being lesbian, gay or bisexual was seen as a mental illness. Developing 'objective tests' that could be used as diagnostic tools. Psychoanalysis acting as a rationale for why some people do not develop 'normal' sexuality. Psychologists taking part in treatment programs to help 'cure' people of their sexuality. Then the switch in views, with over time, psychologists becoming concerned with helping (some) LGB people come to terms with their sexuality and studying discrimination against LGBT people. More recently the arguments by (some) psychologists that being gay (and most of this has focused on male sexuality) is biologically natural, and that being used in arguments about rights, whereas the only thing that should be important humans for equal rights is being human.

But then there is social class. While I can find a few (very few) examples of work that have looked at social class by psychologists the picture is one of neglect. I will do another post about why I think that neglect has happened, in this one I just want to look at the case for doing psychology engaging with class.

Professional psychologists will, probably, have clients across the class spectrum. Professional training in psychology is getting better at tackling discrimination amongst trainees and the possible consequences of this for clients. Without a body of knowledge about class prejudice there is little opportunity to tackle issues of discrimination based on class. There is some evidence that trainee psychologists have different beliefs about working class and middle class clients, and that these different beliefs include beliefs about what a list of symptoms mean. (The typical way to do such work is to give a list of symptoms to trainees along with a short autobiographical sketch.) Psychology trainees who believe in a just world are likely to show more of an effect (with normal caveats about psychology findings being chronically underpowered and open to question).

Allied to this is a need for an understanding of how (or if) social class affects psychological functioning, and if possible to try to pick at the antecedents of that, which are caused by structural factors and which are caused by class based identity. It would be interesting to look at psychological functioning across the classes, from the very wealthy through to those dealing with poverty. To some extent the concerns of psychology are middle class concerns and there is a need to broaden that. Although therein lies the major difficulty.

To some extent psychology has broadened its concerns with people as those who make up the population of psychologists has changed. There are real concerns that entrance into higher education may be becoming ever more restricted for working class folks, but beyond that, there is something about the process of becoming a psychologist that takes people away from being working class, whatever their origins were. So unlike issues around racism, gender and sexuality the body of psychologists are likely to remain middle class so one issue is how to engage with class without becoming patronising.

Some thoughts on the replication issue in Psychology

So new book contract for Dai Jones, Phil Tyson and me and the idea this summer is to make some inroads into my chapters. I am going to use the blog to work through some of the issues in my chapters with the idea that it will help the writing process.

One of the things I am writing about is methodological issues.

This article in the Guardian set me to thinking.

The first thought is the state of crisis the discipline of psychology is in.

For generations psychologists have been doing experimental work with too few participants, leading to a chronic lack of power. This has been made worse by researchers throwing as many variables as possible into studies, so that data collection is more 'efficient' and a tendency to write up studies as if some of the variables never existed.

Allied to a lack of pre-registration of studies and the well known positive result bias in publication then we get to a situation where I am unsure of any findings in psychology, beyond a handful of well  verified findings. While I might not be a experimentalist I still want psychology to be able to act in that mode, albeit with an acknowledgement that findings are probably time and culture specific until we have positive evidence to the contrary.

Adding to this a culture that is hostile to replication studies then I am not sure what, if anything, we should be teaching undergraduate students.

Some of the recent historical research on famous findings like the Milgram obedience study suggests that a tendency to "clean up" findings and present results in an overly positive way has been standard practice for over 60 years.

The second thought is what a bunch of hypocrites we are.

The article draws parallels with the natural sciences in making a call for more replication. Yet psychologists have been quite happily attacking parapsychologists over just this issue (along with the issue of methodological transparency). Some of that fire and methodological exactitude should be turned on the rest of the discipline.

The third thought is it should be of no surprise if even well done, with sufficient participants and replicated in their own time, historical results are not replicated.

People change, and humanity changes. In so far as one can believe any psychology research, the research on stereotype threat suggests that cultural expectations can affect performance. The looping effect, as Ian Hacking calls it, is one possible mechanism where past research on psychology can change the nature of the object of study (people). None of which is an argument against doing careful well replicated research in the here and now, it is useful to know about the psychology of people, even if that knowledge has a shelf life.

The final thought is we need to be much more explicit about linking the models of human action and thought psychologists use in the laboratory to real world. If we establish beyond reasonable doubt that a given independent variable can have a measurable effect in the laboratory we need to be able to say what that effect looks like in the wider world.

Mindfullness and Positive Psychology, two examples of the secularisation of religious practice?

While my mind has been wandering in between bouts of marking I started thinking about Mindfulness.

Most recently it was prompted by this article in the Guardian. While Madeleine Bunting includes some words of caution I would be a little more critical, more in the style of this blog post. In summary, meditative practise might be useful but there ought to be more to it than that. Additionally I am a little concerned by the appropriate of others cultural practises.

I, perhaps, ought to explain that I do sometimes sit quietly and focus on, for example, my breathing a practise I picked up from reading (what I am guessing were) popular Buddist books in the early 1980s. Subsequently I was taken through a series of guided mediations as part of a neo-pagan group in the mid (ish) 1980s. Finally I was 'taught' meditation again by a group of Pythagoreans, who were pretending to be general New Agers, but who were trying to iniate people (including me!) into their Pythagorean group. It can be helpful when I am feeling stressed, but so can really absorbing computer games or novels. And. at times, none of the above is useful.

So I started to ponder. Specifically pondering why take others cultural and religous practises, remove them from their context, dress them up as a paliative for the modern age, without including the thorough questioning of self and values that I have seen in all the mediative practises I have been taught/learnt. The second ponder is why not rename some Christian cultural practises of sitting quietly and pondering, while being guided to focus on something, and without the cultural traditions attached what is the difference?

Then I realised somebody else had already moved into that market, the positive psychologists, with their secularisation of some Christian practises. Think about all your blessings. Think about the people you should be grateful towards. Do some good deeds.

There seems to be something to this, but I possibly need to chat to someone who know more of theology attached.

History and Theories in Psychology, The Musical

Chatting to folks during the conference I realised just how much music I use in my teaching. So here is something I have joked with students about, the music to History & Theories the Musical.

Freud

A quick introduction to the Greek fable which inspired Freud's Oedipus complex.

Following that we have a song that I use to demonstrate how Freud has penetrated popular culture

This next set of music is meant to be evocative of the 1940s through to the 1960s.

Woody Guthrie's Tear the Fascist Down.

A satirical song, that nevertheless illustrates cold war sentiment

Then we move into the sixties

Finally I do some work on positive psychology (well I give it the good kicking it deserves) and I use the last two clips during a lecture on measuring happiness.

So now all I need to do is write the script...

Why academics go to conferences

This is going to be posted on the Psychological Sciences blog once I am back in work, meant mainly for an undergraduate audience

From time to time a lecturer might not be on campus because they are 'at a conference'. In this post I am going to explain what academics do at conferences, why they go, and why undergraduate students should consider going to at least one conference during their time as a student. This post will of course be heavily based on my own experiences of going to conferences, and therefore biased towards psychology.

What is a conference?

Normally at a conference there will be a series of presentations (papers) from academics, and students, talking about their most recent research. There may also be poster sessions, themed symposiums when there are three or four papers on the same theme with additional time for discussion, and other ways to communicate research findings.

As well as the people giving presentations there will be others with an interest in the subject at the conference. Very often at any university there are a limited number of specialists in any particular field, at a conference there are very many experts in the same general area.

Conferences can be single day or longer. They are often based at universities and if multiple day conference delegates will normally stay in the local town, or sometimes in halls of residence on campus.

Learning about what is happening in the academic speciality

To get a paper (poster or other presentation) accepted at a conference one has to send an abstract, or sometimes an extended summary, to the conference organising committee. There will be some peer review of these abstracts, and depending on how many papers are submitted some choices are made about which presentations will be accepted for a conference.

It is, of course, worth noting that these presentations do not go through a full peer review process, and while in the current climate of promoting public engagement press releases may be written and sent out, conference papers should not normally be used as reference material.

With that caveat in mind conference papers are where new ideas are first tested in front of the academic community. So they are an excellent way to learn about the new ideas circulating in the specialist community, this might act as inspiration for future research directions. It is also an essential way to stay up to date in the field.

Testing out your new ideas and recent research

Giving a conference paper on research that you have just completed is a great way to test out the reaction to that research. It will give the presenter some ideas about what they need to do to publish the research in a peer reviewed journal article. While this developmental stage is not always necessary in writing up research it can be a very useful exercise. The majority of the audience at a conference can be classified as friendly critics, and as well as the formal question and answer session there is normally a chance to chat though ideas with people more informally.

Chatting to like minded academics

Several of the delegates spoke about being the only person interested in conceptual and historical issues at their university. This can be quite isolating at an intellectual level and being able to chat to people with more in common, academically, is very useful and can be therapeutic. At this conference there were a number of international delegates, sharing experiences with them can give a wider perspective to some of the issues faced.

Networking

With my new module on Gender and Sexuality starting next academic year it was very good to hear four papers on that topic. I hope to be in touch with all of those presenters in the near future, and am hoping to do a short video piece with one of them for use on the module. One delegate from the USA thought we had something in common academically and we will be chatting over email to see if anything concrete can come out of that.

This might be even more important for students, looking towards post graduate or post doctoral studies, or in professional areas looking for supervisors as part of their training.

The History and Philosophy of Psychology section has, some, student bursaries available, for students giving papers. This might be of interest to any students of our degree interested in pursuing a Conceptual and Historical Issues dissertation.

What I learnt at the History and Philosophy Psychology Section Conference

Yesterday, 16 May, I got back from the annual conference for the History and Philosophy of Psychology conference. I am going to write a slightly more formal report of the event for the Psychological Sciences blog, but here I am going to reflect on the stuff that I found out at the conference, that I think is really interesting.

This section conference is a really friendly meeting, and I was pleased to see a number of students and a high ratio of international delegates. The day prior to the main event there was a workshop about the ways that Historians, Psychologists and Philosophers can work together. That was also an excellent event but here I am going to concentrate on the main event.

Almost all of the papers were of a very high standard.

Andrea Von Hohenthal taught me about the World War One history of German Psychology, but more particularly about the way that the British and German psychologists almost immediately at the cessation war scientific exchange once more.

Katherine Hubbard taught me about how the projective test movement in the 1950s acted as a site of liberatory practice for women and lesbians.

From Alison Torn I found about a 19th century project at New York Lunatic Asylum, to create a patient's periodical, and of the circumstances around being allowed to write for the periodical, what people were allowed to write and how power worked within the Asylum.

Natasha Bharj's paper on continuing colonial and racist discourses in contemporary psychology taught me about how the individualist versus collectivist  categorisation of societies can be racist. It also reinforced the need not to see racism in psychology as a problem in the past.

John Hall is doing really interesting work in being part of creating a critical history of clinical psychology in the UK. Also, and very interestingly, the way the clinical psychology trainers are beginning to see the need for teaching their students about CHiPs.

Philip Thomas reinforced my antipathy to some of the poorly conceptualised usages of functional brain images, this time in the field of psychosis.

John Jackson's presentation taught me about the ontological gerrymandering that Evolutionary Psychologists have done in creating their caricature of how the social sciences work, which they call the "Standard Social Science Model".

Peter Hegarty's wonderful presentation on "The Denaturalisation of Sexuality in 21st Century Time" taught me lots, especially how much I need to update to do a currently relevant course on the Psychology of Gender and Sexuality. Also it taught me much more about the linkages between some of the biological determinist work on (mostly male) gay sexuality and the struggles for equal rights in the USA.

Natalia Loginova's paper on history of psychology in Russia a fascinating insight into what is very often a hidden history to anglophones.

Elena Demke's paper on the role of psychologists acting as expert witnesses for the defense in cases of child abuse was an important lesson about the potentially very damaging consequences of psychologists trying to prove their professional status at the expense of children's well being.

Finally from Katrina Roen I had a thorough education in problems around using surgery to create normality for children in two cases, cochlear implants and Hypospadias. 

All in all a very good conference for me.