Table Of ContentRediscovering the History of Psychology
Essays Inspired by the Work of Kurt Danziger
HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF PSYCHOLOGY
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REDISCOVERINGTHEHISTORYOFPSYCHOLOGY
EssaysInspiredbytheWorkofKurtDanziger
EditedbyAdrianC.Brock,JohannLouw,andWillemvanHoorn
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Rediscovering the History
of Psychology
Essays Inspired by the Work
of Kurt Danziger
Editedby
Adrian C. Brock
UniversityCollegeDublin
Dublin,Ireland
Johann Louw
UniversityofCapeTown
SouthAfrica
Willem van Hoorn
UniversityofAmsterdam
Amsterdam,Netherlands
KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK,BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW
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CONTRIBUTORS
BettyM.BayerisAssociateProfessorofSocialPsychologyinWomen’sStudies
atHobartandWilliamSmithColleges,Geneva,NewYork,USA.
RichardWalsh-BowersisProfessorofPsychologyatWilfredLaurierUniversity,
Waterloo,Ontario,Canada.
AdrianC.BrockisCollegeLecturerinPsychologyatUniversityCollegeDublin,
Ireland.
KurtDanzigerisProfessorEmeritusofPsychologyatYorkUniversity,Toronto,
Canada and Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Cape Town,
SouthAfrica.
Willem van Hoorn is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of
Amsterdam,NetherlandsandHonoraryProfessorofPsychologyattheUniversity
ofCapeTown,SouthAfrica.
Johann Louw is Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology at the
UniversityofCapeTown,SouthAfrica.
Hans van Rappard has taught history and systems of psychology at the Free
University,Amsterdam,Netherlands.Henowstudiescomparativephilosophy.
Irmingard Staeuble is Professor of Psychology at the Free University, Berlin,
Germany.
Henderikus J. Stam is Professor of Psychology at the University of Calgary,
Canada.
PieterJ.vanStrienisProfessorEmeritusofTheoryandHistoryofPsychologyat
GroningenUniversity,NetherlandsandformerPresidentoftheArchivesofDutch
Psychology(ADNP).
Andrew S. Winston is Professor of Psychology at the University of Guelph,
Ontario,Canada.
v
CONTENTS
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
AdrianC.Brock
1. ReconstructingtheSubject:KurtDanzigerandthe
RevisionistProjectinHistoriographiesofPsychology . . . . . 19
HenderikusJ.Stam
2. InSearchofMethod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
JohannLouw
3. ControllingtheMetalanguage:AuthorityandAcquiescence
intheHistoryofMethod . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
AndrewS.Winston
4. Paris,Leipzig,Danziger,andBeyond . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
PieterJ.vanStrien
5. ExpandingtheTerrainofConstructingtheSubject:The
ResearchRelationshipinInterpersonalAreasofPsychology 97
RichardWalsh-Bowers
6. OnCulturalHistoryasTransformation—or,What’sthe
MatterwithPsychologyAnyway? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
BettyM.Bayer
vii
viii CONTENTS
7. WundtasanActivity/ProcessTheorist:AnEventinthe
HistoryofPsychologicalThinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
HansvanRappard
8. TheMissingLinkofHistoricalPsychology . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
WillemvanHoorn
9. De-CenteringWesternPerspectives:Psychologyandthe
DisciplinaryOrderintheFirstandThirdWorld . . . . . . . . 183
IrmingardStaeuble
10. ConcludingComments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
KurtDanziger
Appendix:KurtDanziger’sPublications . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
INTRODUCTION1
Adrian C. Brock
BACKGROUNDANDAIMSOFTHISBOOK
ThethreeeditorsofthisbookareallrelatedtoKurtDanzigerindifferentways.
I was a PhD student with him at York University in Toronto from 1988 to 1993
and we have stayed in regular contact ever since. Johann Louw is based at the
UniversityofCapeTownwhereDanzigerisaregularvisitor.WillemvanHoorn,
whowasLouw’sPhDsupervisorattheUniversityofAmsterdam,isalsoaregular
visitor to the University of Cape Town. The three of us came together out of a
mutualadmirationforDanziger’swork.
WhenwebegantodiscussthepossibilityofproducingabookonDanziger’s
work,wewereagreedthatwedidnotwanttoproducea‘Festschrift’inthetra-
ditionalsenseoftheterm.Thereis,ofcourse,noharminproducingsuchabook
but we thought that there could be no greater tribute to Danziger than to make
his work the focal point for a variety of contributions representing several areas
ofactiveresearchinhistoryandtheoryofpsychology.Althoughinrecentyears
productivescholarshiphasflourishedinthisfield(Richards,2002a),thissituation
isnotreflectedinthereadilyavailableliterature.
There are few broad discussions of the current state of history and theory
ofpsychology,aswellasitsproblemsandfuturedirections.Forobviousreasons,
scholarsinthisfieldtendtofocusonthelimitedaspectofthehistoryofpsychology
thatformsthetopicoftheirresearch.Theessaysinthisvolumewillgosomeway
towardsfillingthisgap.Theyrangeinscopefromtheroleofhistoryandtheory
of psychology in the discipline of psychology, the marginalization of cultural-
historical approaches to psychology, historical psychology and its relationship
to history and theory of psychology, the epistemological implications of critical
history,theinclusionofpartsoftheworldotherthanEuropeandNorthAmerica
1
2 ADRIANC.BROCK
in psychology’s history, the future of academic disciplines and much more. As
such,theessaysinthisvolumecanserveasadeparturepointforthosewhowish
toacquaintthemselveswithsomeofthemostimportantissuesinthefield.
KURTDANZIGER’SWORK
KurtDanzigerhashadalongcareerinpsychology,havingbeenawardedhis
DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1952. The research for his dissertation
involvedstandard1940slaboratoryexperimentsusingrats(e.g.Danziger,1953).
Hehadalreadybecomecriticalofthiskindofresearchwhilehewaswritinghis
dissertationandhesubsequentlybegantodoPiagetian-styleresearchwithchildren
(e.g. Danziger, 1958). However, his interests moved towards social psychology
during the 1950s and this area of psychology became his main research interest
until the end of the 1970s. His work in this area includes a well-known study
of the sociology of knowledge in South Africa (Danziger, 1963) and books on
Socialization(Danziger,1971)andInterpersonalCommunication(1976).While
much of this work is highly original and of continuing interest to researchers in
this field (see Louw, this volume), the focus of this book is the work on history
andtheoryofpsychologythatDanzigerstartedtopublishin1979.
Danziger’s switch to history and theory of psychology began when he had
a sabbatical in academic 1973–74. He decided to use the sabbatical to acquaint
himselfwiththeoriginalworksofsomeoftheimportantfiguresintheearlyhistory
ofpsychology.HisknowledgeofGermanwasanobviousadvantageinthistaskas
hereadtheworkofHelmholtz,Fechner,Wundt,andmanylessprominentauthors.
Danziger compared his situation on reading these works to that of a subject in
an Asch conformity experiment since the views that were being expressed in
the original works of these authors bore little or no relationship to the views
that had been traditionally attributed to them. At first, he wondered if he was
misunderstanding these works but it became increasingly clear that there was a
discrepancybetweentheprimaryandsecondarysources(Brock,1995a;1995b).
Itisdifficultforthoseofuswhowerenotinvolvedinhistoryandtheoryof
psychologyinthe1970stoimaginehowundevelopedthefieldwasatthistime.
Althoughhistoryandtheoryofpsychologyhadbeenanactiveareaofpedagogy
for many years, it had only become a recognized area of research in the United
States in the late 1960s with the establishment of the American Psychological
Association’sDivision24(Theoretical/PhilosophicalPsychology)andDivision26
(History of Psychology), as well as the Cheiron Society (International Society
fortheHistoryoftheBehavioralandSocialSciences),theJournaloftheHistory
of the Behavioral Sciences and the graduate program in history and theory of
psychology at the University of New Hampshire (Ash, 1983; Brock, 1998). It
wastobeseveralmoreyearsbeforeitbecamewellestablishedinothercountries.
