Frederic Bartlett and the Idea of an Historical Psychology Alan Costall, Portsmouth University
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Ethnographic Studies, No 11, Autumn 2009 Frederic Bartlett and the Idea of an Historical Psychology Alan Costall, Portsmouth University have recognized an alternative viable George Humphrey has described the option for psychology (Connelly & ‘welcome’ he received when he took up Costall, 2000). He set out this alternative the first chair in psychology at Oxford in the context of a critique in which he 1946. warned psychologists against mistaking the historically situated for human [The] new professor ... found himself the universals. Referring back to what he jetsam of an acrimonious debate as to described as David Hume’s “‘science of whether he should exist at all. He heard the lions on the shore sniffing round him, human nature’ … with its strictly waiting for him to make a wrong move. empirical methods,” he argued that (Humphrey, 1953, p. 382) Hume had been mistaken in assuming “that human minds had everywhere and The chair was established to support the at all times worked like those of new Honours School of Psychology, eighteenth-century Europeans.” Philosophy and Physiology (PPP). Yet the main problem was the philosophers. However, Collingwood raised no And there were so many of them! As objection to such an empirical study, as Humphrey put it, Oxford had more long as it was recognized for what it philosophers “to the square mile than really was, a study of human nature in anywhere else, perhaps with the situ - in Hume’s case, “an historical exception of the Vatican” (1953, p. 382). study of the contemporary European mind” (Collingwood, 1939, pp. 115–116, R.G. Collingwood was one of the emphasis added). Yet, Collingwood philosophers at Oxford who did not never seriously explored the idea of an completely dismiss psychology as an historical psychology in a positive way, impossible science. In fact, as Oxford that is, as an alternative direction in philosophers go, Collingwood kept which psychology might develop into a himself remarkably well informed about science, along the lines, say, of Wundt’s new developments in psychology, cultural psychology, or Vygotsky’s including psychoanalysis. He even socio-historical approach to human 1 chaired a committee of the sub-faculty of development. philosophy in 1928 encouraging the establishment of a psychological At the time Collingwood was writing, laboratory (Connelly & Costall, 2000). Vygotsky’s main work had not been translated into English, and Wundt’s Nevertheless, Collingwood seemed to international reputation had suffered set prohibitive limits on what the new badly from his emphatic support of the psychology could properly take on. German cause during the First World According to Collingwood, it should War. There was, however, an example of restrict itself to the realm of sensation and the irrational, and so, in effect, 1 In contrast to Collingwood, Stephen Toulmin exclude both history and values. has been an enthusiastic proponent of the idea of However, as James Connelly and I have an historical psychology as developed in the pointed out, Collingwood seems also to work of Wundt and also Vygotsky (e.g. Toulmin, 1987). 24 Ethnographic Studies, No 11, Autumn 2009 an attempt at an historical approach to occupation, stimulated field work on the psychology that was available much problem of contact … . (Richards, 1939, closer to home, though not at Oxford, pp. 290-291) but at Cambridge.2 For many years, Bartlett, like Wundt When Frederic Bartlett (1886-1969) before him, has mainly been began to study at Cambridge, shortly remembered as an experimental before the First World War, the psychologist. In more recent years, there Cambridge psychologists had has been increasing recognition of established close links with Bartlett’s project for a socio-historical anthropology. Several of them had psychology. Most of the focus has been taken part in the anthropological put upon his still widely cited book, expedition to the Torres Straits in 1898 Remembering, published in 1932. Yet, (Costall, 1999), and two of the main by the time this book was written, figures, W.H.R. Rivers and C.S. Myers, Bartlett was, as I have argued elsewhere, led a kind of double life as both already on the retreat, opting for a safer psychologists and anthropologists. scientistic image of psychology with Bartlett’s own early research was which to promote his new department. concerned with what he called As he himself explained, when he had “conventionalisation”, the way material published Remembering he had already from one culture is assimilated into the moved beyond what he called his existing schemas of another culture. This “conventionalisation” phase (Bartlett interest in culture contact stemmed in 1958, p. 144). The First World War had part from the commitment within British interrupted the sequence of his thought, anthropology to the theory of cultural and he then came across Head’s diffusion. But the effects of culture individualistic notion of the schema contact were also an urgent political which led him to place a new emphasis issue: upon "constructive imagination and thinking" (p. 148). Interestingly, the Among English anthropologists the term subtitle of Remembering is A study in ‘culture contact’ has been chiefly restricted experimental and social psychology, but to the description of the changes caused in the book is hardly a synthesis. Bartlett’s native societies by the impact of European treatment of experimental and social civilization. The depopulation of the psychology is split into two separate Pacific, consequent on European halves, an early sign of Bartlett’s dissociation of these two interests. 2 Frederic Bartlett became the first professor of psychology at Cambridge in 1931, and The revisionist accounts of Bartlett, as eventually the most powerful figure within an early champion of an historical British psychology. As such, he was in the psychology disagree about his eventual historically unique position of being able to fix commitment to that ideal. The the professorial appointments throughout Britain anthropologist, Mary Douglas (1987, p. for many years, and, in this way, also engaged in another form of promotion, that of a kind of 81) claimed that Bartlett simply dropped mindless, introverted, experimental psychology the idea, and she portrayed Bartlett as a that persists to the present-day. In fact, this kind victim of his institutional setting. Yet, of psychology has received a new lease of life the institutional setting of early where the same old experiments are being Cambridge psychology was not pre- conducted all over again, but now connected to impressively expensive brain-imaging ordained, and Bartlett, as an astute equipment. academic politician, must have played some part in the transfer of his department from the faculty of Moral 25 Ethnographic Studies, No 11, Autumn 2009 Sciences to Natural Sciences. In any research was related to the case, he seems to have been pleased with Government’s post-war re-housing the outcome. As he recalled, “the initiative, and Bartlett was keen on the Psychological Laboratory was … placed work because of its wider policy where it properly belonged, with implications. But, locally, he was Physiology, Biochemistry and Pathology pushing the line about psychology being . Very nearly all the subsequent a hard science, and Lee’s research did changes have grown out of this one.” not exactly fit in: (Bartlett, 1937, p. 108; emphasis added). halfway through my Ph.D, round about In contrast, Derek Edwards and David 1951, Bartlett was making a big play (he Middleton (1987) portray Bartlett as a spent a lot of time on university politics, hero-figure resolutely championing a where he was very influential) to shake off socio-historical approach to psychology the image of “Moral Sciences”. He called me in one day and explained, throughout his career. apologetically, that my particular dissertation project was a bit of an In fact, Bartlett’s eventual attitude to embarrassment to him in this campaign. It socio-historical psychology could best could hardly have been more quantitative be described as NIMD-ism: let’s have a (I was the first to adopt Discriminant radical historical psychology, but Not In Function Analysis from Physical My Department. He never appointed any Anthropology to Social Psychology!) but it social psychologists to his department. was not experimental — it was He even discouraged social approaches observational. This was the main source of in relation to applied research. David the problem. Anyway, he asked if I would Duncan, who was a member along with be so kind as to seek affiliation to a more Bartlett of the Scientific Advisory congruent Department and he made several Committee of the National Institute of suggestions, including Anthropology and Human Ecology. I followed up the latter Industrial Psychology, has described and received a warm welcome. (Lee, 1995) Bartlett as a “cantankerous reactionary … [who] definitely had the boundaries In fact, although Lee was no longer of psychology as an applied science very officially a member of Bartlett’s tightly drawn, for others at any rate” department, nothing changed. He (Duncan, 1999; emphasis added). continued to remain in the department Duncan’s qualification - “for others at with Bartlett, and successfully any rate” - is telling. Bartlett never completed his thesis in 1954. forgot his commitment to this alternative historical conception of psychology. As In the end, Bartlett came to regret the he himself put it, it remained his official version of psychology he had so “leading interest” (Bartlett, 1957, p. 72). carefully promoted, that of an essentially experimental science, and a highly There was a conflict between Bartlett’s introverted one at that. Beate Hermelin efforts to present Cambridge psychology told me that when she was a young as a ‘hard’, natural science, and his student and newly arrived in England, “leading interest” in social psychology. she met Bartlett at Cambridge at a Sometimes, this led to absurd situations.