Should History & Systems course content be modernized?

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Should the course content of History & Systems psychology courses change to reflect the emerging interdisplinary nature of our disipline and the shift in relative activity to certain areas that seem today more promising? These contemporary shifts may represent more that just fads, and be due in part to a better vantage point to see overall patterns and what is more valuable to pursue? While the history of psychology should reflect the people, theories, and practices of our profession, but today our profession might be seen as broader that it was say 50-100 years ago and the boundaries with other disiplines seem more blurred. This is particularly the case with the increased influence of the allied biological disiplines (e.g., genetics, neurology, psychiatry, evolutionary biology), but there is also considerable overlap with political science and economics). Should more of the people, theories, and practices in these allied disiplines be taught to psychology students? Even within psychology proper, some areas of psychology seem like their roots should be given more attention than they have traditionally been given in past History & System texts (e.g., cognitive psychology, physiological psychology, cross-cultural psychology, social psychology, economic psychology, political psychology, and health psychology).

-- Paul R. Kleinginna (prklein@gsvms2.cc.gasou.edu), September 09, 2002

Answers

Tough question! It's already so hard to cover the range of history in a quarter or semester. But my heart is with you. I've always taught special units on the connection with religion, but all the areas you mention could become specialty topics. There are of course histories already of most of these areas, in journal article or book chapter or even book format.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), September 09, 2002.

Are the textbooks not being modernized? The most recent edition of Ray Fancher's _Pioneers of Psychology_ has a chapter on computational cognitive science that was not in previous editions. Folks like Leibniz, Babbage, and Turing who were not part of the history of psychology in the past (is that ironic?), are now right there alongside of Descartes, Helmholtz, and Wundt. Of course, updating textbooks is a slow process in any field, not just in history of psych. The lagtime seems to be about 10-20 years, but I think it happens.

There was a chapter on the history of social psychology in Gardner Murphy's textbook, I think (at least the last edition, written with Kovach), though I don't belive it's in print anymore. As for subfields such as cross-cultural psychology, economic psychology, political psychology, and health psychology, I guess it depends on how many pages the author has at his/her disposal.

Actually, if you haven't run across it already, you might be interested in Roger Smith's _Fontana History of the Human Sciences_ (I think it's called the _Norton History of the Human Science_ in the US). It covers (over the course of 900+ pp.) a lot of the areas related to psychology that are not usually covered in history of psych. texts (sociology, anthropology, law, moral philosophy, etc.).

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), September 09, 2002.


I'd say any coverage of the history of psychology needs necessarily to reflect the way in which psychology's development is embedded in a range of social, economic, political and intellectual climates. As you suggest, you can't really cover the history of cognitive psychology without looking at developments in cybernetics, computing, and neurology, for example. Concentrating only on psychologists, their theories and their practices is, to my mind, to give a false impression of the nature of psychology as a self-sufficient discipline - a purpose which traditional history has long served, but which has been rejected in more contemporary historiography.

-- Dai Jones (djones@glos.ac.uk), October 19, 2002.

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