Treating mind and body: Essays in the history of science, professions, and society (original) (raw)
Related papers
States of mind: American and post-Soviet perspectives on contemporary issues in psychology
1997
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast. Interestingly, the view that U.S. psychology is a "normal" science and that psychology in the former Soviet Union should orient itself by reference to the former is shared by many American and non-American contributors. While U. S. authors do not always emphasize the particular American setting of their studies and sometimes generalize their conclusions across cultures, their post-Soviet counterparts tend to stress the particular context of research. Some non-Americans make what they see as their cultural uniqueness into a research subject (specific Russian patterns of truth and lie-telling, specific motives for alcohol abuse, etc.). Others emphasize how their approaches differ from approaches in the West (the use of "psychosemantics" in studies of political attitudes, an existential approach to post-traumatic disorder). Even when non-American authors evaluate the differences between their own and Western studies as quantitative rather than qualitative, hoping that the areas previously non-existent in Soviet psychology will soon develop (e.g., research in advertising and gerontology), they accept Western psychology as a model. The difference between American and post-Soviet contributors is also reflected in their style: if the former are written in an "objective" language, with balanced and well-supported conclusions, the articles by the post-Soviet authors are often emotional, even bitter and angry, where the problems of their countries are concerned. Placed side-by-side with the stylistically highly professional American articles, the post-Soviet writers may appear "biased" to a Western reader. (Sometimes, as in the article on lying, a comparative study and much more evidence is indeed needed to support the author's conclusion that lying became the habit of everybody in Soviet society.) A reader curious about the psychology of everyday life in the emergent countries of the former Soviet Union and willing to interpret all the contributions in context, will have a rich time. To the reviewer, the book provided an abundance of material with which to reflect on the differences between psychological communities. The book also aroused thoughts that BOOK REVIEWS of sexology and psychiatry effectively dismissed the idea that homosexuality was a function of anatomical development, championing instead a model of psychopathological deviance. Bleys documents how this process was reflected by ethnographic depictions of samesex sexual practices-depictions that were mustered regularly in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century debates about the etiology of homosexuality. In this regard, chapter five is particularly illuminating, since it presents the positions of some of the seminal figures in these debates, among them the German zoologist and anthropologist Ferdinand Karsch-Haack and the British writers John Addington Symonds, Henry Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. If Foucault's History of Sexuality functions as one of the conceptual pillars of The Geography of Perversion, Edward Said's Orientalism serves as the other one. But much like Said-who has been taken to task for presenting the "Orient" both as a Western invention and as a site of genuine cultural difference-Bleys occasionally wanders on treacherous epistemological ground. On the one hand, he seeks to show how shifting images of non-Western same-sex sexual practices reflected European understandings of sodomy and homosexuality-a mode of argument that renders all European accounts of non-Western sexuality inherently suspect, since they appear less as the product of unbiased ethnographic observation than the result of systematic projections of European cultural inventories. While Bleys effectively mines his sources for historical biases, he, on the other hand, repeatedly seeks to recuperate them as truthful renditions of "actual" conditions. Especially in his discussions of the Arab world, Bleys often criticizes western thinkers' long-standing preoccupation with Arab same-sex sexuality while confirming cultural prominence of this configuration by recourse to the very sources his study compromises and deconstructs. If The Geography of Perversion shares some conceptual problems with Said's Orientalism; it is to Bleys' credit to have attempted a project of similar magnitude. And much like its model, The Geography of Perversion will be a definitive text for years to come.
Journal of Asian Studies, 1997
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast.
Soul on the couch: Spirituality, religion, and morality in contemporary psychoanalysis
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1998
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast. Interestingly, the view that U.S. psychology is a "normal" science and that psychology in the former Soviet Union should orient itself by reference to the former is shared by many American and non-American contributors. While U. S. authors do not always emphasize the particular American setting of their studies and sometimes generalize their conclusions across cultures, their post-Soviet counterparts tend to stress the particular context of research. Some non-Americans make what they see as their cultural uniqueness into a research subject (specific Russian patterns of truth and lie-telling, specific motives for alcohol abuse, etc.). Others emphasize how their approaches differ from approaches in the West (the use of "psychosemantics" in studies of political attitudes, an existential approach to post-traumatic disorder). Even when non-American authors evaluate the differences between their own and Western studies as quantitative rather than qualitative, hoping that the areas previously non-existent in Soviet psychology will soon develop (e.g., research in advertising and gerontology), they accept Western psychology as a model. The difference between American and post-Soviet contributors is also reflected in their style: if the former are written in an "objective" language, with balanced and well-supported conclusions, the articles by the post-Soviet authors are often emotional, even bitter and angry, where the problems of their countries are concerned. Placed side-by-side with the stylistically highly professional American articles, the post-Soviet writers may appear "biased" to a Western reader. (Sometimes, as in the article on lying, a comparative study and much more evidence is indeed needed to support the author's conclusion that lying became the habit of everybody in Soviet society.) A reader curious about the psychology of everyday life in the emergent countries of the former Soviet Union and willing to interpret all the contributions in context, will have a rich time. To the reviewer, the book provided an abundance of material with which to reflect on the differences between psychological communities. The book also aroused thoughts that BOOK REVIEWS of sexology and psychiatry effectively dismissed the idea that homosexuality was a function of anatomical development, championing instead a model of psychopathological deviance. Bleys documents how this process was reflected by ethnographic depictions of samesex sexual practices-depictions that were mustered regularly in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century debates about the etiology of homosexuality. In this regard, chapter five is particularly illuminating, since it presents the positions of some of the seminal figures in these debates, among them the German zoologist and anthropologist Ferdinand Karsch-Haack and the British writers John Addington Symonds, Henry Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. If Foucault's History of Sexuality functions as one of the conceptual pillars of The Geography of Perversion, Edward Said's Orientalism serves as the other one. But much like Said-who has been taken to task for presenting the "Orient" both as a Western invention and as a site of genuine cultural difference-Bleys occasionally wanders on treacherous epistemological ground. On the one hand, he seeks to show how shifting images of non-Western same-sex sexual practices reflected European understandings of sodomy and homosexuality-a mode of argument that renders all European accounts of non-Western sexuality inherently suspect, since they appear less as the product of unbiased ethnographic observation than the result of systematic projections of European cultural inventories. While Bleys effectively mines his sources for historical biases, he, on the other hand, repeatedly seeks to recuperate them as truthful renditions of "actual" conditions. Especially in his discussions of the Arab world, Bleys often criticizes western thinkers' long-standing preoccupation with Arab same-sex sexuality while confirming cultural prominence of this configuration by recourse to the very sources his study compromises and deconstructs. If The Geography of Perversion shares some conceptual problems with Said's Orientalism; it is to Bleys' credit to have attempted a project of similar magnitude. And much like its model, The Geography of Perversion will be a definitive text for years to come.
The American Historical Review, 1997
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast. Interestingly, the view that U.S. psychology is a "normal" science and that psychology in the former Soviet Union should orient itself by reference to the former is shared by many American and non-American contributors. While U. S. authors do not always emphasize the particular American setting of their studies and sometimes generalize their conclusions across cultures, their post-Soviet counterparts tend to stress the particular context of research. Some non-Americans make what they see as their cultural uniqueness into a research subject (specific Russian patterns of truth and lie-telling, specific motives for alcohol abuse, etc.). Others emphasize how their approaches differ from approaches in the West (the use of "psychosemantics" in studies of political attitudes, an existential approach to post-traumatic disorder). Even when non-American authors evaluate the differences between their own and Western studies as quantitative rather than qualitative, hoping that the areas previously non-existent in Soviet psychology will soon develop (e.g., research in advertising and gerontology), they accept Western psychology as a model. The difference between American and post-Soviet contributors is also reflected in their style: if the former are written in an "objective" language, with balanced and well-supported conclusions, the articles by the post-Soviet authors are often emotional, even bitter and angry, where the problems of their countries are concerned. Placed side-by-side with the stylistically highly professional American articles, the post-Soviet writers may appear "biased" to a Western reader. (Sometimes, as in the article on lying, a comparative study and much more evidence is indeed needed to support the author's conclusion that lying became the habit of everybody in Soviet society.) A reader curious about the psychology of everyday life in the emergent countries of the former Soviet Union and willing to interpret all the contributions in context, will have a rich time. To the reviewer, the book provided an abundance of material with which to reflect on the differences between psychological communities. The book also aroused thoughts that BOOK REVIEWS of sexology and psychiatry effectively dismissed the idea that homosexuality was a function of anatomical development, championing instead a model of psychopathological deviance. Bleys documents how this process was reflected by ethnographic depictions of samesex sexual practices-depictions that were mustered regularly in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century debates about the etiology of homosexuality. In this regard, chapter five is particularly illuminating, since it presents the positions of some of the seminal figures in these debates, among them the German zoologist and anthropologist Ferdinand Karsch-Haack and the British writers John Addington Symonds, Henry Havelock Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. If Foucault's History of Sexuality functions as one of the conceptual pillars of The Geography of Perversion, Edward Said's Orientalism serves as the other one. But much like Said-who has been taken to task for presenting the "Orient" both as a Western invention and as a site of genuine cultural difference-Bleys occasionally wanders on treacherous epistemological ground. On the one hand, he seeks to show how shifting images of non-Western same-sex sexual practices reflected European understandings of sodomy and homosexuality-a mode of argument that renders all European accounts of non-Western sexuality inherently suspect, since they appear less as the product of unbiased ethnographic observation than the result of systematic projections of European cultural inventories. While Bleys effectively mines his sources for historical biases, he, on the other hand, repeatedly seeks to recuperate them as truthful renditions of "actual" conditions. Especially in his discussions of the Arab world, Bleys often criticizes western thinkers' long-standing preoccupation with Arab same-sex sexuality while confirming cultural prominence of this configuration by recourse to the very sources his study compromises and deconstructs. If The Geography of Perversion shares some conceptual problems with Said's Orientalism; it is to Bleys' credit to have attempted a project of similar magnitude. And much like its model, The Geography of Perversion will be a definitive text for years to come.
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013
Contemporary Russian psychology faces an uphill battle in joining the international mainstream after decades of isolation. Among Russian psychologists today, we can see traces of the "globalist" (integrative) and "counter-globalist" (isolationist) tendencies that first manifested during the Soviet period. At that time, Russian psychology was shaped as a mono-methodological trend; it addressed fundamental theoretical problems, was based on Marxist philosophy and was oriented to reflect the standards of the natural sciences. In the post-Soviet period, fundamental social changes shifted the development of psychology as a science and different standards were adopted. Contemporary Russian psychology is substantially diversified. When searching for "the optimum level of integration" with global peers, it is necessary to take into account the theoretical and methodological orientations of the scientists, as their motives and constraints with respect to integration can be substantially different. Here we explain in detail how the different theoretical understandings and predilections of Russian psychologists determine their interests, ideals and constraints with respect to integration with the mainstream.
Using history to understand psychology in non-Western countries
Psychologie Und Geschichte, 2002
Psychology has experienced strong growth in many countries in the twentieth century. This growth has been the strongest in industrialised, urbanised democracies, and as a result, the discipline has come under criticism for its Western bias. While not denying the possibility of such bias, this paper argues that a historical analysis provides a more thoroughgoing explanation than this "cultural critique" for what has happened in the relationship between psychology and these societies. It is argued that there is a special affinity between psychology and the type of subjects, and their self-understandings, found in liberal democracies. As a result, the subject matter of the discipline itself is historically variable, and psychology is reflexively involved in this process. How the interplay between government, psychology, and its subject matter constructs and reconstructs human subjectivity in these societies remains unpredictable.
A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America
American Historical Review, 1999
This book is part of a larger project to bring together articles by psychologists from the United States and the former Soviet Union and make them available to both English-and Russian-speaking audiences. The English-language version appeared first; the publication of the book in Russia, it is hoped, will follow shortly. The contributions to this volume were carefully chosen to reflect on contemporary changes in both post-Soviet and American societies. They are taken not from conventional academic subdivisions, but from the application of psychology to socially relevant issues: politics and persuasion, mental health, prejudice and ethnic conflicts, ecological and environmental problems. Following the editors' intention to highlight both differences and similarities between American and post-Soviet psychology, the book is organized in sections each containing parallel articles from U. S. and former Soviet scholars. Sometimes the articles complement each other, sometimes they stand in a striking but instructive contrast.