QUOTES XXVI
Quotations about
THE POLITICS OF PSYCHOLOGISTS
AND ALLIED CO-WORKERS
ONCE PSYCHOLOGISTS AIMED TO CHANGE THE WORLD; THEN THEY CAME TO
DENOUNCE SUCH ENGINEERING-AT LEAST IF IT INVOLVED IMPOSING UNACCEPTABLE
VALUE ON OTHERS, AND ESPECIALLY ON MINORITIES (INCLUDING WOMEN).
EVENTUALLY POLITICIANS SHOWED SOME SIGN OF AGREEING WITH PSYCHOLOGISTS,
BUT IT WAS NOT CLEAR WHETHER PSYCHOLOGISTS WOULD MAKE DO WITHOUT
THE FUNDING.
In 1967, Britain's witty clinical psychologist, Donald Bannister
(an enthusiast for George Kelly's quasi-phenomenological Personal
Construct Theory), suggested that psychology was in fact a branch
of politics. This was a prescient suggestion, and one that was
being articulated for psychiatry by 'anti-psychiatrists' Ronnie
Laing and Thomas Szasz.
At the time, there was admittedly almost audible resistance to
Bannister's proposal. Scientific psychologists in those days were
still prepared to assert the objective nature of their researches
and ambitions; and to maintain that any notable coincidence between
their conclusions (if any) and their socio-political outlooks
reflected chiefly the influence of the former on the latter. However,
those were the days of innocence-preceding the victimization in
the 1970's of Arthur Jensen and Hans Eysenck for their alleged
racism, elitism and eugenicism (or at least for unwelcome pessimism
about psychotherapy and Head Start programmes). As the academic
martyrdom of Jensen and Eysenck proceeded, many 'experimental
psychologists' (as they were then called) learned to keep their
heads down, to seek their funding from medical and computer-science
sources, and to draw a veil over their personal recognition of
the importance of intellectual difference as a prime causal variable
in human affairs. Soon 'cognitive' psychologists would come to
accept 'discourse analysis' as a legitimate pastime for psychology
students-not a high price to pay once truthful realism about the
human condition had been abandoned.
In fact, psychologists have often had agendas that were pretty
plainly influenced by ideological considerations. Like most Victorian
intellectuals (including Marx and Engels), Francis Galton had
decidedly politically incorrect views about women, Jews and Negroes.
Though he sought equality of opportunity for the sexes in education,
he easily came to believe that his observations (in his South
Kensington laboratory) had demonstrated the intellectual inferiority
of women. The Frankfurt School and their many 'critical theory'
descendants among social psychologists were concerned to explain
what they took to be the surprising decision against Communism
by German voters in the early 1930's-a decision that they first
held to require a 'depth' psychodynamic account involving undue
deference to authority, and which they later found to require
analysis in terms of 'social' (no longer individual) psychopathology.
The foremost behaviourist, B.F.Skinner, was an early 'Green':
he liked the idea of psychologists exercising authority in a brave
new world that would turn people off nuclear weapons, cigarettes,
gas-guzzling and salted peanuts. The main difference in the past
was that psychologists once felt the need to prove their
points empirically: e.g. to prove, using adequate methodologies,
that lack of mother love was bad for personality, that being brought
up without professional psychological help was bad for mental
health, that nurseries made children more sociable, that comprehensive
schools made children happier, less snobbish and more sensible
about the opposite sex, and that unemployment had nothing to do
with having a low IQ.
Today, by contrast, many professional psychologists would freely
acknowledge the dominating influence of political attitudes in
deciding what kind of psychological work is done. The idea that
twin- and adoption-studies can resolve disputes about human nature
(and its modifiability) is rarely encountered outside differential
psychology and the world of medicine. Political beliefs are readily
agreed by correspondents of the British Psychological Society
(itself an agent of 'non-sexist language' and of the form of racial
discrimination known as 'affirmative action') to decide the outlooks
of humanistic and 'radical' psychologists and, less properly,
of their opponents. Moreover, broadly political influences decide
what psychological research achieves public funding. After the
worlds of education and social science in Britain were abandoned
by most politicians as unreformably egalitarian, no personological
research was funded into sex differences in logical reasoning,
into Britain's relatively low rate of post-War IQ-type gain, into
the influence of intelligence on intergenerational social mobility,
or even into the notorious failure of the British educational
system to turn children out with marketable job skills at their
own ability levels. The influence on British psychology of the
egalitarian socio-political nostrums today's Establishment
(in city bureaucracies as much as in Whitehall) is now stronger
than that of elected politicians.
As the quotes disclose, the profession of psychology has come
to see itself as a branch of welfare endeavour that must necessarily
side with the 'under-privileged' (despite 'social class of origin',
at least, having had a rather slight connection with human outcomes
in empirical researches over the past decade {see Quotes XXIII}).
Such continuing dedication to traditional welfarism may seem a
surprise: for the wider political community of the West has tried
a little in recent years to limit crudely corporatist, social-engineering,
egalitarian and utopian fancifulness. Yet such constraining efforts
of 'libertarians' often seem-in sociologist Robert Nisbet's phrase-those
of 'chipmunks scurrying to bring down a giant redwood'. Certainly,
such efforts have barely affected today's psychological establishment
in Britain, or the minimally reconstructed expansionist aspirations
for social science that are predominant in Britain's constantly
expanding universities. (The Anglo-American impetus is to fund
and to teach psychology degrees by rote learning if necessary,
even though few of the recipients will find their 'qualifications'
of distinctive use in any conceivable job-market.)
The selected quotations document these various 'achievements
of the resistance' / 'failures of development' (according to taste)
amongst Britain's tenured psychologists and allied co-workers.
After a glance at ancient history, the Quotes indicate the dissatisfactions
of British professional psychologists with 'society' and with
the lack of revolutionary zeal that they remark in what remains
of their discipline. The Quotes then show something of the socio-political
opinionation of 'IQ' psychologists' who-once behaviourism was
abandoned by its former champions (now 'cognitive psychologists')-found
themselves under attack for their unconventional 'scientism',
positivism and lack of common-or-garden idealism. Lastly, the
Quotes illustrate the widest (and wildest) hopes and fears of
today's psychologists for the future.
For more coverage of how politics impinge on psychology,
especially in relation to the study of intelligence, see:
BRAND, C.R. (1996) The g Factor.
Chichester : Wiley DePublisher.
The book was first issued, in February, but then withdrawn, in
April, by the 'publisher' because it was deemed to have infringed
modern canons of
'political correctness.'
It received a perfectly favourable review in Nature (May
2, 1996, p. 33).
For a Summary of the book, Newsletters concerning the
de-publication affair, details of how to see the book for scholarly
purposes, and others' comments and reviews,
see the Internet URL sites:
http://laboratory.psy.ed.ac.uk/DOCS/crb/internet.html
http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/index.html
For Chris Brand's 'Get Real About Race!'-his popular exposition
of his views on race and education in the Black
hip-hop music magazine 'downlow' (Autumn, 1996)-see:
http://www.bhs.mq.edu.au/~tbates/intelligence/Brand_downlow.html
INDEX to QUOTES XXVI
Page
(i) Ancient history. 5
(ii) Anxieties about society. 7
(iii) Anxieties about other psychologists and researchers,
their politics, and their failure to adopt an entirely enlightened
relativism. 9
{For more detailed discussion of whether people
can properly be said to differ in 'intelligence', see Quotes
VIII - XI. For further consideration of 'racism' in psychology,
see Quotes XXIV.}
(iv) Reflections of IQ-psychologists and sympathisers.
15
(v) Brave New World? 21
Epilogue
(i) Ancient history
{See also Quotes XX.}
"The man of science, whatever his hopes may be, must lay
them aside while he studies nature; and the philosopher, if he
is to achieve truth, must do the same. Ethical considerations
can only legitimately appear when the truth has been ascertained;
they can and should appear as determining our feeling towards
the truth, and our manner of ordering our lives in view of the
truth, but not as themselves dictating what the truth is to be."
Bertrand RUSSELL, 1914, Mysticism and Logic.
"In John Dewey's view, the modern development of scientific
method had made it possible for man to face his problems and solve
them through the use of organized intelligence. This meant that
the scientific, hypothetical, experimental method should replace
all forms of absolutism, authoritarianism and dogmatism. ....In
his social philosophy, Dewey was a democratic liberal who rejected
all a priori solutions whether of the right, left or middle.
He advocated the experimental approach to politics, rather than
suggesting some blueprint for the future. In Liberalism and
Social Action (1935) and Freedom and Culture (1939),
he stated his position in terms of immediate problems, and in
the latter book severely criticized Marxist dogmatism and abdication
of science."
Thesaurus of Book Digests. New York : Avenel Books, 1977.
"....in October, 1929, [Martin Heidegger, the philosophical
forerunner of existentialism and constructivism.] warned an official
in the German Ministry of Education against Verjudung (growing
Judaisation) as a threat to 'our German spiritual life'.... ....Heidegger
was to Sartre what Hegel was to Marx."
D.CAUTE, 1995, The Spectator, 21 x. (Reviewing Elzbieta
Ettinger, Hannah Arendt / Martin Heidegger, Yale U. Press.
"Floyd Allport [the founder, around 1930, of experimental
social psychology] had been trained at Harvard by Hugo Munsterberg,
and although his social philosophy was not identical with Munsterberg's,
he shared some of the same views. Both were social harmonists,
seeing society as a system evolving toward balance, order and
efficiency, but needing intervention in order to develop. Both
saw themselves as departing radically from traditional American
values of individual autonomy and self-reliance. ....Allport
[saw] society as a patterned totality, and one which gave rise
to oppression and suffering.... Allport [followed] the sociologists
of the day in recommending that government should be socialized."
Carol SHERRARD, 1989, addressing the 3rd Annual Conference
of the History & Philosophy of Psychology Section of the
British Psychological Society.
"Social and political psychology will become a psychology
of social order and social control."
Gardner MURPHY, 1942, Human Nature and Enduring Peace.
"[The mission of community psychology is to] place the psychologist
in the position of social interventionist, whose primary task
is to intervene at the social system level to modify human behavior."
R.REIFF, 1967, Presidential address to the APA Division of Community
Psychology. Quoted by Ellen Herman, 1995, The Romance of
American Psychology. Berkeley, CA : University of California
Press.
"...legally required preferences on the basis of race or
sex are inconsistent with the principle of equality of persons
before the law and therefore with the maintenance of a democratic
society. It is not surprising that such preferences should find
their origin to an important extent....in the work of an ardent
anti-democrat, the Swedish lawyer-economist Gunnar Myrdal. Myrdal,
a founder of the Swedish welfare state, favored government by
a "party of intelligence" which, though it "despises
the democratic principle," would for practical reasons work
within a democratic framework....[Myrdal's (1944) American
Dilemma] denigrated America's "extreme democracy"
as an impediment to overcoming what he saw as the country's pervasive
racism. ....Judge Felix Frankfurter, a former Harvard law professor,
considered Myrdal's book "indispensable" and manipulated
the judicial process to implement the social engineering it proposed.
{The 1964 Civil Rights Act banned all racial discrimination; but
soon social engineers soon converted} the Act's prohibition of
racial discrimination in school assignment into a requirement
of racial discrimination in order to achieve "racial balance"
in the schools {and elsewhere}."
L.E.GRAGLIA, 1996, National Review, 25 iii.
"[Richard] Lewontin's 1984 book, Not in our Genes,
co-authored with [Leon] Kamin and Britain's arch-antihereditarian
Stephen Rose, was an outright attempt to deny the importance of
heredity. A self-described Marxist, Lewontin was a prime force
behind Science for the People [a US Marxist-leaning organization
aimed at destroying the field of behavioral genetics].... Stephen
J. Gould-who according to Skeptic has denied being a Marxist
but says that "he learned Marxism on his father's knee"-similarly
advances the cause of biological egalitarianism...."
Roger PEARSON, 1996, Humanity and Heredity.
Washington : Scott-Townsend.
(ii) Anxieties about society
"[Psychologists'] labelling of prejudice as a psychopathology
deflected us....from acknowledging the all-pervading ideological,
cultural, and economic character of Western prejudice."
Halla BELOFF, 1977, British Journal of Social & Clinical
Psychology.
"We are becoming increasingly aware that we find ourselves
in a community which no longer seems to share to the same extent
as in the recent past the aspirations of most psychologists."
Professor D.E.BLACKMAN (President of the British Psychological
Society, 1981/2), 1982, {after three years of Thatcherism},
Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 35.
"Hill's basic thesis is that conceptualizations and treatment
of those considered 'mad' have depended upon the cultural Zeitgeist
of the time. Consequently an examination of the predominant political,
philosophical and religious ideas [of a society] will provide
us with a better understanding of our reactions to madness. As
he lays particular emphasis upon those ideas held by the ruling
factions of the time, his analysis is carried out within a Marxist
framework."
R.MARSHALL, 1985, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society
38.
(Reviewing D.Hill, The Politics of Schizophrenia: Psychiatric
Oppression in the United States.)
"I believe that industrialised societies (including governments)
are, in general, extremely ignorant and hence short-sighted about
the effects of industrialization upon the environment. Can this
ignorance be reduced? Can attitudes be changed? In short, can
there be a psychology of the environment? I think the answer
is yes. Does the British Psychological Society have any suggestions
about how such a psychology might be developed?"
B.C.HEALE, 1986, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society
39.
"....it is still the case that many individual lesbians and
gays experience acute difficulties in 'coming out'. In general,
British public opinion on controversial issues, such as abortion,
capital punishment and homosexuality tends to be authoritarian
rather than liberal (NOP, 1975). Many people may well be tolerant
towards lesbians and gays, but adverse towards them being open
about their sexuality (see Hays, 1970, discussed in Feldman, 1984),
and particularly opposed to the employment of homosexuals in sensitive
areas such as teaching, child care and social work. Such social
attitudes and the personal problems they create may serve as a
strong disincentive to many
psychologists interested in pursuing lesbian and gay research
from actually doing so." P.J.FURNELL, 1986, 'Lesbian
and gay psychology: a neglected area of British research'. Bulletin
of the British Psychological Society 39.
"The militarists, politicians and industrialists who have
a vested interest in nuclear weapons are macho, competitive and
power-mad in the age-old tradition of men."
Dorothy ROWE, 1986, Bulletin of the British Psychological
Society 39.
"Violence against women, the harassment of black communities,
deaths in custody and the implications for Britain of changes
in Northern Ireland's criminal justice system are just some of
the issues covered by [P.Scraton's (Law, Order and the Authoritarian
State)] introduction to current theoretical debates in critical
criminology. The analysis is grounded in detailed discussions
of particular cases within the broader context of the "authoritarian
state" under successive Thatcher administrations."
Publisher's announcement, 1987.
Milton Keynes : Open University Press.
"Because of the racism in our society....[our sample of young
people of mixed race] did have more problems with their racial
identity than either the black or the white groups."
Barbara TIZARD, 1992, The Psychologist 5, ii.
(iii) Anxieties about other psychologists and researchers,
their politics, and their failure to adopt an entirely
enlightened relativism.
"We are evidently impervious to all those many critics
of psychology who object to all our irresponsible methodologies,
to our philosophical ignorance in recognizing that data are theory-laden,
and to our frequent and unrecognized prostitution of our discipline
to the often dubious purposes of power elites or the capitalist
system."
I.VINE, 1977, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society.
"Hard-headed applied science has been concerned with ego-strengthening
and social control. Its theory pre-empts any analysis of the socio-political
and existential dimensions of man's experience."
D.PILGRIM, 1977, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society.
"Chauvinism and xenophobia are systematized in sociobiology."
"All science is ideological."
Stephen ROSE, 1979.
"....psychologists are a reactionary force. They help to
maintain the status quo; a status quo that is producing
the very problems that psychologists set themselves up to help."
Susan MICHIE, 1981, Bulletin of the British Psychological
Society.
"Given the continuing prominence of the biomedical model
of illness and its abhorrence to most psychologists, one must
query the effectiveness of our proselytising."
J.SMITH, 1982, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society
36.
"[Michel] Foucault [e.g. 1984, Power/knowledge] understands
psychology as one of the sciences of the social which is implicated
in the production of modern forms of government. In this analysis,
psychology's claims to truth are not guaranteed by a timeless
epistemology, but have to be understood in terms of the historical
circumstances in which the knowledge was generated. Foucault's
thesis locates the sciences of the social as emerging at a distinct
historical period in Western Europe when new forms of government
were needed to manage the growing populations of towns and cities,
an industrialized workforce and a move away from the country.
He seeks to demonstrate that such sciences have to be understood
in terms of the necessity to produce new techniques for the managing
of the subject, the mind, or, as Nickels Rose (1990) puts it,
the soul. There is no sure and disinterested march of science
in this analysis, but nothing less than the production of the
individual as a specific form of the subject."
Valerie WALKERDINE, 1993, Theory & Psychology 3.
"What we've lost is the notion that social (or, more
to the point, political) context is everything. Holloway [author
of Changing the Subject: Psychology, Social Regulation and
Subjectivity] points out, for example, that psychologists'
willingness to design better selection tests for 'industry' looks
happily neutral (or even progressive, in modern job-design terms)
only because our blinkers hide the fact that it's not 'industry'
that briefs us at all: it's that fraction of it that society
allows to call the tune. A truly wider psychology of industry
would question what 'work' is, or should be, not slavishly keep
its present incarnation going."
C.ANTAKI, 1985, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society.
"Never does the political hereditarian consider the implications
of even his own principles for social reforms that might benefit
the potentially less able and the potentially less stable.
Yet it could be equally well argued that such individuals require
and deserve the special attention of society, aimed at offsetting
the disadvantages of their allegedly poor genetic endowment: after
all, following the hereditarian's line of reasoning, the genetically
bright and aggressive should already be well equipped to take
care of themselves!"
Gordon CLARIDGE, 1985, Origins of Mental Illness.
Oxford : Blackwell.
"....whilst the psychological causes of a phenomenon may
be well understood, they are rarely the only factors at work.
Thus we need not only to understand and attempt to remedy the
psychological causes of, say, racial strife. In order to create
a situation in which greater harmony can be achieved there is
little point in focusing on the psychological dynamics of prejudice
and discrimination unless the social conditions in which they
arise and flourish are also changed. And these changes may involve
legislation, changes in the school system and content of education,
recruitment practices and so on. The question therefore arises
as to how socially concerned psychologists, interested in the
implementation of psychological research, would interpret their
professional role."
Hedy BROWN, 1986, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society
39.
"A feature of the colonial attitude is the tendency to see
all things Western as superior to, and necessarily better than
anything comparable from the developing world. This outlook necessarily
means there is a blind spot to problems and inefficiencies existing
in the developed world. Thus, at a time when Western psychology
is being criticised for its ideological bias and lack of attention
to issues such as unemployment, racial prejudice and inter-group
conflict (see Billig, 1976, 1978, 1982; Sampson, 1981), Connolly
suggests that Western psychologists 'grow psychology for the Third
World'. ....a colonial attitude has crept in, so that Connolly
believes that developed world psychologists can achieve in Third
World societies what critics would claim they have failed to achieve
in their own developed-world societies: that is, evolve an applied
'problem-centred' psychology which can help overcome problems
related to unemployment, prejudice, violence, and issues facing
racial and political minorities generally."
Fathali MOGHADDAM & Donald M. TAYLOR, 1986, Bulletin of
the
British Psychological Society 39.
"For Hegel, [the] overarching spirit of community was fundamental
to the human condition; the individual was a secondary derivative.
As Hegel argues, 'The individual is an individual in this
substance (which characterizes a community).... No individual
can step beyond [it]!' ....Many contend that explanations of
human activities in terms of individual selves - motives, mechanisms,
drives, structures, and the like - help to sustain institutions
in which competition, alienation, and isolation are central features.
Worse still, as the individual centred metaphor enters into our
consideration of political affairs, we are led to differentiate
ourselves from other selves, to cast the world in terms of us
versus them."
Kenneth J. GERGEN, 1987, in K.Yardley & T.Honess, Self
and
Identity: Psychosocial Perspectives. Chichester : Wiley DePublisher.
"Ray Fancher [The Intelligence Men].... raises the
fascinating possibility that economic forces might have helped
to shape and direct the work of such worthies as Terman and Wechsler,
thus adding to the usual list of psychological and political influences
on psychometrics."
Sandy LOVIE, 1987, British Journal of Mathematical and
Statistical Psychology 39.
"The psychology-society relationship is a complex one: in
different times and places, psychologists have been slaves, agents,
critics, subverters, even outcasts of their host societies. And
however purely "scientific" their actual research work,
psychologists are always and inevitably one or other of these,
which in turn affects the psychology they produce."
Graham RICHARDS, 1988, Times Higher Educational Supplement,
1
vii. Reviewing M.G.Ash & W.R.Woodward, Psychology in Twentieth-
Century Thought and Society.
"The distinctive feature of psychology as a science is that
it generates theories about people themselves; and these
theories are based on presuppositions which arise from the ordinary
experience of people. Since we experience people only in a particular
social and political reality - i.e. as people already
organized, in the whole social production process, in a particular
way - major presuppositions about human nature (e.g. about human
abilities, class and sex differences, child development and so
on) naturally arise as direct reflections which tend to explain
and legitimise that organization, and make it seem rational, just
and inevitable."
Ken RICHARDSON, 1988, Understanding Psychology.
Milton Keynes : Open University Press.
"[I argue for] the use of psychological theories not as mirrors
of reality but as forms of cultural intelligibility. As sense-making
devices, such theories serve to sustain or alter patterns of human
conduct. Thus, the chief evaluation to be made of such theories
is not whether they are true or false, but what forms of cultural
life do they support or disturb. ....theories may be valorized
{sic} as they offer fresh alternatives to the existing
order."
Kenneth J. GERGEN (Swarthmore College), 1988, addressing the
24th International Congress of Psychology (I 24).
"It is becoming increasingly evident that social/personality
psychology frequently finds itself complicit in reinforcing the
dominant order by, inter alia, reifying concepts [like
that of the 'self' as autonomous and individually responsible]
that emerged only as a matter of historical contingency [around
the time of the emergence of the free market economy]."
B.R.SLUGOSKI & G.P.GINSBURG, 1989, in J.Shotter & K.J.Gergen,
Texts of Identity. London : Sage.
"Critical Theory, originating in the Frankfurt School tradition,
has located the current North American conception [of personhood,
as individualistic rather than relational,] in the heartland of
advanced capitalist ideology. These theorists not only question
the inevitability of the North American ideal, but also force
us to consider the possibility that psychology's subject is a
character designed primarily to serve ideological purposes; and
that psychology, in studying that character and presenting so-called
'facts' about its qualities, helps contribute primarily to societal
reproduction rather than truly to human betterment."
E.E.SAMPSON, 1989, in J.Shotter & K.J.Gergen
Texts of Identity. London : Sage.
"....Critical Theory, developed originally at the Institute
for Social Research in Frankfurt....investigates how cultural
ideologies mediate the production of the person, thereby reproducing
[themselves]. For example, E.Sampson (1989, in J.Shotter &
K.Gergen, Texts of Identity) suggests that the Western
conceptions of the self are founded on ideologies of individuality,
autonomy and freedom - concepts stressing the ability of self-determinacy.
He argues that such notions of self-determinacy create a propensity
to seek the cause of problems within the individual rather than
within society. In this way the onus is placed on the individual
to change, rather than the social structure."
Anna L. MADILL, 1990, 'An historical study of the construction
of
the self in literature'. Final Honours Thesis : Edinburgh University
Department of Psychology.
"Foucault's books of the 1970's looked at the social context
of various professionalized practices, such as incarceration [and]
clinical treatment, as forms of 'surveillance' in which professionalized
knowledge was inextricably bound up with relations of power, however
benignly the power might be manifested. Without appealing to conspiratorial
explanation, Foucault nonetheless emphasized the repressive role
of systems which ostensibly served liberal, rational and democratic
ends. To some extent, Foucault's analyses supported and extended
a broadly Marxist analysis by which any state-sponsored practice
under capitalism is inevitably repressive."
John R. MORSS, 1992, 'Making waves: deconstruction and
developmental psychology', Theory and Psychology 2.
"There are a variety of ways of doing psychology differently,
of avoiding orthodox psychology's asocial subject, and of resisting
the alienation of researched from researcher.... One is to avoid
the individual as the focus of analysis, emphasizing instead the
cultural practices and discourses that have made us what we are....
Parker (1992, Discourse Dynamics) argues that because of
the subversive and scientifically unacceptable nature of psychoanalysis,
the advantage of this approach is that it may serve to protect
discourse analysis from its potential assimilation by scientistic
psychology. On the other hand, disadvantages of this approach
include an implicit recourse to individualism and unavoidable
unequal relations of power between researcher and researched....
If the aim is to produce knowledge which helps subordinated groups,
then surely the first criterion should be that the knowledge is
accessible."
Sue WIDDICOMBE, 1992, Theory and Psychology 2.
"As I.Parker (1990, The Crisis in Modern Psychology)
has argued....even recent theory in psychology, e.g. the work
of Shotter and Harré as well as....Russian group research,
can be seen as supporting a particular political agenda."
T.I.GRACIA, 1993, Theory & Psychology 3.
"The Pioneer Fund [established in 1937 to encourage higher
reproduction by US whites and to research 'race betterment'] disburses
around a million dollars a year. In the second half of the 1980's,
its main beneficiary was Thomas Bouchard's twin study project,
which was given more than $500,000. .... between 1971 and 1992,
Arthur Jensen received more than one million dollars. ....Richard
Lynn benefited to the tune of $325,000...."
Marek KOHN, 1995, The Race Gallery: the Return of Racial Science.
London : Jonathan Cape.
||
"Today, given the extent to which all of the social sciences
have become monopolized by political values and aspirations, it
would be much more correct if they were called the political
sciences."
R.NISBET, 1982, Prejudices: a Philosophical Dictionary.
Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press
"J.Bruner (1986, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds) may
be correct in principle - that different 'cultures' might
conceivably 'construct their own realities'; but he is largely
wrong in practice. Cross-cultural agreement concerning criminal
codes, sexual practices, metaphysical problems and the value of
intelligence is far more conspicuous than cultural difference
- 'constructed', accidental or otherwise. If we are to believe
Bruner, our natural human constructiveness should have generated
- around the world - at least a few sophisticated languages and
social systems that defy inter-translation and mutual comprehension.
In fact, there is no such phenomenon. Perhaps we may one day cease
to be able to understand societies that have meat queues, internal
passports, restrictions on visiting one's own capital city, conscription,
corruption, labour camps, abortion instead of contraception, curfews,
widespread alcoholism, censorship, 17% of Gross National Product
admitted as spent on the military, virtually no women in high
office, and barbed wire to restrain their citizens from leaving;
but at present we manage all right. Developmental-psychological
relativism is simply bunk."
C.R.BRAND, 1987, Behaviour Research and Therapy 25.
"....most of the influential work in the social sciences
is ideological, and most of our criticisms of each other are ideologically
grounded. Non-social-scientists generally recognize the fact that
the social sciences are mostly ideological, and that they have
produced in this century a very small amount of scientific knowledge
compared to the great bulk of their publications. Our claim to
being scientific is one of the main intellectual scandals of the
academic world, though most of us live comfortably with our shame."
C.LESLIE, 1990, Social Science and Medicine 31.
"Hogan & Schroeder (1981, Psychology Today 15)
concluded that the Reagan administration perceived psychology
as "left-wing political rhetoric with no legitimate claim
to the public pocket". This, they concluded, was due to the
fact that psychology is pervaded by deep-seated liberal behavioural/situationalist
attitudes."
K.J.TIERNEY, 1990, Irish Journal of Psychology 11.
"As [Edward Said] remarked [in his BBC Reith Lectures], the
intellectual's obligation is to be the spokesman for the poor-the
intellectual as Robin Hood, as he put it (thus revealing his own
conformity with, not dissent from, the consensus of the social-affairs
intelligentsia....)....No-one but the permanent critic of society
can be a genuine social-affairs intellectual....[After 1968, following
the anti-positivism of Marcuse, Horkheimer and Adorno,] the application
of scientific method to the study of human affairs was not the
route to the solution of social problems; on the contrary, the
problems of society were due to 'the present triumph of the factual
mentality.' 'Facticity' was one of the 'tyrannies' that had to
be broken. Only the intellectual who sides with the deprived (the
work itself begs the fundamental question), on their terms (judgementalism
is banned), can be correct on the facts and sound in his morality;
therefore adherence to the cause of the politically-correct advocacy
group is crucial, not loyalty to scientific procedures. No superficially
plausible facts that undermine the case of the deprived, as they
define their own case, can be ultimately true."
Norman DENNIS, 1993, Rising Crime and the Dismembered Family.
London : Institute of Economic Affairs.
"[The attacks on The Bell Curve] have revealed the
extent to which the social science that deals in public policy
has in the latter part of the 20th century become self-censored
and riddled with taboos-in a word, corrupt."
Charles MURRAY, 1995, Commentary 99.
(iv) Reflections of IQ-psychologists and sympathizers.
"The best form of civilization in respect to the improvement
of the race, would be one in which society was not costly; where
incomes were chiefly derived from professional sources, and not
much through inheritance; where every lad had a chance of showing
his abilities and, if highly gifted, was enabled to achieve first
class education and entrance into professional life, by the liberal
help of the exhibitions and scholarships which he had gained in
his early youth; where marriages were held in as high honour as
in ancient times; where the pride of race was encouraged (of course
I do not refer to the nonsensical sentiment of the present day
that goes under that name); where the weak could find a refuge
in celibate monasteries and sisterhoods, and lastly where the
better sort of emigrants and refugees from other lands were invited
and welcomed, and their descendants naturalized."
GALTON, 1869, Hereditary Genius.
"Of Mohammedanism and Christianity - we do not speak
here or elsewhere as to their essential doctrines, but as they
are practically conveyed by example and precept to the negro -
the former has the advantage in simplicity. It exacts a decorous
and cleanly ritual that pervades the daily life, frequent prayers,
ablutions and abstinence, reverence towards an awful name, and
pilgrimage to a holy shrine, while the combative instincts of
the negro's nature are allowed free play in warring against the
paganism and idolatry he has learned to loathe and hate. The whole
of this code is easily intelligible, and is obviously self-consistent.
It is not so with Christianity, as practised by white men and
taught by example and precept to the negro. The most prominent
of its aggressions against his every-day customs are those against
polygamy and slavery. The negro, on referring to the sacred book
of the European, to which appeal is made for the truth of all
doctrines, finds no edict against either the one or the other,
but he reads that the wisest of men had a larger harem than any
modern African potentate, and that slave-holding was the established
custom in the ancient world. The next most prominent of its doctrines
are social equality, submission to injury, disregard of wealth,
and the propriety of taking no thought of tomorrow. He, however,
finds the practice of the white race, from whom his instructions
come, to be exceedingly different from this. He discovers very
soon that they absolutely refuse to consider him as their equal;
that they are by no means tame under insult, but the very reverse
of it; that the chief aim of their lives is to acquire wealth;
and that one of the most despised characteristics among them is
that of heedlessness and want of thrift. Far be it from us to
say that the modern practice in these matters may not be justified,
but that it appears to require more subtlety of reasoning than
the negro can comprehend, or, perhaps, even than the missionary
can command, to show their conformity with Bible teaching."
Francis GALTON, 1878, Edinburgh Review, i.
"Galton saw around him an increasing scepticism of dogmatic
religion, and he believed that a re-statement of religious principles
was needed. But he doubted whether human beings had yet acquired
the intelligence and moral balance necessary to tolerate change.
If traditional beliefs were swept away before men were mature
enough to accept better alternatives, there would be a period
of feverish and unsuccessful experiments, socialist experiments
among them, which would end in failure."
C.P.BLACKER, 1952, Eugenics: Galton and After.
London : Duckworth.
"Dr Halsey [the Oxford sociologist] (1967) has recently depicted
Galton as the "champion of the privileged classes",
and traces [Galton's] views and those of his followers to certain
"ideological forces, expressed intellectually as hereditarianism
and politically as conservatism". ....In politics, however,
Galton was a liberal, not a conservative; and no-one who has read
his scathing comments on members of the so-called 'privileged
classes' could possibly regard him as their champion. His conclusions
were based, not on any 'philosophical considerations', but on
the sedulous collection of facts and on objective statistical
analysis."
Cyril BURT, c. 1970, in C.James, Modern Concepts of
Intelligence. Issued by the Association of Educational
Psychologists. 94, Chatsworth Road, Croydon : R.S.Reid.
"[The IQ-test pioneer, Lewis Terman's] combination of [a]
hereditarian point of view with generally liberal, reforming political
attitudes seems odd today, and some have suggested that he mellowed
on this point in his later years. Such arguments are ahistorical
as well as counterfactual. For many Americans, it was perfectly
logical in the era between the 1920's and the 1950's, to be liberal
reformers and to believe that heredity prevailed over environment.
Indeed, Terman, Goddard and Yerkes {also mental test pioneers}
all supported reform candidates in both the Republican and Democratic
parties; yet all three believed in the power of nature over nurture,
and so did millions of Americans, whether or not they were scientists,
as the tragic history of White - Non-White race relations in that
era amply suggests."
Hamilton CRAVENS, 1992, American Psychologist 47.
"Possibly the most influential of the early psychologists
who were active in the eugenics movement was William McDougall.
Born in England {Lancashire}, and educated at the universities
of Cambridge and Göttingen, McDougall taught at Oxford University
before eventually emigrating to the US to take up a position at
Harvard. With his experience of anthropological work in Borneo,
McDougall was a fellow of the prestigious Royal Society in Britain
and the author of numerous major textbooks which earned him pre-eminence
in the field of social psychology. McDougall's respect for heredity
showed itself in a series of books, beginning with An Introduction
to Social Psychology (1908)....Because of the significant
degree of racial diversity within the living peoples of the world,
he prophesied that "racial psychology" would one day
become a recognized field of study. As a believer in the quality
of the North European stock relative to diverse other populations
in the contemporary world, McDougall also took an interest in
the composition and quality of the future population of America:
his book Is America Safe for Democracy? (1921) stressed
the influence of genetic qualities on the destinies of nations,
and the need to take race into consideration when attempting to
understand history or plan national policy on immigration....
....Notable sociologists [supported] eugenics. Franklin H. Giddings,
author of several major works in early American sociology, professor
of sociology at Bryn Mawr College, later chairman of the sociology
department at Columbia University and president of the American
Sociological Society, was a strong supporter of the eugenics movement
who helped to organize some of the first international conferences
on eugenics and population."
Roger PEARSON, 1996, Humanity and Heredity.
Washington : Scott-Townsend.
"The world crisis, with its clash of cultures and ideologies,
has created for us psychologists unique opportunity for promotive
endeavor. What may be achieved through wisely-planned and well-directed
professional will be limited only by our knowledge, faith, disinterestedness,
and prophetic foresight. It is for us, primarily, to prepare the
way for scientific advances and the development of welfare services
which from birth to death shall guide and minister to the development
and social usefulness of the individual."
R.YERKES, 1943, to the APA's Intersociety Constitutional Convention.
Quoted by Ellen Herman, 1995, The Romance of American Psychology.
Berkeley, CA : University of California Press.
"The hostile reaction of acquaintances among left-wing intellectuals
[in the 1930's] (including Hogben and Laski) to my mention of
a positive correlation (of +.25) between the innate component
of intelligence and social status was the beginning of the end
of my youthful illusion that intellectuals had a special monopoly
on penetrating and unprejudiced intelligence."
R.B.CATTELL, 1974, in G.Lindzey, A History of Psychology in
Autobiography, Vol. VI. Englewood Cliffs, N.J. : Prentice
Hall.
"It is interesting to speculate on the course that history
would have taken if early socialists had been truer to their scientific
pretensions and had recognised the importance of well trained
brains to the planned society we sought in twenties and thirties."
Victor SEREBRIAKOFF (President of UK Mensa), 1984.
"[In adolescence, inspired by] my hero worship of Mahatma
Gandhi, .....I even went so far as to become a vegetarian for
a time, to my parents' consternation, and to write a book-length
biography of Ghandi. ....My fascination with the great life and
character of Ghandi has continued to this day.... ....From about
1960 to about 1975, educational research in the United States
was dominated by a political philosophy fishing for theories and
projects that were consistent with the ideological Zeitgeist,
and the theories for the most part turned out to be wrong. Policy
in public education is at the mercy of politics, and anyone who
believes that basic educational research influences politics believes
that a sailboat produces the wind." A.R.JENSEN, 1987,
in S. & Celia Modgil, Arthur Jensen: Consensus
and Controversy. Brighton : Falmer.
"Although we may all have been becoming more intelligent
over generations, the enormous variation that is preserved among
us today should insistently remind us that previous generations
have found a role (and, indeed, a procreative role) for people
of all levels of IQ. If natural laws have any merit, achieving
the integration of genuinely different people into a true community
should thus be the goal of all but the most iconoclastic. It is
short-sighted politicking to envisage either a diminution of human
differences or a scaling down of the kinds of social arrangements
that can genuinely care for and find a place for them all. ....If
Arthur Jensen has sometimes seemed to Western psychologists to
protest too much about IQ, it must be said that he has asserted
truths which, especially when they are properly understood, can
make men genuinely communal and enduringly free."
C.R.BRAND, 1987, 'The importance of general intelligence'.
In S. & Celia Modgil, Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy.
Brighton : Falmer.
"Scholars who have elaborated the genetic case for a wide
audience - the most famous is Arthur Jensen - have not only
been characterized as extremists but smeared as racists. ....Meanwhile,
Leon Kamin of Princeton keeps being cited [in the American media]
as a respected authority figure. Kamin, it happens, really is
an extremist. A Marxist who views the IQ as an instrument of class
oppression, he is almost alone among academics {e.g. among 661
American professional psychologists claiming IQ-related expertise,
and surveyed by Seligman} in arguing that environmental differences
may well explain all IQ variation."
Daniel SELIGMAN, 1989, Commentary, iii.
"....the three people who took the initiative in publicizing
the case against Burt {i.e. Kamin, Gillie and Tizard) were all
on the left politically."
R.B.JOYNSON, 1989, The Burt Affair. London : Routledge.
"....if one tries to organise the world intellectual community
to declare, by the vote of an intimidated majority, that certain
testable scientific hypotheses are "incorrect" and,
what is more, evil and dangerous, then one is well on the way
to harnessing aggressive instincts in the service of the inquisition,
the pogrom, the witch hunt, the book-burning, the stamping out
of heresy, and, finally, the jihad, the crusade and "the
war to end all wars"."
Robin FOX, 1989, 'Anthropology's Auto-da-Fe'. Encounter
73, ix/x.
"The breaking point [for me, with Communist Party friends]
came in 1930, when I returned [to Germany, aged 14] from school
on the Isle of Wight. This was the time of the Berlin tram drivers'
strike, in which Communists and Nazis together challenged the
Weimar constitution. Finding it impossible to understand the motive
for this collaboration, I went to ask my Communist friends. Shaking
their heads at my naivety, they told me that the first duty of
socialists was to smash the Weimar state, and if they had to enlist
the help of the Nazis to do that, then so be it. Once the state
had been smashed, they would deal with the Nazis."
Hans EYSENCK, 1990, Rebel with a Cause. London : W.H.Allen.
""I say that our problems are not going to be mitigated
until we establish [a licensing scheme] for those who would produce
children. ....A lot of social scientists are so scandalized by
my proposals that they think I must be a Fascist," says David
Lykken. "But I consider myself a political atheist."
Lykken is a well-respected researcher who is known for taking
authoritarian positions on public policy. He has just published
a book, The Antisocial Personality in which he contends
that what turns children into sociopaths is not genes but environment,
and particularly the environment of a fatherless home and an illiterate
mother."
Lawrence WRIGHT, 1995, New Yorker, 7 viii, 44-62.
"Interviewer: Is there nothing that can be
done about the decline of the United States to Latin American
status?
Professor Richard Lynn: I think the only solution
lies in the break-up of the United States. Blacks and Hispanics
are concentrated in the Southwest, the Southeast and the East,
but the Northwest and the far Northeast, Maine, Vermont and upstate
New York have a large predominance of whites. I believe these
predominantly white states should declare independence and secede
from the Union. They would then enforce strict border controls
and provide minimum welfare, which would be limited to citizens.
If this were done, civilisation would survive within this handful
of states."
From Right Now, Issue 9, 1995 (BCM Right, London WC1N
3XX).
"Today, Marxists and other biological egalitarians, somewhat
humbled by events in Eastern Europe, but with their ethical arguments
reinforced by the changing attitudes of the Western nations as
result of the new multiculturalism arising from the presence of
massive immigrant minorities, remain disproportionately influential
in the universities and media of the Western world. Large numbers
of social science academics still refuse to recognize, or lack
the courage to openly recognize, the implications of the fact
that human beings are biological organisms, even though and increasing
majority of psychologists once again acknowledge the importance
of heredity in shaping the limits of human personalities and abilities.
The result has been increasing intimidation of those who seek
to apply Darwinian logic to the solution of human problems."
Roger PEARSON, 1996, Humanity and Heredity.
Washington : Scott-Townsend.
(v) Brave New World?
"[My paper] closes with a discussion of the possible
relationship between de-self-alienation, self-determination, collective
self-determination and political change."
C.LODZIAK, 1976, Bulletin of the British Psychological Society.
"Readers with an interest in psychology and the Third World
might like to hear of a forthcoming educational tour of Nicaragua."
Charles ANTAKI, 1986,
Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 39.
"For some years now I have been trying to organize an international
meeting entitled 'The image of the enemy' in which scholars from
different nations could look at some psychological aspects of
international conflicts and rivalry. My main interest has been
to encourage an East/West debate about the nuclear arms race.
I am happy to say that after two years of discussions these topics
are to be included in the 7th World Congress of the International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War {a notorious Soviet
'front' organization} which will be held....in Moscow."
James A. THOMPSON, 1986,
Bulletin of the British Psychological Society 39.
"The old model of lesbianism as a pathological affliction
has largely given way to a liberal social-scientific one which
presents it as an alternative lifestyle, a way of loving, a sexual
preference, or a source of sexual fulfilment. This controversial
book {Celia Kitzinger's The Social Construction of Lesbianism}
argues that the shift from 'pathological' to 'gay affirmative'
research merely substitutes one depoliticized construction of
lesbianism for another. The author contends that the liberal 'social
construction', instead of furthering the liberation of women,
represents a new development in the oppression of women in general
and lesbians in particular. Gay affirmative constructions are
fundamentally incompatible with radical feminist theory in which
lesbianism is a political statement representing the bonding of
women against male supremacy. Two chapters use the literature
on lesbianism and male homosexuality to illustrate the rhetorical
techniques through which social science constructs the conditions
for its own legitimacy. Kitzinger then draws upon her own research
to show the operation of liberal ideology in the construction
of lesbian identities. In the final chapter, she urges researchers
to reject the traditional model of science as an objective search
for truth or facts, but instead to examine their own rhetoric
and evaluate their political commitments."
Publisher's announcement, 1987. London : Sage.
"On the political scene, for more than a decade, several
Western democracies have experienced a marked shift towards the
opinions of the extreme Right, with all that implies: the embracing
of the neo-Darwinist, free-for-all social philosophy, an erosion
of the collective caring attitude, and an increased intolerance
of minority groups and dissident individuals. Interestingly, over
the same period, and on a different front, those of us who have
been watching have also witnessed another 'revolution'. I am referring
to the emergence of the 'new genetics', including the ability,
using the freshly discovered techniques of recombinant DNA technology,
actually to locate genes on the chromosomes and the opportunity,
we are told, even to map out the complete human genome and so
ultimately lay bare the whole of Man's heredity. The dangers of
these two developments - political and scientific - meeting
again in a modern disguise scarcely needs spelling out and should,
at the very least, alert us to the lessons of our past."
Gordon CLARIDGE, 1989, Personality & Individual Differences
10.
"Kitzinger (1987, 1989)....argues that one consequence of
the current 'liberal humanist' discourse of lesbianism, which
emphasizes the centrality of romantic love and the importance
of personal growth and happiness, is that lesbian relationships
can be accounted for in the same way as heterosexual relationships
and thereby pose no threat to the dominant (patriarchal) order.
Similarly, the earlier pathological discourse of lesbianism can
be understood as a response to the threat of the women's liberation
movement to heterosexual relations..... Foucault (1972)....states
that his approach is aimed at 'denying the sovereignty of the
subject'. Similarly, Shotter and Gergen (1989) argue that to be
concerned with social construction or texts of identity is 'to
be engaged in a struggle with a single dominant text: the centrality
and sovereignty of the individual, and the problems to which it
gives rise.'"
Sue WIDDICOMBE, 1992, 'Subjectivity, power and the practice of
psychology'. Theory and Psychology 2.
"The academic critique of the ethnocentrism and racism of
western social science, including psychology, is too weighty to
be ignored.... Perhaps we can anticipate a British Psychology
Society policy statement which states that "The B.P.S. believes
that racism is endemic in the values, attitudes and structures
of British society, including those of professional psychology
and psychological education."
Charles HUSBAND, 1992, The Psychologist 5, ix.
"Poststructural feminism. A branch of feminism
based on the proposition that every thought is a political thought
and every statement is a political statement. In this context,
poststructural feminists argue, such concepts as 'biological difference',
'heterosexual attraction', 'ideal beauty', 'common sense', 'logic',
'facts', 'truth', and 'reality' can be seen for what they are:
'fictive constructs' created by men to oppress women. (Note: One
small problem with this otherwise unassailable philosophy, writer
Nicholas Davidson (1990, 'Psychology and the construction of gender',
National Review, 20 viii) has pointed out, is that it fails
to explain why poststructural feminism is not itself a 'fictive
construct'.)"
Henry BEARD & Christopher CERF, 1994, Sex & Dating:
the Official Politically Correct Guide. London : HarperCollins.
Epilogue
"....a minority [of U.S. scientists still] cling to the
intellectual autonomy of the traditional artisan or the traditional
client of royal patronage. But intellectual autonomy tends to
be undermined even within that minority by several forces, the
most obvious of which is the bureaucratization of patronage, that
is, the modern system of grant-getting. It tends to reward those
who seek to satisfy a bureaucratic hierarchy, rather than those
who seek truth, not to speak of wisdom."
David JORANSKY, 1989, Nature 340, 24 viii.
"[Bernard] Henri-Levy, author of Le barbarisme à
visage humaine, has a nice line in invective. - Scratch a
member of the cultural élite, pondering the human condition
from a university chair or a private income.... and you find a
power-worshipper, excited by every dictator in sight: Mussolini,
Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Chou En-Lai, Mao or Ho Chi-Minh, Tito or
Castro. Some had dreams of a monarchical, Catholic, peasant France,
purged of Protestants, secularists and Jews; others suffered from
the psychological condition that Orwell called "transferred
patriotism", and anguished with Guevara in the Bolivian
backlands...."
Colin WARD, 1993, New Statesman & Society, 29 i.
"Because of their commitment to relativism, many American
intellectuals seem peculiarly vulnerable to ignoring and apologizing
for Marxist atrocities. Indeed, academic groups such as the American
Anthropological Association have consistently refused to condemn
Communist mass murder in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Ethiopia. African
Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, deplores the way in which Western
liberals, who claim to be partisans of freedom, engaged in "passionate
reconstructions of reality" and "tortuous rationalizations"
for Stalinist and Marxist totalitarianism. Eugene Genovese notes
that while the collapse of Nazism produced a major moral accounting
on the part of those who silently acquiesced in Hitler's crimes,
the collapse of Soviet communism has generated no comparable soul-searching
on the part of American leftist intellectuals."
Dinesh D'SOUZA, 1995, The End of Racism. New York : Free
Press.
FINIS
{Compiled by C. R. Brand, Department of Psychology,
University of Edinburgh.)
For more coverage of how politics impinge on psychology,
especially in relation to the study of intelligence, see:
BRAND, C.R. (1996) The g Factor.
Chichester : Wiley DePublisher.
"The nature and measurement of intelligence is a political
hot potato. But Brand in this extremely readable, wide-ranging
and up-to-date
book is not afraid to slaughter the shibboleths of modern "educationalists".
This short book provides a great deal for thought
and debate."
Professor Adrian Furnham, University College London.
The book was first issued, in February, but then withdrawn, in
April, by the 'publisher' because it was deemed to have infringed
modern canons of
'political correctness.'
It received a perfectly favourable review in Nature (May
2, 1996, p. 33).
For a Summary of the book, Newsletters concerning the
de-publication affair, details of how to see the book for scholarly
purposes, and others' comments and reviews,
see the Internet URL sites:
http://laboratory.psy.ed.ac.uk/DOCS/crb/internet.html
http://www.webcom.com/zurcher/thegfactor/index.html
For Chris Brand's 'Get Real About Race!'-his popular exposition
of his views on race and education in the Black
hip-hop music magazine 'downlow' (Autumn, 1996)-see:
http://www.bhs.mq.edu.au/~tbates/intelligence/Brand_downlow.html
A reminder of what is available in other Sections of
'P, B & S.'
Summary Index for PERSONALITY, BIOLOGY
& SOCIETY
(This resource manual of quotations about individual and group
differences, compiled by
Mr C. R. Brand, is kept on the Internet and in Edinburgh
University Psychology Department Library.)
Pages of Introduction
3 - 11 Full Index, indicating key questions in
each Section.
12 - 14 Preface. - Why quotations? - Explanations and apologies.
15 - 51 Introduction: Questions, Arguments and Agreements
in the study of Personality.
-Some history, and a discussion of 'realism vs 'idealism.'
52 - 57 Introductory Quotes about the study of personality.
Sections
General problems
1 'Situational' vs 'personological' approaches to
human variation.
2 'Nomothetic' vs 'idiographic', 'subjective' and relativistic
approaches.
3 Personality dimensions-by factor analysis and otherwise.
4 'Superstructure' and 'infrastructure.' - The 'mind/body problem'.
5 Nature versus Nurture? - Or Nature via Nurture?
6 The role of consciousness in personality and 'multiple personality'.
7 The 'folk psychology' of personality components.
Intelligence
8 The measurement of intelligence. - Does g exist?
9 The bases of intelligence. - What is the psychology
of g?
10 The developmental origins of g differences. - The nature
and nurture of g.
11 The importance of intelligence. - The psychotelics
of g.
12 Piagetianism: Kant's last stand?
13 Cognitivism: 'The Emperor's New Mind?'
Propensities
14 Neurosis, emotion and Neuroticism.
15 Psychosis, psychopathy and Psychoticism.
16 Crime and criminality.
17 Genius and creativity.
Popular proposals - psychoanalytic, phrenological and prophylactic
18 Psychoanalysis: 'Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire'?
19 Hemispherology: a twentieth-century phrenology?
20 Psycho-social Engineering: therapy, training or transformation?
Group differences
21 Age and ageing-especially, the role of g in 'life-span
development'.
22 Psychological sex differences. - Do they exist? Must they
exist?
23 Social class. - Does it matter any longer?
24 Racial and ethnic differences. - Their role in 'lifestyles'
and cultural attainments.
Ideological issues
25 The psychology of politics and ideological extremism.
26 The politics of psychologists and allied co-workers.
27 Equality and Community: the 'utopian' package of political
aims.
28 Freedom and Responsibility: the 'legitimist' package of political
aims.
Pragmatic questions
29 Carry on differentializing?
30 Carry on psycho-testing?
Appendix: Factor Analysis. - 'Garbage in, garbage
out'?
=============================================