‘Psychology has a long past but a short history’

An essay about the development of nineteenth-century psychology can be appropriately prefaced by that most clichéd of quotations about the subject’s past. Although the words are claimed by many, it is most often attributed to the German experimental psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus whose longstanding self-absorption with learning three-letter nonsense syllables, and the propagation of similar work, epitomized much of the novelty of nineteenth-century psychology. Thus we had a growing attachment to exuberant empiricism, which increasingly meant the explicit and self-conscious selection and manipulation of fragments of the external world, coupled with a gathering restriction on what the organism could think, or say, or do about such selections and manipulations. A major inspiration for this increasingly controlled set of practices was physiology, particularly the early experimental exploration of the nervous system and the senses. It should not, however, be assumed that such efforts lacked an intellectual context; as we will see here, ‘Psychology is philosophy pursued by other means.’ This philosophical move also took the form, in some writers’ hands, of a kind of moral discourse, that is to say that what was judged to be the case as far as human action and belief were concerned was often mixed up with what should be the case (see Richards 1995 on the moral project that formed much nineteenth-century US psychology). Such a tendency was compounded even more by descriptions of the person that allowed for the possibility of moral improvement; thus in Alexander Bain’s psychology of the 1850s the intellect and the will could control or direct the unruly emotions (Bain 1855, 1859). Thus, nineteenth-century psychology is characterized by the growth of a physiology-inspired experimentation,

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nurtured within pre-existing, but also evolving, philosophical, conceptual and moral frameworks, with the whole enterprise devoted to the study of human (and animal!) consciousness.

One other point to make is that the bulk of nineteenth-century psychology seemed to

be concerned almost exclusively with the individual and with the self. There were no strong collectivist traditions as we understand them today; no ready use of Marx (see MARX AND MARXISM) or Engels, even though both had much to say about psychology and consciousness as the product of social and economic forces (for a useful introduction to their psychological views, see Smith 1997:433–51). Indeed the nearest that, say, JOHN STUART MILL or Bain in the middle of the century came to a social accounting was when they talked about the individual’s moral responsibility to the group, since for them society was no more than a collection of individuals (see Charpentier 2002 for a recent coverage of this neglected aspect of their joint work). Even as late as the early twentieth century, the British psychologist Stout was only able to invoke the social as a kind of moral and reciprocal mirror where the other acted as the reflective surface for the self. Here the major role accorded the other was as the judge of one’s own actions and beliefs, whose expression could be altered depending on the reactions to them of the other, with the other presumably being similarly shaped by one’s reactions to them (Stout 1907:538–45). This notion of Stout’s, which draws heavily on the work of the US Pragmatic philosopher Royce, seems to parallel William James’s notion of the social self where ‘a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him’ (1890:281).

‘Psychology has a long past but a short history’