#kurt danziger

[estefanyailen]

❝El problema es hallar la perspectiva que resulte adecuada al problema❞.

— "Los orígenes sociales de la psicología moderna" - Kurt Danziger (P: 1).

[maaarine]

Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found its Language (Kurt Danziger,1997)

“In their pursuit of the project of personality measurement psychologists worked within a framework of assumptions that never had to be questioned because they were so widely held in the societies in which they operated.

Among these assumptions two deserve at least a passing mention here.

One concerns the belief that human conduct is the expression of some essence within the individual, an essence that remains the same irrespective of the conditions under which the conduct occurs and is observed.

The psychology of personality measurement added the refinement that variations in intra-individual essence between individuals were purely quantitative, so that all individuals could be assigned a position on the same universal set of attributes.

This refinement had played a crucial role in the first constitution of a human quality as a measurable, universal attribute, namely, intelligence. 

It was now extended to all individual attributes in principle.

‘Personality’ was now constituted as the sum of these universally present, measurable intra-individual essences.

The second major assumption that was indispensable for the constitution of personality as the object for a certain kind of measurement concerned the role of language.

‘Personality’ was posited as a real natural entity existing quite independently of anyone's description of it.

Yet the favoured method for the investigation of this entity depended entirely on verbal description!

On the one hand, ‘personality’ was to be treated as an object not fundamentally different from any other object of natural science,

but on the other hand, scientific access to this object was to be gained primarily through its description in everyday language. 

One has to wonder how the older natural sciences would have fared, had they adopted this approach to knowledge.

So personality research based on questionnaires, rating scales, adjectival checklists and so on would seem to have faced a fundamental problem.

How could it be claimed that it provided knowledge of anything beyond the semantic space of personality description?”

[estefanyailen]

❝Los motivos individuales que juegan un rol tan importante no son establecidos por medio de una investigación biográfica concreta, sino que son imputados en términos de un modelo abstracto implícito de decisión racional, mediante el cálculo de probabilidades de carrera❞.

— "Los orígenes sociales de la psicología moderna" - Kurt Danziger (P: 1)

[estefanyailen]

❝No puedo evitar hacerlo de esta manera, ni habré de permanecer en silencio sobre un aspecto de mis recuerdos que ha permanecido en la memoria más vívidamente que muchos otros❞.

— "Los orígenes sociales de la psicología moderna" - Kurt Danziger (P 3)

[estefanyailen]

❝El motor del cambio histórico es buscando en el nivel de la motivación individual. Un nuevo rol es inventado y emulado en el transcurso de un intento personal por promover una carrera personal❞.

— "Los orígenes sociales de la psicología moderna" - Kurt Danziger (P: 1)

[maaarine]

Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language (Kurt Danziger, 1997)

“Once mind is conceived as something that can only be known directly through some kind of 'inner sense', or consciousness, then other minds can only be known indirectly through reflection or inference.

Because of the continuing cultural embeddedness of these beliefs it is appropriate to note in passing that this is not the only way in which knowledge of self and other can be conceived. (…)

Instead of beginning with the assumption that experience is basically a private affair, one can begin with the notion that experience is essentially something shared.

Then one would regard the partial privatization of experience as the outcome of a process of development that requires explanation.

Conversely, if one begins by assuming that experience is necessarily private, it is shared experience that requires explanation.

Undoubtedly, implicit assumptions of this kind depend very much on a social and cultural context that is mediated both by intellectual tradition and by the conventions of everyday relationships.

In a highly individualistic culture, or sub-culture, experience is usually defined as a basically private event.”

[estefanyailen]

❝La psicología como disciplina autónoma es una invención americana y no alemana❞.

— "Los orígenes sociales de la psicología moderna" - Kurt Danziger (P 4)

[estefanyailen]

Entre aquellos que, como Wundt, ingresaron a los rangos académicos en los años 1850 y 1860, el 78% de los que lo hicieron en fisiología finalizaron como profesores titulares, mientras que en filosofía solamente el 51% de ellos tuvieron tal fortuna. El mismo Wundt brindó un relato diferente de su pasaje de fisiología a la filosofía. Tras comenzar su autobiografía relatando sus recuerdos juveniles sobre la revolución de 1848, se dirige lo que puede ser considerada una extraña introducción a la vida de un académico:

❝No puedo evitar hacerlo de esta manera, ni habré de permanecer en silencio sobre un aspecto de mis recuerdos que ha permanecido en la memoria más vívidamente que muchos otros. Fue mi destino que la existencia habitual, durante muchos años, de intereses de vida diferentes, condujo a un cambio de ocupación en el cual, sospecho, las impresiones políticas de mi juventud no fueron indiferentes❞.

En realidad, durante el periodo crítico de su vida, cuando tuvo lugar la reorientación de la fisiología a la filosofía, Wundt se encontraba fuertemente comprometido en asociaciones de trabajadores de la educación y durante muchos años, fue miembro del Landtag; el (casi) parlamento del Estado de Baden. A través de sus propias declaraciones se aprecia que finalmente se dio cuenta de que no podría combinar una carrera política con una académica. Eligió la última... en adelante, su trabajo académico estuvo cada vez más orientado hacía temas de discusión del interés humano, cambio que solamente pudo ser facilitado por un pasaje desde la facultad de medicina a la facultad de filosofía.

— "Los orígenes sociales de la psicología moderna" - Kurt Danziger (P 3)