Experimenting with power: Liberal psychologists and the challenge of social reform: 1945--1975.
Item
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Title
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Experimenting with power: Liberal psychologists and the challenge of social reform: 1945--1975.
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Identifier
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AAI3303801
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identifier
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3303801
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Creator
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Wisniewski, Theodore.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Gerald Markowitz
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Date
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2008
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States | Psychology, General
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Abstract
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This dissertation probes the institutional rise and cultural diffusion of psychology in the United States in the years following World War II. It situates this phenomenon within the broader professional, political, and ideological contexts of post-war America. In particular, it focuses on the efforts of four leading psychologists---B.F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow and Kenneth Clark---to reform and redefine psychology in light of the challenges confronting the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. These psychologists staked out new fields, or widened the parameters of established fields, with the intent of rendering professional psychology more relevant to social problems. Thus the rise of radical behaviorist psychology, humanistic psychology and social psychology are analyzed in relation to broad, post-war public issues such as the Cold War, the rise of affluence, the civil rights movement and the American counter culture.;The thesis of this work is that psychologists, originally inspired by idealistic agendas nurtured during the Progressive Era, found their profession out of sync with the emerging landscapes and challenges of the post-war world. New problems and challenges emerged, and these psychologists struggled to render their profession capable of engaging them. They practiced and promoted psychology in different ways, but an underlying thread running though the work of these liberal psychologists was an endorsement of experimentation as a way of life, an endorsement wedded to probing critiques of the status quo and agendas for social reform. Empowered by their standing within a rapidly rising profession, they reached out to the public. Their promotion of experimentalism and social reform resonated with increasing numbers of people outside the profession, especially young people. But as psychology percolated into the wider culture, it became a contentious force, particularly in the experimental climate of the 1960s when psychology was integrated into various agendas and experimented with in different ways. The interactions between these professional psychologists and cultural and political radicals inclined to experimentation could be quite dynamic and heated.;The dissertation falls within the genre of cultural/intellectual history. The exploration of cultural themes and debates relies on an assortment of primary source material, in particular newspapers, magazines, academic journals, science fiction novels, memoirs and various studies of public culture published in the 1950s and 1960s---by journalists, political commentators and academics from various disciplines, in particular psychology and sociology. The chapters on historical developments within the profession rely on academic journals and the published work of the psychologists themselves. Published works of B.F. Skinner, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Kenneth Clark are examined in depth. The dissertation also engages relevant secondary source material, in particular biographies and relevant studies written by psychologists, historians of psychology and cultural and intellectual historians.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
