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THE NEW HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY: Some (Different) Answers to Lovett’s Five Questions

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THE NEW HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY: Some (Different) Answers to Lovett’s Five Questions Adrian C. Brock Manchester, England The professionalization of the history of psychology from the 1960s led to significant changes in the way that history was written. Several authors tried to summarize thes...

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the new history of psychology some different a
even walsh teo and baydala 2014 whose work i

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Course HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY

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History of Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 19, No. 3, 000 1093-4510/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/hop0000036

THE NEW HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY: Some (Different)
Answers to Lovett’s Five Questions

Adrian C. Brock
Manchester, England

The professionalization of the history of psychology from the 1960s led to significant
changes in the way that history was written. Several authors tried to summarize these
changes in the 1980s, and Laurel Furumoto’s (1989) G. Stanley Hall lecture, “The new
history of psychology” is the best-known example of this genre. This journal published
a critique of the new history by Benjamin R. Lovett (2006) with the title, “The new
history of psychology: A review and critique,” and it is still being cited as an
authoritative source. The article consists of 3 parts. First, the author attempts to show
that the new history is not as different from the old as its proponents claim. He then
discusses some problems that he considers to be unique to the new history, and he
presents them in the form of 5 questions for the new historians, which he then goes on
to answer himself. Finally, he discusses the problematic relationship between critical
history and psychology. This article is a reply to Lovett’s article. The author argues that
the new history is different from the old in every way that Lovett claims that it is not.
It critically analyzes Lovett’s answers to his own 5 questions and offers some alter-
native answers to these questions. It also suggests that many psychologist-historians are
opposed to new history of psychology, especially in its critical versions, and that this
explains why Lovett’s article has been uncritically received.

Keywords: historiography, internalism, presentism, Whig history, critical history

2006 was a difficult year for me. A close National University of Cordoba in Argentina.1
relative had died in the previous year after a Clearly, the people who have made it available
long battle with cancer, and it left me with a in this way consider it to be of unusual impor-
backlog of publishing commitments that were tance. A search of the Internet will also show
long overdue. Thus when I saw the article by that it is required reading on course syllabi.2 In
Benjamin J. Lovett (2006), “The new history of their article, “History’s mysteries demystified:
psychology: A review and critique,” I thought Becoming a psychologist-historian,” Vaughn-
that it merited a reply, and I was tempted to Blount, Rutherford, Baker, and Johnson (2009)
write one. On further reflection, I decided that list it without comment in their recommended
my overdue commitments should take priority. I readings.
comforted myself with the thought that some- Perhaps more interesting is its use as an au-
one else would write a reply. Ten years on, thoritative source. Rappard (2008) quotes with
nobody has. If the article had fallen into obscu- approval Lovett’s remarks that the new history
rity in the meantime, I would have given it no has been accepted uncritically and his warning
further thought, but it has now become standard that its critical tendencies will only alienate
reading. psychologists. Rappard had already criticized
The article itself can be downloaded from the new history of psychology and had engaged
several websites, including the website of the
in polemics with Kurt Danziger over the issue

1
http://www.psyche.unc.edu.ar/wp-content/uploads/
news-history-lovett.pdf
2
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- See http://individual.utoronto.ca/solovey/courses/
dressed to Adrian C. Brock, Independent Scholar, 77 High HPS5012_Reading%20List%209-8-12.pdf and https://
Street, Belmont, Bolton BL7 8AJ, United Kingdom. E-mail: www.ndsu.edu/cule/pdfs/capstone/syllabi/pdf/PSYC_
480_Syllabus_Spring_2010.pdf.

1

,2 BROCK

(Danziger, 1997; Rappard, 1997). He concludes of Whiggism). He adds that “the new history is not so
by saying that his “sympathies clearly rest with different from the old as its proponents would argue”
(Lovett, 2006, p. 26) and sometimes “it is difficult to
the ‘old, uncritical history of psychology.’” distinguish between careful judgement and careful pre-
The article has also been cited in textbooks, judgment.” (Lovett, 2006, p. 30) (p. 13)
always in a positive way. For example, Hergen-
hahn and Henley (2013) write: “As Lovett I doubt that historians of psychology have un-
(2006) observes, no matter how much histori- critically accepted the technical assumptions of
cism is emphasized, presentism cannot be com- the new history of psychology. What I do know
pletely avoided” (p. 2). They then quote exten- is that Lovett’s article has been uncritically ac-
sively from the article. King, Woody, and Viney cepted, and it is this uncritical acceptance that
(2016) are even more approving: has finally provoked me into writing a reply.
Lovett (2006) believes the new history has been ac-
cepted uncritically despite few actual differences be- The Background
tween works from the two camps. Indeed, Lovett cited
works from scholars who embrace the new histories as
little more than accounts of a succession of achieve- Most of the institutions that we associate with
ments of past luminaries. Further, he demonstrated that the history of psychology were founded in the
some older histories draw heavily from primary three decades from the 1960s to the 1980s. This
sources and archival materials. Based on Lovett’s anal- includes most of the professional societies, jour-
ysis, any catalog of differences between the new and
the old histories is a distinction without a distinction. nals, archives, and graduate programs in the
(p. 11) field. What lay behind it was the professional-
ization of the area. The name E. G. Boring is so
Even Walsh, Teo, and Baydala (2014), whose closely identified with the history of psychology
work is titled, A Critical History and Philoso- that it is easy to forget that this was not his main
phy of Psychology, see Lovett’s article as an interest. He was an experimental psychologist
opportunity for self-criticism: who specialized in the areas of sensation and
While critiquing the assumptions of traditional histo- perception, and most of his publications were in
rians, critical histories of psychology should not be this field. He wrote in his autobiography that he
exempt from reflecting on their own historical context mainly worked on his textbook during the sum-
and premises (Lovett, 2006). Critical historians, for
instance, could misuse history by attempting to over- mer vacations (Boring, 1952). This was typical
compensate for conventional historians’ bias of using of all the psychologists who worked on the
the past from the perspective of the rich, the famous history of psychology prior to the 1960s. An-
and the successful. (p. 19) other notable feature of this work is that it was
The positive citations continue. Like van centered on textbooks. Original research papers
Rappard, Saulo Araujo is not enamored of the were relatively rare.
new history of psychology. In the introduction During the 1960s, a small number of histori-
to his recent book, Wundt and the Philosophical ans of science moved away from the traditional
Foundations of Psychology (Araujo, 2016), he emphasis of their discipline on the physical and
provides an introduction to some of the recent biological sciences and began to take an interest
literature on the history of psychology. He then in the history of psychology. There were also
writes: psychologists who came to regard it as their
main or only area of teaching and research.
These new approaches to the history of psychology
have brought to light important aspects of psycholog- Many of these had obtained their qualifications
ical theory and practice, such as the influence of psy- in other branches of psychology and were self-
chological discourse on society and the political and taught. The graduate programs that were estab-
ideological uses of mental testing. Despite all their lished from the 1960s onwards began to pro-
merits, however, many of these studies leave much to
be desired in methodological terms. For example, duce a different kind of psychologist who
Lovett (2006) has shown that the dichotomies created identified with the area at an early stage of their
by historians (e.g., naive vs. critical, amateur vs. pro- career and had received training in historical
fessional, use of primary vs. secondary sources etc.) research. The archives, the professional societ-
are exaggerated, if not invalid. More, he identifies in
the new history an uncritical acceptance of technical ies, and the journals that were established
assumptions (e.g., Kuhn’s philosophy of science) and helped to facilitate their research and to provide
similar errors attributed to the old history (e.g., forms outlets for it.

, THE NEW HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY 3

Needless to say, these changes led to changes and the kind of criticism that is not. I will deal
in the content of the history of psychology it- with each one of them in turn. First, the com-
self. The fact that research was being carried out parison of the new history and the old.
on an unprecedented scale led not only to new
knowledge, but also to corrections of mistakes
in the work of the past, most notably in relation Differences That Lovett Accepts
to the so-called founder of psychology, Wil-
helm Wundt. Largely due to the influence of The new historians tended to refer to the
historians of science like Robert Young (1966), older histories as internalist, presentist, and
scholarly standards began to improve, and a Whig. Lovett accepts all of these differences:
whole new way of writing history began to First, old history is notably internalist; some of these
appear. histories contain minute biographical details but do not
As significant as these changes were, the mention any broad social or political changes of the
number of specialist historians of psychology times the psychologists lived in . . . In addition to
internalism, these old histories tend to be presentist, a
was small and most psychology departments term that refers to the use of recent knowledge both to
continued in the traditional way by regarding better understand historic events and to choose histor-
the history of psychology as a pedagogical field ical questions worthy of inquiry . . . Not only does the
that was usually taught by someone whose re- present serve as a lens with which to view the past, but
search was in another branch of psychology, also psychology is viewed as having made progress
often with the help of textbooks that were writ- when compared with the past. This third feature com-
mon to old history texts is termed a “Whig” conception
ten by psychologists who were not specialists in of history, being based on the assumption that over
the area either. The end result was that a gulf time, psychology progresses and that today’s psychol-
developed between the scholarly and pedagog- ogists know more (in an objective sense) than their
ical aspects of the field, and some of the new forebears. (p. 20)
specialists tried to remedy this situation in oral So far so good. Lovett also criticizes Furumoto
presentations and publications that were de-
(1989) and Leahey (1986) for failing to mention
signed to inform the nonspecialists, especially
what he considers to be a fourth difference:
those who were teaching the history of psychol-
ogy, about the new developments that had taken The descriptions of Furumoto and Leahey failed to
place. The best known example of this genre is mention one last dichotomy thought by many (e.g.,
a G. Stanley Hall lecture with the title, “The Stocking, 1965) to differentiate the old and new
histories: the training of the historian. Old histories
new history of psychology” that was given by tend to be penned by psychologists without formal
Laurel Furumoto at the annual meeting of the training in historiography (“amateur historians”),
American Psychological Association in 1988 whereas new histories tend to be written by scholars
and published in the following year (Furumoto, whose training is in history of science or even gen-
1989). eral history (e.g., O’Donnell, 1979; Zenderland,
Lovett’s article is a reply to this literature. By 1998). . . . In sum, then, the new history of psychol-
ogy can be seen as taking the history of psychology
his own account, the article is in three parts. out of the psychology department, out of the hands
First, he compares the old and the new. He of those amateur historians who are interested in
accepts that some differences between them ex- worshipping psychological heroes and teaching their
ist but, as the quotation from Araujo’s book psychology majors to do the same, and bringing the
shows, he goes on to suggest that “the new discipline into the history department. (p. 22)
history is not so different from the old as its Lovett goes on to discuss Kurt Danziger’s
proponents would argue” (Araujo, 2016, p. 26). (1990) Constructing the Subject as an example
The second part consists of some problems or of the new history, and he notes that Danziger is
limitations that Lovett considers to be unique to not a historian but a psychologist:
the new history, and he expresses them in the
form of “Five Questions for the New Histori- When it comes to other features of new history, it is
ans” (p. 24). They are actually rhetorical ques- less clear where Danziger (1990) falls. Although many
primary sources from history were cited, Danziger’s
tions since Lovett goes on to answer them him- training is in psychology rather than history . . . Con-
self. The third part deals with the critical aspects structing the Subject is squarely within the new history
of the new history, and Lovett expresses his framework but does not fulfill all of the criteria exactly.
views on the kind of criticism that is acceptable (p. 23)

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