Marxism & Psychology

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What has been the influence, if any, of Marxism on Psychology?

-- Norman Markel (normanmarkel@mindspring.com), April 26, 2001

Answers

Despite their real impact on psychology, Marx and Dilthey are hardly mentioned in North American history of psychology textbooks. One of the very few textbooks that recognizes Marx is Robinson (1976). He suggested that Marx failed to influence the course of psychological scholarship because of his Hegelianism, and that his non-experimental and sociological approach to the mind were detrimental to the emerging natural science of psychology.

For the relevance of Marx for psychology see my chapter: Teo, T. (in press). Karl Marx and Wilhelm Dilthey on the socio-historical conceptualization of the mind. In C. Green, M. Shore, and T. Teo (Eds.). The transformation of psychology: Influences of 19th-century philosophy, technology and natural science. Washington, DC: APA [to be published in June]. See also: Teo, T. (2000). To overturn all circumstances in which the human is a degraded, a subjugated, a forsaken, a contemptible being. In T. Sloan (Ed.), Critical psychology: Voices for change (pp. 159-170). London: Macmillan.

Marx’s conceptualization of the mind has indeed influenced psychology in the 20th century. He inspired the Soviet philosophical psychologist Sergej Rubinstein (1889-1960), the cultural-historical school with its mastermind Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) [the school includes Leontjew and Luria]. Marx exercises perhaps his greatest momentary influence in psychology via Vygotsky's developmental concepts (e.g., zone of proximal development). These concepts could be assimilated and accommodated into mainstream research because the cultural-historical school followed a natural scientific methodology in line with Marx's authority.

In France you find Georges Politzer (1903-1942) and Lucien Seve. In Germany Klaus Holzkamp (1927-1995) and various forms of critical psychology. See: Teo, T. (1998). Klaus Holzkamp and the rise and decline of German Critical Psychology. History of Psychology, 1 (3), 235-253.

Followers of the Frankfurt School merged his theories, albeit not his psychological writings, with psychoanalysis and developed a field of research called Freudian-Marxism. See for example Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse. Also South-American psychology and psychoanalysis was influenced by Marx.

Benjamin Harris argues persuasively that "Marxist psychologists and Marxist-inspired discoveries are underrepresented in the history of American psychology" (p. 73). He shows that there was a huge impact on American social psychology. See Teo, T. (1999). Marxist psychologists: Bald intellectuals, officials of truth, or revolutionaries? [Review essay of the book Psychology and society: Radical theory and practice]. Theory & Psychology, 9 (3), 427-432.

This is just a small summary of th

-- thomas teo (tteo@yorku.ca), April 28, 2001.


in the seventies we were very much influenced by marxism, sève and the italian operaismo;here in holland, nijmegen with a small group of people we tried to find a new way to link psychology to the social struggle; we made a underground inquiry to labor conditons in factories and tried to fuel with this a new kind of theory and involved science;we didn't manage to bring this to a good end because we were draw in all kinds of social struggle and science was overruled by politics; still i think that when you look at what Seve had to say about psychology especially the theory of personality, there was overlooked a very important breakthrough in how to think about and analyse man.

-- paul kavelaars (roerkav@burningmail.com), July 10, 2001.

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