KURT DANZIGER
Subject, object and practice: Three fundamental concepts in Kurt Danziger's work
University College Dublin
Abstract: In an interview which I
conducted with Kurt Danziger for the journal, History of Psychology, I
pointed to his early interest in Wundt, his subsequent interest in the history
of psychological methods and his more recent interest in the history of
psychological categories and asked if there was a common thread in this work.
This was his reply: "I have used three fundamental concepts to organize
historical information. The three concepts are subject, object and practice. The
conceptual content of psychology consists of psychological objects which are
produced by certain psychological practices. However, those practices ... are
always the practices of actual people, historical subjects. So there are three
histories to pursue, the history of psychological objects, the history of
psychological practices, and the history of the subjects involved with these
objects and practices." The history of psychology to date has largely been a
history of subjects and much of the originality in Danziger’s work is due to its
focus on objects and practices. The previous neglect of these topics was
probably due to an erroneous belief that they are timeless. Now that it has been
shown that they have a history, a shift in emphasis is required.
In 1987, Graham Richards published an article with the title, “Of what is
history of psychology a history?” (Richards, 1987). It is a well-known article
and those who are familiar with it will be aware that Richards was concerned
with the issue of how historians of psychology should deal with the long period
of history before psychology became a distinct field in the second half of the
19th century. Traditional histories of psychology have not hesitated
to apply the label, “psychologist” retroactively to figures like Aristotle, even
though there was no such profession at the time that he lived (e.g. Watson,
1963).
Richards’ question can be posed in a different way: “Which aspects of psychology
can and/or should be the focus of our histories?” To the best of my knowledge,
this question has never been discussed. Most histories of psychology focus on
psychologists, usually as individuals but sometimes as groups (e.g. the Würzburg
School). They also tend to be centred on theories of psychology so that the
field is often described as “history and systems of psychology” in the United
States. Kurt Danziger’s work does not follow this pattern. His early work in the
history of psychology was focussed on Wilhelm Wundt but he then moved on to the
history of psychological methods in the 1980s and his work since the 1990s has
been centred on the history of psychological concepts and categories. In this
paper, I will argue that these different topics go beyond matters of individual
preference. They have implications for our understanding of psychology and, in
particular, its relationship to history.
In an interview which I conducted with Danziger for the journal,
History of Psychology, I pointed to
the diversity of his work on the history of psychology and asked if there was a
common thread running through this work. This was his reply:
I have used three fundamental concepts to organize historical information. The
three concepts are subject, object and practice. The conceptual content of
psychology consists of psychological objects which are produced by certain
psychological practices. However, those practices don't just hang in the air.
They are always the practices of actual people, historical subjects. So there
are three histories to pursue, the history of psychological objects, the history
of psychological practices, and the history of the subjects involved with these
objects and practices. I have concentrated on the first two of these histories
but tried not to forget about the third (Brock, 2006; pp. 10-11).
Given that Danziger regards these three concepts as “fundamental”, they may be a
useful way of approaching his work.
First I will deal with the notion of the subject. This word has been used in
different ways by different people. Psychologists have traditionally used it to
describe the people who participate in their research. The term when it is used
in this sense has passive connotations. Danziger is not using the term in this
way. He is using it to refer to the historical actors who we usually call
"psychologists". Histories of psychology that are centred on psychologists need
no introduction. They are probably the most common form. Danziger has been
critical of the Foucauldian notion of a history without a subject. According to
him, historical events do not simply occur. They require real people to make
them happen (Danziger, 2010). At the same time, he has been equally critical of
the histories of psychology that have been centred on individual psychologists:
My view is that historical biography of individual figures is a perfectly
legitimate and interesting field in its own right, but I think it is a different
field from history ... Historical biography works with certain categories for
the explanation of individual human action and, quite appropriately, it can take
those categories from contemporary theories of human action, motivation and so
on. History, on the other hand, works at a trans-individual level. It works with
trends, phenomena, forces that are not to be equated with individual action at
all. It works with changing cultural patterns, social institutions, ideological
formations, social rules, customs and power relationships.
(Brock, 2006; p. 12).
In Danziger’s view, scientific activity is irreducibly social. The view of the
lone scientist confronting nature has always been a myth but it is particularly
so in psychology where the object of investigation is not usually nature but
other human beings (Danziger, 1993a). Thus Danziger's concept of the historical
subject is social and it was so even when his work was centred on Wundt. One of
his earliest works on the history of psychology is titled, "The social origins
of modern psychology" and much of it is concerned with criticising previous work
which had attributed the origins of modern psychology to Wundt (Danziger, 1979).
As Danziger indicated in the first quotation used above, his work has been
mainly concerned not with subjects but with objects and practices and so any
discussion of it must concentrate on those. I will deal with psychological
practices first since Danziger's work on this subject pre-dates his work on
psychological objects. I am referring here in particular to Danziger's work on
the history of psychological methods. This was the main focus of his work in the
1980s and it culminated in what is probably his best-known book,
Constructing the Subject: Historical
Origins of Psychological Research (Danziger, 1990).
Again, some clarification of Danziger's terminology is needed. He uses the term,
"practice" differently from the way in which psychologists use the term. They
might use it to refer to the application of psychology in the wider society, as
in the example of a clinical psychologist who has a private practice. Danziger
uses the term to refer to anything that psychologists do and consequently uses
the term, "investigative practice" where most psychologists would use the term,
"methodology". Why the difference? Danziger sees the term, "methodology" as
implying a set of impersonal technical procedures that are unrelated to human
interests. "Investigative practice", on the other hand, includes the latter:
In terms of the way in which the concept had been used in the literature, the
term, ‘practice’ or ‘social practice’ seemed to be a suitable one for describing
activities that would have both a rational and a socially contingent aspect to
them without separating them into two different compartments. So I prefer to use
the term ‘investigative practice’ as incorporating both the quasi-rational rules
that scientific activity follows, to a greater or lesser extent, and the social
contingencies of scientific activity as well. It is an integrative concept
(Brock, 2006; p.10).
Danziger has a longstanding interest in philosophy and has always insisted that
historical work must be informed by philosophy (e.g. Danziger, 2003). A
recurring theme in his work is positivist philosophy of science, largely because
of the influence it has had on psychology. Many psychologists continue to
subscribe to its tenets, even though its limitations have been widely recognised
in history and philosophy of science for over 50 years.
One of the distinctions that positivist philosophy of science introduced was
that of “the context of discovery” and “the context of justification” (Danziger,
1993a). It was accepted that scientific discoveries could be explained in social
and historical terms. For example, the background to Darwin's theory of
evolution was Britain's status as a naval power in the 19th century and its
desire to produce accurate maps of the world. It is unlikely that Darwin would
have had the opportunity to gather the evidence in support of his theory without
this background. This is the context of discovery. According to positivism, the
social and historical background of a scientific theory is irrelevant for the
purpose of explaining why the theory is true. Scientific theories were thought
to be based on a combination of empirical observation and deductive logic.
Because of this, they transcended their time and place. This is why there was a
need for a separate context of justification.
This distinction resulted in a sharp division of labour between historians and
philosophers of science. The former were restricted to dealing with the
peripheral aspects of science; for example, the biographies of individual
scientists. It was the latter who were given the task of explaining scientific
knowledge itself. However, there is little evidence from history to suggest that
scientists at all times and in all places have followed a standard set of
procedures. On the contrary, the methods of science have varied enormously not
only across the different sciences but also within the individual sciences
themselves.
A lack of consensus regarding the timeless methods of science resulted in a
vacuum which historians filled with case studies of scientific research. No
longer confined to the peripheral aspects of science, they sought to explain the
adoption or rejection of scientific theories in social and historical terms.
Theories that are now widely regarded as false were once widely accepted.
Phrenology is a case in point. Conversely, theories that are now widely regarded
as true, such as Darwin's theory of evolution, were not universally accepted and
are still not universally accepted today. The acceptance or rejection of these
theories can only make sense if it is viewed in social and historical terms.
Danziger has acknowledged the influence of work on the history and philosophy of
science on his thought and his own work is a contribution to this literature
(e.g. Danziger, 1990). In Constructing
the Subject, he shows that the methods used in Wundt's laboratory were
different from the methods that are used in psychology today. One important
difference is that they typically used one research participant rather than
statistical averages based on results from large numbers of people. Ebbinghaus
famously conducted his memory experiments on himself and the respective roles of
experimenter and research participant arose for the simple reason that it was
impractical to carry out the experimental tasks and record the results at the
same time. Danziger also shows that the methods used in Wundt's laboratory were
different from the methods that were being used by his contemporaries in England
and France. Psychology had a number of different models from which to choose and
so the question arises as to why it adopted a particular model and not some
other. This question can only be answered with reference to human interests.
Different methods are suited to producing different types of knowledge and the
methods adopted will depend on the kind of knowledge that is sought. This takes
us back to the distinction between "methodology" and "investigative practices"
which Danziger makes.
Yet another untenable distinction that was made by positivism was that of facts
based on observation and theories designed to explain those facts. This
distinction is in accord with common sense and it is reflected in the use of
terms like “data” and “findings” by psychologists. However, it should be
recognised that all observation is theory-dependent. Psychologists who
administer intelligence or personality tests do not describe their results in
terms of pencil marks on a page. They refer to their results as "scores" and
these scores are assumed to reflect some underlying characteristic of the person
taking the test.
It is widely accepted that psychological theories vary historically. What are
not thought to vary historically are the fundamental objects that these theories
seek to explain, objects such as emotion, behaviour, personality, motivation,
learning, attitudes etc. As Danziger has shown in his book,
Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its
Language, these objects have a historical dimension. They are all of
relatively recent origin and often replaced older terms like passion, conduct
and character (Danziger, 1997).
Danziger traced his interest in this subject to his experience in Indonesia at
the end of the 1950s where he encountered a local psychology that did not share
the concepts and categories of Western psychology but had its own concepts and
categories that were unknown to Western psychology. Unless one was willing to
take the position that only English-speakers in the second half of the 20th
century had developed a set of concepts and categories that were reflective of
the natural order, and that every other linguistic community had got it wrong,
the inescapable conclusion was that they are the products of a particular
culture at a particular point in history. Also, as with his work on the history
of psychological practices, Danziger’s work on the history of psychological
objects was in tune with developments that were taking place in history and
philosophy of science. For example, Roger Smith had published a history of the
concept of inhibition and Lorraine Daston published an edited volume on the
history of scientific objects (Smith, 1992; Daston, 2000).
Although Danziger makes a conceptual distinction between subjects, objects and
practices, he sees them all as closely intertwined. He is at pains to point out
that psychological objects are not to be seen as merely discursive. They are
intimately related to psychological practices which are carried out by real
historical actors on real people:
I am always concerned to show how the emergence of psychological concepts and
categories, and changes in them, are tied up with practices and changes in
practice in the real world. One could mention the tie between the emergence of
the category of "motivation" and emerging managerial practices in the larger
corporations in the early part of the 20th century. Another example would be the
emergence of the "attitude" concept in its modern form. This changed quite
fundamentally in its meaning as a result of marketing practices and both
consumer and public opinion research (Brock, 2006; p. 10).
Further examples of this link can be found in Danziger’s more recent book,
Marking the Mind: A History of Memory,
where he shows that, under different social and historical circumstances,
different kinds of memory were valued and practices were developed for
cultivating these different kinds. For example, the high value placed on literal
accuracy in remembering (and the corresponding mnemonic techniques) is of
relatively recent origin and coincides with the widespread availability of the
printed text (Danziger, 2008).
Danziger has also related the concepts of subject, object and practice by
adopting the distinction between "natural kinds" and "human kinds" that is
associated with the Canadian philosopher, Ian Hacking (e.g. Danziger, 1999).
This distinction rests on the understanding that our descriptions of the natural
world do not affect the objects that they seek to describe but our descriptions
of human beings have such effects. An interesting example is Charcot's theory of
"grande hystèrie". It was thought to have four stages and they could be easily
observed among the patients in Charcot's care. It was, however, noticed by his
contemporaries that this type of hysteria only existed in Paris and it even
disappeared from there after Charcot retired (Fancher, 1996). The ways in which
our classifications of people lead to changes in their behaviour has been
described by Hacking (1995) as "looping effects" since the changes in their
behaviour lead to further classification in a never-ending circle.
It is a common complaint among historians of psychology that their field is not
taken seriously by psychologists (e.g. Chamberlin, 2010). Underlying this
neglect are the assumptions of positivism which assumes that the practices and
objects of psychology are timeless and universal. In producing work that is
centred on psychological practices and objects, Danziger has moved history from
the periphery of psychology to the centre-stage. These topics can, therefore, be
recommended to historians of psychology on grounds of self-interest, quite apart
from anything else.
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