Kurt Danziger
Kurt Danziger is an academic whose innovative contributions to the history of psychology have received widespread international recognition. He was Professor of Psychology at York University from 1965 to 1994 and is now Professor Emeritus. In 1972 he was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association and in 1989 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He received the CPA Education and Training Award in 1994, having taken a leading role in establishing the History and Theory Option of the Psychology Graduate Programme at York University and having supervised many of the students who took this option during the first 15 years of its existence.
Since the late 1970’s, Danziger’s teaching and research have been largely devoted to the history and theory of psychology. His initial concentration was on the history of psychological methodology. The results of his work in this area were presented in his book, Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research, published by Cambridge University Press in 1990. The review that appeared in Contemporary Psychology in July 1992 judged that "without a doubt this is the most important book on the history of psychology to come along in years....the understanding and the very teaching of the history of our discipline will have been profoundly altered by Danziger's analysis".
The historical interest in research practice was based on many years' experience of empirical research in different areas of Psychology. Danziger’s earliest research publications reported on his experimental work with laboratory rats, but, under the influence of the work of the ethologist, N. Tinbergen, he became sceptical of the value of much of this work. There followed a period of research on conceptual development in the Piagetian tradition as well as experimental work on time judgement. A lasting engagement with social psychological topics was reflected in numerous research papers, as well as the books Socialization (1971) and Interpersonal Communication (1976).
More recently, the history of psychological categories has formed the main focus of Danziger’s studies. The first major product of this work appeared as a Sage publication in 1997, titled Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found its Language. A further book, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory, was published in 2008. In 2004 a group of authors from a number of countries contributed to a volume on Danziger’s work: Rediscovering the History of Psychology: Essays Inspired by the Work of Kurt Danziger (Springer). That volume also contains a list of Danziger’s publications.
Kurt Danziger’s work has always been international in scope. His books have been translated into Danish, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish. He has given numerous invited addresses in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, as well as in Canada. He was a guest professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in 1988. He is or was on the editorial board of such journals as Theory & Psychology, History of the Human Sciences, Culture & Psychology, and Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Although the bulk of his research output has appeared in the psychological literature, he has also published studies in sociological, historical, and philosophical journals.
A wide range of experience in academic settings all over the globe provides the background for Kurt Danziger's deep appreciation of the importance of social and cultural context for psychological theory and research. He was born in Germany but his family emigrated to South Africa just before World War II. There he completed his schooling and took a degree with distinction in Chemistry. Then he switched to the study of Philosophy and Psychology. He obtained his doctorate in experimental psychology at the University of Oxford in 1952. His first teaching position was at the University of Melbourne, Australia. That was followed by eight years at two South African universities, a period which was interrupted by two years as a Visiting Professor in Indonesia. Before he settled in Canada he was Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Upon his departure in 1965 he was declared a "prohibited person" by the then South African government, a ban that remained in force for a quarter century. Following the transition to democracy, Danziger regularly spent a quarter of each year in South Africa until 2012. He served two five-year terms as Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Social Science by that institution in 2004.
Since the late 1970’s, Danziger’s teaching and research have been largely devoted to the history and theory of psychology. His initial concentration was on the history of psychological methodology. The results of his work in this area were presented in his book, Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research, published by Cambridge University Press in 1990. The review that appeared in Contemporary Psychology in July 1992 judged that "without a doubt this is the most important book on the history of psychology to come along in years....the understanding and the very teaching of the history of our discipline will have been profoundly altered by Danziger's analysis".
The historical interest in research practice was based on many years' experience of empirical research in different areas of Psychology. Danziger’s earliest research publications reported on his experimental work with laboratory rats, but, under the influence of the work of the ethologist, N. Tinbergen, he became sceptical of the value of much of this work. There followed a period of research on conceptual development in the Piagetian tradition as well as experimental work on time judgement. A lasting engagement with social psychological topics was reflected in numerous research papers, as well as the books Socialization (1971) and Interpersonal Communication (1976).
More recently, the history of psychological categories has formed the main focus of Danziger’s studies. The first major product of this work appeared as a Sage publication in 1997, titled Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found its Language. A further book, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory, was published in 2008. In 2004 a group of authors from a number of countries contributed to a volume on Danziger’s work: Rediscovering the History of Psychology: Essays Inspired by the Work of Kurt Danziger (Springer). That volume also contains a list of Danziger’s publications.
Kurt Danziger’s work has always been international in scope. His books have been translated into Danish, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish. He has given numerous invited addresses in Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, as well as in Canada. He was a guest professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany, in 1988. He is or was on the editorial board of such journals as Theory & Psychology, History of the Human Sciences, Culture & Psychology, and Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Although the bulk of his research output has appeared in the psychological literature, he has also published studies in sociological, historical, and philosophical journals.
A wide range of experience in academic settings all over the globe provides the background for Kurt Danziger's deep appreciation of the importance of social and cultural context for psychological theory and research. He was born in Germany but his family emigrated to South Africa just before World War II. There he completed his schooling and took a degree with distinction in Chemistry. Then he switched to the study of Philosophy and Psychology. He obtained his doctorate in experimental psychology at the University of Oxford in 1952. His first teaching position was at the University of Melbourne, Australia. That was followed by eight years at two South African universities, a period which was interrupted by two years as a Visiting Professor in Indonesia. Before he settled in Canada he was Head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Upon his departure in 1965 he was declared a "prohibited person" by the then South African government, a ban that remained in force for a quarter century. Following the transition to democracy, Danziger regularly spent a quarter of each year in South Africa until 2012. He served two five-year terms as Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Social Science by that institution in 2004.
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Books by Kurt Danziger
Summary
Memory is one of the few psychological concepts with a truly ancient lineage. Presenting a history of the interrelated changes in memory tasks, memory technology and ideas about memory from antiquity to the late twentieth century, this book confronts psychology's 'short present' with its 'long past'. Kurt Danziger, one of the most influential historians of psychology of recent times, traces long-term continuities from ancient mnemonics and tools of inscription to modern memory experiments and computer storage. He explores historical discontinuities, showing how different kinds of memory became prominent at different times, and examines these changes in the context of specific themes including the question of truth in memory, distinctions between kinds of memory, the project of memory experimentation and the physical localization and conceptual location of memory. Danziger's unique approach provides a historical perspective for understanding varieties of reproduction, narratives of the self and short-term memory.
Reviews
"In this amazing historical treatise on the concept of memory, Danziger (York Univ., Canada) offers a materialist perspective on how memory tasks, technologies, and views about memory have developed from antiquity to the present...The writing is impeccable--even the copius annotated bibliographic notes at the end of each chapter make excellent reading. Anyone interested in the psychology of human learning, memory, and cognition must read this book. Essential..." - G.C. Gamst,
CHOICE
"Required reading for all cognitive psychologists, this book is also a treasure trove of intellectual gourmandize for historians, philosophers, anthropologists, physicians, linguists, classicists and almost any historically minded lay readers willing to sample nourishing, fascinating, mind-stretching fare." - Michael Wertheimer, Memory Studies
"This book is wide in scope and impressive in its scholarship and erudition... a wonderful book, a success on all levels... Marking the Mind is essential reading for anyone with a strong interest in the study of memory, from any of its many possible perspectives. Rarely have I been so glad to have read a book." - Henry L. Roediger III, PsycCRITIQUES
In the world of contemporary academia, Danziger’s work is unique. It blends immense knowledge of the history (and pre-history) of psychological research with likewise immense knowledge of psychology’s conceptual and cultural history; it combines discussion of empirical experimentation with its discourse analysis; and it draws on registers of historical erudition and philosophical acumen unusual in many human sciences and very rare in psychology. In today’s psychology, Kurt Danziger appears like one of the small number of scholars from ancient Athens who, after Greece was defeated, were able continue their work in Rome, reminding the Romans of a civilization so different from theirs." - Jens Brockmeier, Theory & Psychology
“The book contains much more than psychology and it deserves to be read widely: by psychologists but also by historians of the human sciences and by any academics interested in memory, whatever their disciplinary allegiance. It has all the qualities we have come to associate with Danziger’s work: it is scholarly, thought-provoking and subtle. In short, it is a fine book.” – Alan Collins, History of the Human Sciences
Details
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Hardcover Edition: October 20, 2008 (ISBN-10: 0521898153 ; ISBN-13: 978-0521898157)
• Paperback Edition: October 20, 2008 (ISBN-10: 0521726417; ISBN-13: 978-0521726412)
• Kindle Edition: October 20, 2008 (ASIN: B001JEPW9K)
Summary
Intelligence, motivation, personality, learning, stimulation, behaviour and attitude are just some of the categories that map the terrain of `psychological reality'. These are the concepts which, among others, underpin theoretical and empirical work in modern psychology - and yet these concepts have only recently taken on their contemporary meanings.
In this fascinating work, Kurt Danziger goes beyond the taken-for-granted quality of psychological language to offer a profound and broad-ranging analysis of the recent evolution of the concepts and categories on which it depends. He explores this process and shows how its consequences depend on cultural contexts and the history of an emergent discipline.
Danziger's internationally acclaimed Constructing the Subject examined the historical dependence of modern psychology on the social practices of psychological investigation. In Naming the Mind, he develops a complementary account that looks at the historically changing structure of psychological discourse.
Naming the Mind is an elegant and persuasive explanation of how modern psychology found its language. It will be invaluable reading for students and academics throughout psychology, and for anyone with an interest in the history of the human sciences.
Reviews
“I wish I had it in my power to make this book by Kurt Danziger required reading for any psychologist who teaches or contemplates teaching a course in the history of the field. Why? Because it eloquently challenges the current view that the category language of the 20th-century American psychology reflects a natural and universal order of psychological phenomena. In Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language, Danziger shows very convincingly what is wrong with that picture” - Laurel Furumoto, Theory & Psychology
“Naming the Mind consolidates a vast body of scholarship on psychological language and offers a persuasive model for appreciating the dynamic play and implications of this expert language....For those researchers concerned with psychology's language, Naming the Mind is a smart read" - Jill Morawski, Feminism & Psychology
"Danziger is to be congratulated for his vision, his courage, and his articulate style in delivering his devastating message that today's psychology is not forever." - Michael Wertheimer, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
"...helps to reveal the socially constructive character of psychological categories that are often taken as 'natural' entities in a reality independent of sociocultural processes. His method for doing this, however, is not ethnographic, but historical, and his book demonstrates how historical analysis can make an important contribution to the ongoing development of psychology." Harry Heft, The Psychological Record
"Kurt Danziger’s Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language, published in 1997, has already been highly valued as a must-read book in the domain of history of psychology, theoretical psychology, and critical psychology ... This review will evaluate the book from the viewpoint of the philosophy of mind and its relevant domains in philosophy. My conclusion is that this book is also a must-read for philosophers." - Tetsuya Kono, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Details
• Publisher: Sage
• Hardcover Edition: May 6, 1997 (ISBN-10: 080397762X; ISBN-13: 978-0803977624)
• Paperback Edition: May 6, 1997 (ISBN-10: 0803977638; ISBN-13: 978-0803977631)
Summary
The book traces the history of psychological research methodology from the nineteenth century to the emergence of currently favored styles of research. Professor Danziger considers methodology as a kind of social practice rather than being simply a matter of technique. Therefore his historical analysis is primarily concerned with such topics as the development of the social structure of the research relationship between experimenters and their subjects, as well as the role of methodology in the relationship of investigators to each other and to a wider social context. Another major theme addresses the relationship between the social practice of research and the nature of the product that is the outcome of this practice.
Reviews
"Danziger is to be commended for his incisive and compelling archeology of investigative practices. Without a doubt, this is the most important book on the history of psychology to come along in years." Henderikus J. Stam, Contemporary Psychology
"A transformation is currently under way in the historiography of the science of psychology. and Kurt Danziger's book is one of the best of the new breed arising from that transformation... essential reading for historians of psychology, and highly recommended reading for other historians and sociologists of science." Deborah J. Coon, Isis
"...the most striking achievement in historical research within psychology since the publication of Edwin G. Boring's History of Experimental Psychology ... Danziger presents psychologists with a tightly argued thesis supported by an impressive depth and breadth of scholarship. I hope that his book will initiate a profound and prolonged debate about the nature of psychology." John A. Mills, American Scientist
"...a tour de force in the new history of psychology. It transcends the old debate over internal versus external factors in the development of scientific knowledge by revealing the social processes that lead to particular kinds of knowledge claims." James H. Capshew, Theory & Psychology
"It is essential reading for all with an active interest in the history of our discipline and is highly recommended as well for garden-variety research practitioners who dare to consider practicing their art without taking its ways for granted." Charles W. Tolman, Canadian Psychology
Details
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Hardcover Edition: June 29, 1990 (ISBN-10: 0521363586; ISBN-13: 978-0521363587)
• Paperback Edition: January 28, 1994 (ISBN-10: 0521467853; ISBN-13: 978-0521467858)
Journal Articles by Kurt Danziger
Abstract: During its relatively short history as a distinct discipline, psychology was accompanied by a historiography that projected the idea of psychology back to ancient times when such an idea did not in fact exist. As the modern discipline proliferated into a collection of weakly connected sub-disciplines, the textbook image of psychology’s ancient essence suggested that, in spite of the current messy reality, the subject had an unchanging core object that had always been there to be recognized. Earlier, that object was the psyche, later it was “human nature,” and more recently, the principles of human cognition. However, historiography plays a more useful role within the discipline when it takes the current multiplicity of psychological objects as its point of departure and explores the social context of their emergence. This entails a historical analysis of the language used to define, describe, categorize, and modify psychological objects.
Abstract: Taking the Foucauldian notion of practices as its central theme, this paper examines the relationship between psychological practices on the one hand and institutions and ideologies on the other. It is argued that a global conception of this relationship should be replaced by one based on differentiated historical studies of the operation of psychological practices under widely varying socio-historical conditions. South Africa, a country outside the main North-Western European and North American centres of psychology, provides two important developments to test the argument: the administration of intelligence tests; and psychological testing in the gold mining industry. These were imposed and objectifying practices that could not be considered as “technologies of the self”. It is concluded that practices must be understood in the context of their application – there are only practices-in-context. The concept of contested practices is suggested as a way to conceptualize practices whose nature varies with the ideological and institutional context in which they are deployed.
Abstract: Kurt Danziger is a senior scholar whose innovative contributions to the history of psychology have received widespread international recognition. This wide-ranging interview covers every aspect of Danziger’s work since the 1970s, including his early work on Wundt, his work on psychological methods that culminated in the book Constructing the Subject (1990), and his more recent work on psychological objects in Naming the Mind (1997). It also includes his thoughts on history of psychology in general and the related subject of historical psychology. The interviewer is a former student of Danziger and coeditor of a recent book on Danziger’s work.
Abstract: For some contributors, ‘‘indigenous psychology’’ seems to involve no more than the introduction of essentially technical modifications that serve to enhance the export value of psychological products imported from the West. For the majority, however, indigenous psychology seems to imply some kind of reaction against the way in which the ideal of universal psychological knowledge is commonly pursued in the major centres. Insofar as this reaction is concerned with fundamental issues, it can be seen as questioning the social and normative framework within which psychological knowledge is produced and evaluated. Certain culture-bound interpretations of science and scientific method form an important part of this framework. Although complaints about the individualistic bias of Western psychology are common, there is a need for further exploration of the link between this brand of individualism, ‘‘Cartesian psychology,’’ and a certain understanding of the goals of scientific investigation in psychology. These goals, as well as the norms governing their practical pursuit, are embedded in and enforced by disciplinary structures that are now international in scope but were originally the product of quite specific historical circumstances. This imported disciplinary organization of psychological knowledge may not be appropriate at all times and everywhere. It may be particularly inappropriate where the primary task of indigenous psychology is considered to be the generation of locally appropriate knowledge. Another obstacle to the achievement of this task is constituted by the uncritical use of ‘‘culture’’ as an entity. A more promising approach is provided by those contributors for whom indigenous psychology means doing research with rather than on indigenous people. This seems to be an important step towards escaping a tradition in which the human sources and the human beneficiaries of professional psychological knowledge have seldom been the same people.
Abstract: The project of a historical psychology must be distinguished from the history of psychology and from psychohistory. Unlike the latter, it conflicts with the assumption that what psychology studies is an ahistorical human nature. Although human psychology is deeply historical the discipline of psychology bears the imprint of its relatively recent origin. Historical psychology does not address an imaginary unity but explores the transformations of specific objects posited in discourse and targeted by intervening practices. Memory is taken as an example of such an object, some of its most salient features having been subject to historical change. Its history illuminates the background of current priorities.
Abstract: The history of psychology before its modern incarnation as a quasi-scientific discipline suffers from a lack of non-arbitrary criteria of relevance because the domain of psychology lacks any natural unity. Its history is that of a multiplicity of “psychological objects”, mostly of relatively recent origin. "Memory" is an interesting case because of its antiquity, though in the 19th century there was uncertainty about its status as a scientific concept and a crucial change in its meaning. But this historical discontinuity masked the more profound continuity of an implied analogy between internal and external memory that can be traced back to Plato. The longevity of this inscription metaphor is attributed to the technical and social practices of a culture of literacy. Regarded as a natural object memory has no history, but its history as a discursive object is relevant to contemporary practice and theorizing.
Abstract: The historical emergence of a field devoted to the experimental investigation of effects identified as “social” required a radical break with traditional conceptions of the social. Psychological experimentation was limited to the investigation of effects that were proximal, local, short-term, and decomposable. A viable accommodation to these constraints occurred in the closely related programs of Moede’s experimental crowd psychology and Floyd Allport’s experimental social psychology. Later, Kurt Lewin attempted to provide a different conceptual foundation for the field by drawing on certain precepts of Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of scientific experimentation developed by Ernst Cassirer. These ideas were poorly understood and were soon replaced by a methodological regime in which a new generation of statistical procedures and experimental design shaped implicit conceptions of the social in social psychological experiments through such procedures as randomization and the additive combination of variables.
Abstract: In her comment, Dehue (1990) advocates and practices the occasional, rather than the principled, use of contextualism in historical studies, However, I regard contextualism as a regulative principle of such studies which applies to the historian as well as to the subject matter. Because historical studies are themselves historically situated, Dehue's 'symmetrical contextualism' must remain an illusion.
Abstract: A review of eleven volumes in the Sage series, Inquiries in Social Construction, reveals a field that is marked by a great variety of positions, fundamental disagreements, and few common themes. Among the more important of the latter is an emphasis on the discursive constitution of knowledge and the related demystification of scientific authority. Fundamental disagreements exist on the meaning and scope of “discourse”. For some, discourse is essentially conversation and its reach more or less unbounded. For others, relationships of power, whether displayed at social or somatic sites, constitute an irreducible reality beyond discourse.
Abstract: A content analysis of four psychological journals for 1938, 1948 and 1958 showed that over this period there was a considerable increase in the use of the term “variable”, especially in the domain of social psychological and personality research. Some of this increase is attributable to a growing tendency to describe psychological research in terms of the manipulation of variables. However, there was also a transposition of the term from the description of procedure to the description of that which was being investigated. Functions and limitations of this process of reification are discussed in terms of the cohesion of the research community and the consequences of a non-reflective research style.
Abstract: Contrary to Rappard’s (1997) reading of my paper (Danziger, 1994), I did not advocate that the history of psychology be left to historians. However, that does not mean we can afford to ignore historians’ criticisms of insider history. Underlying our disagreement there are different conceptions of the role of history in the natural and social sciences and of the position of psychology among these.
Abstract: For historians of psychology it is important to recognize that any intelligible historical account must necessarily be made from a position within history. Thus there can be no historical account without a particular perspective or point of view from which aspects of historical reality are seen or not seen, emphasized or played down, accepted or rejected. The pretence of being able to step outside history and describe it as it were from nowhere puts the historian in a godlike position and represents a major obstacle to good scholarship. One can land in this position if one fails to distinguish between morally tinged historical biases and emotional commitments, and also if one does not recognize the constitutive role of interpretation in historical accounts.
Introduction: In the autumn of 1994, Kurt Danziger retired from full-time teaching at York University in Toronto, Canada, where he coordinated the History/Theory option within the Psychology graduate programme. He was born in Germany and studied psychology in South Africa and England. He has taught psychology in Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Germany, and Canada. In addition to his work on history and theory of psychology, Danziger has published research papers in experimental psychology, developmental psychology and social psychology. His books include Socialization (1971), Interpersonal Communication (1976) and Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research (1990). Most recently, he has published a paper on the state of the art, “Does the history of psychology have a future?” (1994) which he refers to in this interview as “being on the point of appearing in print.” Shortly before his retirement, Danziger received the Canadian Psychological Association’s first Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training. This interview took place at York University on August 29, 1994. The interviewer is Adrian Brock, historian of psychology and former student of Danziger, now College Lecturer in Psychology at University College Dublin.
Abstract: History of psychology tends to be accorded a purely pedagogical role within the discipline rather than being seen as a possible source of substantive contributions. This reflects a type of mobilization of tradition that is characteristic of the natural rather than the human sciences. The shallow history of the scientific review helps to organize consensus while critical history represents a threat to the moral community of researchers. However, there are developments which provide a more favourable context for critical historical scholarship. These developments include the emergence of a somewhat disenchanted view of science, feminist scholarship, and the international diversification of psychology. The potential effects of critical historical studies on conceptions of the subject matter of psychology, on the understanding of its practices, and on the nature of its social contribution are briefly discussed.
Summary
Memory is one of the few psychological concepts with a truly ancient lineage. Presenting a history of the interrelated changes in memory tasks, memory technology and ideas about memory from antiquity to the late twentieth century, this book confronts psychology's 'short present' with its 'long past'. Kurt Danziger, one of the most influential historians of psychology of recent times, traces long-term continuities from ancient mnemonics and tools of inscription to modern memory experiments and computer storage. He explores historical discontinuities, showing how different kinds of memory became prominent at different times, and examines these changes in the context of specific themes including the question of truth in memory, distinctions between kinds of memory, the project of memory experimentation and the physical localization and conceptual location of memory. Danziger's unique approach provides a historical perspective for understanding varieties of reproduction, narratives of the self and short-term memory.
Reviews
"In this amazing historical treatise on the concept of memory, Danziger (York Univ., Canada) offers a materialist perspective on how memory tasks, technologies, and views about memory have developed from antiquity to the present...The writing is impeccable--even the copius annotated bibliographic notes at the end of each chapter make excellent reading. Anyone interested in the psychology of human learning, memory, and cognition must read this book. Essential..." - G.C. Gamst,
CHOICE
"Required reading for all cognitive psychologists, this book is also a treasure trove of intellectual gourmandize for historians, philosophers, anthropologists, physicians, linguists, classicists and almost any historically minded lay readers willing to sample nourishing, fascinating, mind-stretching fare." - Michael Wertheimer, Memory Studies
"This book is wide in scope and impressive in its scholarship and erudition... a wonderful book, a success on all levels... Marking the Mind is essential reading for anyone with a strong interest in the study of memory, from any of its many possible perspectives. Rarely have I been so glad to have read a book." - Henry L. Roediger III, PsycCRITIQUES
In the world of contemporary academia, Danziger’s work is unique. It blends immense knowledge of the history (and pre-history) of psychological research with likewise immense knowledge of psychology’s conceptual and cultural history; it combines discussion of empirical experimentation with its discourse analysis; and it draws on registers of historical erudition and philosophical acumen unusual in many human sciences and very rare in psychology. In today’s psychology, Kurt Danziger appears like one of the small number of scholars from ancient Athens who, after Greece was defeated, were able continue their work in Rome, reminding the Romans of a civilization so different from theirs." - Jens Brockmeier, Theory & Psychology
“The book contains much more than psychology and it deserves to be read widely: by psychologists but also by historians of the human sciences and by any academics interested in memory, whatever their disciplinary allegiance. It has all the qualities we have come to associate with Danziger’s work: it is scholarly, thought-provoking and subtle. In short, it is a fine book.” – Alan Collins, History of the Human Sciences
Details
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Hardcover Edition: October 20, 2008 (ISBN-10: 0521898153 ; ISBN-13: 978-0521898157)
• Paperback Edition: October 20, 2008 (ISBN-10: 0521726417; ISBN-13: 978-0521726412)
• Kindle Edition: October 20, 2008 (ASIN: B001JEPW9K)
Summary
Intelligence, motivation, personality, learning, stimulation, behaviour and attitude are just some of the categories that map the terrain of `psychological reality'. These are the concepts which, among others, underpin theoretical and empirical work in modern psychology - and yet these concepts have only recently taken on their contemporary meanings.
In this fascinating work, Kurt Danziger goes beyond the taken-for-granted quality of psychological language to offer a profound and broad-ranging analysis of the recent evolution of the concepts and categories on which it depends. He explores this process and shows how its consequences depend on cultural contexts and the history of an emergent discipline.
Danziger's internationally acclaimed Constructing the Subject examined the historical dependence of modern psychology on the social practices of psychological investigation. In Naming the Mind, he develops a complementary account that looks at the historically changing structure of psychological discourse.
Naming the Mind is an elegant and persuasive explanation of how modern psychology found its language. It will be invaluable reading for students and academics throughout psychology, and for anyone with an interest in the history of the human sciences.
Reviews
“I wish I had it in my power to make this book by Kurt Danziger required reading for any psychologist who teaches or contemplates teaching a course in the history of the field. Why? Because it eloquently challenges the current view that the category language of the 20th-century American psychology reflects a natural and universal order of psychological phenomena. In Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language, Danziger shows very convincingly what is wrong with that picture” - Laurel Furumoto, Theory & Psychology
“Naming the Mind consolidates a vast body of scholarship on psychological language and offers a persuasive model for appreciating the dynamic play and implications of this expert language....For those researchers concerned with psychology's language, Naming the Mind is a smart read" - Jill Morawski, Feminism & Psychology
"Danziger is to be congratulated for his vision, his courage, and his articulate style in delivering his devastating message that today's psychology is not forever." - Michael Wertheimer, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
"...helps to reveal the socially constructive character of psychological categories that are often taken as 'natural' entities in a reality independent of sociocultural processes. His method for doing this, however, is not ethnographic, but historical, and his book demonstrates how historical analysis can make an important contribution to the ongoing development of psychology." Harry Heft, The Psychological Record
"Kurt Danziger’s Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language, published in 1997, has already been highly valued as a must-read book in the domain of history of psychology, theoretical psychology, and critical psychology ... This review will evaluate the book from the viewpoint of the philosophy of mind and its relevant domains in philosophy. My conclusion is that this book is also a must-read for philosophers." - Tetsuya Kono, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Details
• Publisher: Sage
• Hardcover Edition: May 6, 1997 (ISBN-10: 080397762X; ISBN-13: 978-0803977624)
• Paperback Edition: May 6, 1997 (ISBN-10: 0803977638; ISBN-13: 978-0803977631)
Summary
The book traces the history of psychological research methodology from the nineteenth century to the emergence of currently favored styles of research. Professor Danziger considers methodology as a kind of social practice rather than being simply a matter of technique. Therefore his historical analysis is primarily concerned with such topics as the development of the social structure of the research relationship between experimenters and their subjects, as well as the role of methodology in the relationship of investigators to each other and to a wider social context. Another major theme addresses the relationship between the social practice of research and the nature of the product that is the outcome of this practice.
Reviews
"Danziger is to be commended for his incisive and compelling archeology of investigative practices. Without a doubt, this is the most important book on the history of psychology to come along in years." Henderikus J. Stam, Contemporary Psychology
"A transformation is currently under way in the historiography of the science of psychology. and Kurt Danziger's book is one of the best of the new breed arising from that transformation... essential reading for historians of psychology, and highly recommended reading for other historians and sociologists of science." Deborah J. Coon, Isis
"...the most striking achievement in historical research within psychology since the publication of Edwin G. Boring's History of Experimental Psychology ... Danziger presents psychologists with a tightly argued thesis supported by an impressive depth and breadth of scholarship. I hope that his book will initiate a profound and prolonged debate about the nature of psychology." John A. Mills, American Scientist
"...a tour de force in the new history of psychology. It transcends the old debate over internal versus external factors in the development of scientific knowledge by revealing the social processes that lead to particular kinds of knowledge claims." James H. Capshew, Theory & Psychology
"It is essential reading for all with an active interest in the history of our discipline and is highly recommended as well for garden-variety research practitioners who dare to consider practicing their art without taking its ways for granted." Charles W. Tolman, Canadian Psychology
Details
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Hardcover Edition: June 29, 1990 (ISBN-10: 0521363586; ISBN-13: 978-0521363587)
• Paperback Edition: January 28, 1994 (ISBN-10: 0521467853; ISBN-13: 978-0521467858)
Abstract: During its relatively short history as a distinct discipline, psychology was accompanied by a historiography that projected the idea of psychology back to ancient times when such an idea did not in fact exist. As the modern discipline proliferated into a collection of weakly connected sub-disciplines, the textbook image of psychology’s ancient essence suggested that, in spite of the current messy reality, the subject had an unchanging core object that had always been there to be recognized. Earlier, that object was the psyche, later it was “human nature,” and more recently, the principles of human cognition. However, historiography plays a more useful role within the discipline when it takes the current multiplicity of psychological objects as its point of departure and explores the social context of their emergence. This entails a historical analysis of the language used to define, describe, categorize, and modify psychological objects.
Abstract: Taking the Foucauldian notion of practices as its central theme, this paper examines the relationship between psychological practices on the one hand and institutions and ideologies on the other. It is argued that a global conception of this relationship should be replaced by one based on differentiated historical studies of the operation of psychological practices under widely varying socio-historical conditions. South Africa, a country outside the main North-Western European and North American centres of psychology, provides two important developments to test the argument: the administration of intelligence tests; and psychological testing in the gold mining industry. These were imposed and objectifying practices that could not be considered as “technologies of the self”. It is concluded that practices must be understood in the context of their application – there are only practices-in-context. The concept of contested practices is suggested as a way to conceptualize practices whose nature varies with the ideological and institutional context in which they are deployed.
Abstract: Kurt Danziger is a senior scholar whose innovative contributions to the history of psychology have received widespread international recognition. This wide-ranging interview covers every aspect of Danziger’s work since the 1970s, including his early work on Wundt, his work on psychological methods that culminated in the book Constructing the Subject (1990), and his more recent work on psychological objects in Naming the Mind (1997). It also includes his thoughts on history of psychology in general and the related subject of historical psychology. The interviewer is a former student of Danziger and coeditor of a recent book on Danziger’s work.
Abstract: For some contributors, ‘‘indigenous psychology’’ seems to involve no more than the introduction of essentially technical modifications that serve to enhance the export value of psychological products imported from the West. For the majority, however, indigenous psychology seems to imply some kind of reaction against the way in which the ideal of universal psychological knowledge is commonly pursued in the major centres. Insofar as this reaction is concerned with fundamental issues, it can be seen as questioning the social and normative framework within which psychological knowledge is produced and evaluated. Certain culture-bound interpretations of science and scientific method form an important part of this framework. Although complaints about the individualistic bias of Western psychology are common, there is a need for further exploration of the link between this brand of individualism, ‘‘Cartesian psychology,’’ and a certain understanding of the goals of scientific investigation in psychology. These goals, as well as the norms governing their practical pursuit, are embedded in and enforced by disciplinary structures that are now international in scope but were originally the product of quite specific historical circumstances. This imported disciplinary organization of psychological knowledge may not be appropriate at all times and everywhere. It may be particularly inappropriate where the primary task of indigenous psychology is considered to be the generation of locally appropriate knowledge. Another obstacle to the achievement of this task is constituted by the uncritical use of ‘‘culture’’ as an entity. A more promising approach is provided by those contributors for whom indigenous psychology means doing research with rather than on indigenous people. This seems to be an important step towards escaping a tradition in which the human sources and the human beneficiaries of professional psychological knowledge have seldom been the same people.
Abstract: The project of a historical psychology must be distinguished from the history of psychology and from psychohistory. Unlike the latter, it conflicts with the assumption that what psychology studies is an ahistorical human nature. Although human psychology is deeply historical the discipline of psychology bears the imprint of its relatively recent origin. Historical psychology does not address an imaginary unity but explores the transformations of specific objects posited in discourse and targeted by intervening practices. Memory is taken as an example of such an object, some of its most salient features having been subject to historical change. Its history illuminates the background of current priorities.
Abstract: The history of psychology before its modern incarnation as a quasi-scientific discipline suffers from a lack of non-arbitrary criteria of relevance because the domain of psychology lacks any natural unity. Its history is that of a multiplicity of “psychological objects”, mostly of relatively recent origin. "Memory" is an interesting case because of its antiquity, though in the 19th century there was uncertainty about its status as a scientific concept and a crucial change in its meaning. But this historical discontinuity masked the more profound continuity of an implied analogy between internal and external memory that can be traced back to Plato. The longevity of this inscription metaphor is attributed to the technical and social practices of a culture of literacy. Regarded as a natural object memory has no history, but its history as a discursive object is relevant to contemporary practice and theorizing.
Abstract: The historical emergence of a field devoted to the experimental investigation of effects identified as “social” required a radical break with traditional conceptions of the social. Psychological experimentation was limited to the investigation of effects that were proximal, local, short-term, and decomposable. A viable accommodation to these constraints occurred in the closely related programs of Moede’s experimental crowd psychology and Floyd Allport’s experimental social psychology. Later, Kurt Lewin attempted to provide a different conceptual foundation for the field by drawing on certain precepts of Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of scientific experimentation developed by Ernst Cassirer. These ideas were poorly understood and were soon replaced by a methodological regime in which a new generation of statistical procedures and experimental design shaped implicit conceptions of the social in social psychological experiments through such procedures as randomization and the additive combination of variables.
Abstract: In her comment, Dehue (1990) advocates and practices the occasional, rather than the principled, use of contextualism in historical studies, However, I regard contextualism as a regulative principle of such studies which applies to the historian as well as to the subject matter. Because historical studies are themselves historically situated, Dehue's 'symmetrical contextualism' must remain an illusion.
Abstract: A review of eleven volumes in the Sage series, Inquiries in Social Construction, reveals a field that is marked by a great variety of positions, fundamental disagreements, and few common themes. Among the more important of the latter is an emphasis on the discursive constitution of knowledge and the related demystification of scientific authority. Fundamental disagreements exist on the meaning and scope of “discourse”. For some, discourse is essentially conversation and its reach more or less unbounded. For others, relationships of power, whether displayed at social or somatic sites, constitute an irreducible reality beyond discourse.
Abstract: A content analysis of four psychological journals for 1938, 1948 and 1958 showed that over this period there was a considerable increase in the use of the term “variable”, especially in the domain of social psychological and personality research. Some of this increase is attributable to a growing tendency to describe psychological research in terms of the manipulation of variables. However, there was also a transposition of the term from the description of procedure to the description of that which was being investigated. Functions and limitations of this process of reification are discussed in terms of the cohesion of the research community and the consequences of a non-reflective research style.
Abstract: Contrary to Rappard’s (1997) reading of my paper (Danziger, 1994), I did not advocate that the history of psychology be left to historians. However, that does not mean we can afford to ignore historians’ criticisms of insider history. Underlying our disagreement there are different conceptions of the role of history in the natural and social sciences and of the position of psychology among these.
Abstract: For historians of psychology it is important to recognize that any intelligible historical account must necessarily be made from a position within history. Thus there can be no historical account without a particular perspective or point of view from which aspects of historical reality are seen or not seen, emphasized or played down, accepted or rejected. The pretence of being able to step outside history and describe it as it were from nowhere puts the historian in a godlike position and represents a major obstacle to good scholarship. One can land in this position if one fails to distinguish between morally tinged historical biases and emotional commitments, and also if one does not recognize the constitutive role of interpretation in historical accounts.
Introduction: In the autumn of 1994, Kurt Danziger retired from full-time teaching at York University in Toronto, Canada, where he coordinated the History/Theory option within the Psychology graduate programme. He was born in Germany and studied psychology in South Africa and England. He has taught psychology in Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Germany, and Canada. In addition to his work on history and theory of psychology, Danziger has published research papers in experimental psychology, developmental psychology and social psychology. His books include Socialization (1971), Interpersonal Communication (1976) and Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research (1990). Most recently, he has published a paper on the state of the art, “Does the history of psychology have a future?” (1994) which he refers to in this interview as “being on the point of appearing in print.” Shortly before his retirement, Danziger received the Canadian Psychological Association’s first Award for Distinguished Contributions to Education and Training. This interview took place at York University on August 29, 1994. The interviewer is Adrian Brock, historian of psychology and former student of Danziger, now College Lecturer in Psychology at University College Dublin.
Abstract: History of psychology tends to be accorded a purely pedagogical role within the discipline rather than being seen as a possible source of substantive contributions. This reflects a type of mobilization of tradition that is characteristic of the natural rather than the human sciences. The shallow history of the scientific review helps to organize consensus while critical history represents a threat to the moral community of researchers. However, there are developments which provide a more favourable context for critical historical scholarship. These developments include the emergence of a somewhat disenchanted view of science, feminist scholarship, and the international diversification of psychology. The potential effects of critical historical studies on conceptions of the subject matter of psychology, on the understanding of its practices, and on the nature of its social contribution are briefly discussed.
Abstract: The theories of modern psychology always appear as components of complex formations that also have two other components, namely, specific empirical domains and sets of practices employed in the construction of such domains and of the corresponding theories. These formations can only be fully understood through historical analysis, for they are historical products. Their content comprises "psychological objects", which are the things psychologists take themselves to be investigating and theorizing about. Such psychological objects are not to be confused with natural objects, for they are crucially shaped by the theoretical constructive activity and by the practical intervention of psychological communities. The historical situation of these communities influences their construction of psychological objects in that it provides the criteria of legitimacy by which specific constructive activities and their products are judged. This does not mean that psychological objects can be reduced to the status of "nothing but" socio-historical constructions, though it does mean that the categories with which the discipline of Psychology works can never be accepted as "natural kinds" and that its research practices lose their supramundane status.
Abstract: During the period when positivism was dominant scientific methodology and its products were believed to rest on ahistorical principles. More recent work in the sociology, philosophy and history of science has undermined this belief. Modern science studies are based on the realization that the nature of any actually existing science will be profoundly determined by the historical conditions of its existence. Hence the objects of scientific research must be regarded, not as purely natural, but as historical facts. This even applies to empirical data because they are heavily dependent on theoretical preconceptions and methodological constructions. The historical understanding of a science like Psychology is thererfore no mere garish but is concerned with the essential nature of the discipline.
Abstract: The notion that experimentation provides an appropriate means of acquiring valid knowledge about some aspects social reality has always depended on certain presuppositions about the nature of social reality and about the role of experiment in knowledge acquisition. In this paper I examine historical changes in these presuppositions from the beginnings of social psychological experimentation to the period after World War II. It was late nineteenth-century crowd psychology that provided the theoretical inspiration for the first systematic steps in the application of experimental methods to the investigation of social psychological problems. The basic question addressed by these early experiments was derived from the individualistic social ontology of crowd psychology. It was this ontology that made the microcosm of the experimental situation appear relevant to social reality outside this situation. In the 1940s experimental social psychology was briefly influenced by the nonindividualistic social ontology for which group phenomena were real. In the work of Kurt Lewin this was linked to an anti-inductivist conception of experimentation derived from Gestalt psychology and the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer. However, this model proved to be utterly unassimilable by American social ontology which was dominated by an individualistic social ontology and an inductivist philosophy of experimentation that mutually supported each other.
Abstract: Although the sites of psychological research and practice have always been internationally diverse, the knowledge claims of the discipline have always been universalistic. At various times, the resulting tension became apparent in the form of differences among 'schools', in resistance to methodological uniformity, and in attempts at 'indigenization'. The resolution of this problem requires a recognition that, to a large extent, psychological universality is historically contingent, depending on the spread of similar conditions of life. Forms of literacy and of therapeutic culture provide examples.
Abstract: Common psychological categories, such as personality, motivation, attitude, emotion, do not correspond to inherent divisions within a timeless human nature. They do not represent natural kinds, such as gold, which exist independently of how we depict them. The categories in terms of which humans understand their individual conduct and experience are part of human social life and change as that life changes. They are "human kinds" (Hacking) also in the sense that humans are affected by the terms in which they understand themselves. The culturally embedded and historically changing meaning of specific psychological categories forms a layer of implicit knowledge usually taken for granted by more explicit psychological theorizing.
Abstract: The empirical domains about which psychologists theorize are not raw natural phenomena but carefully constructed products of psychological practice. The rules governing the construction of such products are enforced by communities of practitioners. Such communities are themselves part of the history of the societies in which they flourish. They adapt to the demands imposed on them by their social context by modifying the rules governing their professional activity, including the production of empirical domains. These rules are subject to historical change, and the knowledge products that are constructed with their help are historical products. At the same time, rules for the production of acceptable empirical domains are based on theoretical suppositions about the nature of psychological reality. Changes in these rules are also theoretical changes. On this level, there is a profound historicity of theory, but the theorizing at issue here is what goes on implicitly before and during the construction of empirical domains rather than explicitly afterwards. A major historical change in rules of practice and their implicit theories occurred when psychology switched to a preference for certain types of statistical data. This preference can be traced to practitioners’ need to legitimize their activity in terms of a particular interpretation of what constitutes science and a limited interpretation of what constitutes socially useful knowledge.
Abstract: Methods involve the application of specific ordering principles in order to construct empirical domains. These principles are not theory neutral but are based on definite ontological presuppositions. Where the presuppositions of a particular method conflict with those of a particular theory, that theory cannot be appropriately tested by an application of this method. However, it is an important function of methods, not only to ‘test’ theories but also to demonstrate them in action. Where the theories in question refer to the foundations of human social action appropriate methods are those which constitute empirical domains that reflect the structure of such action.
Abstract: For Hermann Ebbinghaus, an early experimentalist usually credited with introducing the popular contrast between psychology's long past and short history, the distinction had to be made because psychologists had finally embarked on a path of cumulative progress by means of empirical investigations. However, Ebbinghaus did not invent the distinction so much as change its emphasis in a way that hid continuities between long past and short history. To illustrate: the history of memory reveals significant links between the experimental period and its predecessor, not only on the conceptual level, where ancient metaphors survive, but also on the level of practice, where there was a long tradition of systematic intervention in the operations of memory that provided material for modern approaches. Exclusive reliance on the particular discontinuity emphasized by Ebbinghaus also tends to obscure other peculiarities of the modern period that may be equally important historically.
Abstract: An interest in the analysis of theories and concepts, implicitly accepted as discursive products, was already apparent at the early meetings of the European Society for the History of the Human Sciences. Becoming more explicit about this approach leads to an examination of the notion of discursive objects and the problematic notion of history without a subject. If a kind of discourse idealism is to be avoided an analytic distinction between discursive objects, human interests and social practices must be preserved. It is suggested that in the future more attention should be paid to diachronic studies of investigative practices and to the “epistemic objects” that result from these practices. The recent metaphorical use of “biography” in connection with diachronic studies of scientific objects has already proved fruitful. This is illustrated with some examples from the history of the concept of memory.
Abstract: In 1950 I was a graduate student doing research in the field of motivation. My work led me to doubt the existence of a separate category of motivational processes clearly distinct from other psychological processes. However, I did not suspect that this doubt might be appropriate for all psychological categories until I encountered an indigenous psychology in Indonesia that operated with an entirely different set of categories. In the course of my more recent historical research it became clear to me that psychological categories could not be regarded as natural kinds, reflecting immutable psychological distinctions, but that they were culturally bound. Psychological language is an important part of a context of construction within which psychological phenomena are constituted. Had I understood this in 1950 I would have had a better grasp of what my research meant and been more circumspect in the choice of my empirical questions and in the interpretation of my results.
Abstract: The most influential histories of psychology tend to adopt the perspective of a particular centre of psychological development, most often the USA, with developments elsewhere forming a kind of periphery. Conceptualizations and practices favoured by social conditions at the centre are treated as universally valid core principles of the discipline while knowledge emerging at the periphery is often awarded only local significance. More recently, this model has become difficult to maintain and the history of the field is more readily seen in terms of an interaction among several focal centres. Such a perspective leads to an analysis of the way in which the generation, transmission and application of psychological knowledge has been shaped by power relationships as well as by cultural biases and barriers. A polycentric history has considerable relevance for current developments within the discipline.
Talk at the celebration of one hundred years of Psychology in the Netherlands and ten years of Cheiron-Europe (the predecessor to European Society for the History of the Human Sciences), Groningen University, 27 August 1992.
Abstract: The claim that progress in applied psychology depended on previous advances in basic psychological research became part of the discipline's scientific rhetoric in the early years of the twentieth century. In reality, however, one finds very few instances where this was indeed the case. Far more commonly, psychologists engaged in finding solutions to practical problems, for example in advertising, the reliability of testimony, or personnel selection, developed their own approaches and methods that owed little or nothing to the basic research of the time. In due course, the major direction of influence was actually the reverse of that claimed by the standard rhetoric: basic research adopted many methodological innovations pioneered by "applied" psychology, including techniques for the analysis of individual differences and control group methodology. Applied psychology merited its name more by its use of concepts, such as association, that antedated the emergence of scientific psychology than by its reliance on an existing basic science.