Words to Ponder #15
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Words to Ponder #15

16 Jan Words to Ponder #15

Posted at 17:47h in I Like This, Language, Politics, Psychology, What's New, Words to Ponder by

If I were an historian I’d want to be as creative, eloquent, passionate and rigorous as Kurt Danziger (Professor Emeritus at York University in Toronto). A few times a year, I return to his wonderful books, Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research and Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found its Language. Here’s something to chew on from Naming the Mind:

Psychological categories have a political dimension because they are not purely descriptive but also normative. … For instance, in the prevailing Western system everyone is expected to have private motives, everyone is expected to have social attitudes, everyone is expected to fall somewhere in the distribution of intelligence. In principle, individuals could claim that these categories misrepresented their own experience, but the social and scientific pressures are such that virtually no one does. For most persons the prevailing discursive system becomes inescapable and motives, attitudes, intelligence and so on are the forms in which they experience their own subjectivity.

KurtDanziger

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4 Comments
  • loisholzman
    Posted at 19:30h, 16 January

    Thanks, Jan. I’ve learned a lot from Danziger. I’m going to read some of his later articles.

  • Jan
    Posted at 19:21h, 16 January

    “One size fits all” subjectivity.

    This is such an important point he’s about how the psychological categories of how and who we are, reason, experience, see and feel, are normative. Resonant of your work and teaching on GETTING PSYCHOLOGY OUT OF OUR LIVES.

    Thanks Lois.

  • loisholzman
    Posted at 18:56h, 16 January

    I like your analogy and image, Lonny.

  • Lonny Meinecke
    Posted at 18:52h, 16 January

    These are great words Dr. Holzman… definitely food for thought. If I may, I would only hazard a small change to the last sentence. I feel that we do not so much experience subjectivity through this restrictive filter (since the substance of subjectivity is that it isn’t filtered by consensus), but that we try to squeeze our subjective appreciation through these restrictions, often resulting in distress we have to conceal to maintain social acceptance. It’s a bit like trying to squeeze our urgency through a tiny cellphone screen and somehow “reach” the person separated from us by that tiny phone — instead of looking up and talking face to face. Thanks for sharing this! Danziger is terrific.
    — Lonny

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