Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

Putting the HIP into CHIP

How to Interest Students in an Unfamiliar Subject

Geoff BunnManchester Metropolitan University

Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

A required level II undergraduate course 160 students 1 hr lecture each week over 2 semesters 10 credits 1 course work essay (1,500 words) 1 final exam question (from 6) in 1 hour

http://www.psychology.heacademy.ac.uk/networks/chip/

Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

Interrogative Themes

Situated knowledge (investigative traditions in Psychology)

The construction of gender

Three Investigative Paradigms in Psychology

Francis Galton: Psychometric

Sigmund Freud: Psychodynamic

Wilhelm Wundt: Psychophysics

Using Tools: Psychometrics

Does it work?

Is it useful?

Telling Stories: Psychodynamic

What does it mean? Does it help me to understand

my experience?

Puzzle Solving: Psychophysics

Does it exist? Is it real?

Psychology has many different historical foundations.

“The human being is not the eternal basis of human history and human culture but a historical

and cultural artifact.” (Nikolas Rose, 1996)

Portrait of Sir Thomas Lucy and His Family by Cornelius Johnson (c.1625)

Diurnal and

seasonal time.

‘The industrial revolution demanded a greater

synchronisation of labour.’ (E.P. Thompson, 1967)

“This was not merely an idea, but a

revelation. At the sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast

plain under a flaming sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal—an atavistic being

who reproduces in his person the ferocious instincts of primitive

humanity and the inferior animals.”

– Lombroso (1874)

“In hysteria, every thought, every symptom was linked to sex…The hysteric’s tale...was a narrative of seduction.” (Lunbeck, 1994)

‘These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.

Memory fingers in their hair of murders,’- Wilfred Owen

Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

Interrogative Themes

Psychological categories and human kinds

Power and subjectivityPop psychology and psychological

expertise

What’s the difference between a broken heart and a broken bone?

Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

The Passions of the Soul

Do Psychological Objects Have Historical Continuity?

The Psychology of Emotion

“There is no physiology of the mind any more than there is psychology of the nervous system.”

– John Hughlings Jackson

Natural Objects (Indifferent Kinds) & Psychological Objects (Interactive Kinds)

Natural objects: rocks, atoms, electrons, chemicals, cells, stars, genes, electricity, weather, hormones, viruses, bones, trees, dinosaurs, gravity.

Psychological objects: depression, love, melancholy, intelligence, schizophrenia, self-esteem, autism, attitudes, motivation, emotion, dyslexia, cognition, behaviour, nostalgia, mind, soul, ADHD, shell shock, sexuality, race, personality, development, introversion, feeblemindedness, hysteria, temperament.

Psychological Objects & Human Kinds

Psychological objects: depression, love, melancholy, intelligence, self-esteem, attitudes, motivation, emotion, dyslexia, cognition, behaviour, nostalgia, mind, soul, sexuality, race, personality, development, temperament.

Human kinds: schizophrenic, autistic child, child with ADHD, gifted child, introvert, genius, shell shocked soldier, paedophile, multiple personality, hysterical woman, father, feebleminded child, vulnerable adult, hero, rough sleeper, alcoholic, criminal man, single mum.

Psychological Categories

Emotional labour

Power & Expertise

Popular psychology

“Race”

‘Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they

confuse with the absolute truth.’ - Simone de Beauvoir (1949)

Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology

An optional level III undergraduate course 60 students 1 hr lecture each week over 2 semesters 20 credits Essay and a reflective journal of readings