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HPSC3023 - HPPP

History & Philosophy of Psychology and Psychiatry


Semester 1, 2010

Unit co-ordinator & Lecturer Lecturer


Dr. Hans Pols Dr. Fiona J. Hibberd
Email: hans.pols@sydney.edu.au Email: fiona.hibberd@sydney.edu.au

Lectures: Mon 1-2; Carslaw Lecture Theatre 173


Thur 1-2; New Law School Lecture Theatre 024
Tutorials: Mon 2-4; Carslaw Tutorial Room 274
Mon 4-6; New Law School Seminar Room 020
Thur 10-12; TBA
Thur 2-4; TBA

OVERVIEW
This unit of study consists of two parts, sections A and B. In the first half of the unit (section
A), Dr. Pols focuses on the history of psychiatry and also takes up some philosophical issues.
In the second part (section B), philosophical issues within psychology will be examined by
Dr. Hibberd, giving due consideration to some of psychology’s history. Across both sections,
we examine one of the most interesting developments in the history and philosophy of
science, viz., the scientific practices involved in making human beings an object of study. We
examine the ways in which psychologists and psychiatrists have investigated human nature,
approaches to research they have developed to that end, major controversies in the field, and
basic philosophical assumptions made in the sciences of human nature. We investigate the
development of psychological theories and investigative methods as well as the development
of psychiatric theory, treatment methods, and institutions.

This unit of study is for students in the History and Philosophy of Science and for students in
Psychology. For the latter, the unit counts towards a major in Psychology. Successful
completion of this unit of study is essential for Psychology students intending to take the
theoretical thesis option in Psychology Honours. The unit HPSC3023 replaces PSYC3202.

OURSE OBJECTIVES
1. To examine the history of Psychology and Psychiatry, introducing students to debate
about interpretation of the historical process, focusing on important individuals and
movements and drawing particular attention to recurrent ideas and themes.
2. To acquaint students with various arguments which have been presented in favour of (or
against) certain theories and approaches in Psychology and Psychiatry.
3. To expose students to conceptual analysis by relating historical conceptual problems to
modern problems in Psychology and Psychiatry, and by examining some key concepts
(such as ‘mind’, ‘behaviour’, ‘consciousness’, ‘theory’, ‘explanation’, ‘mental illness,’
and so on).
4. To foster in students the development of their own abilities to present and evaluate
arguments and to engage in critical analysis of any material encountered in their reading
and research in Psychology and Psychiatry.
HPSC3023 Syllabus

Generic skills developed during this unit of study include:


1. Analytical reading: being able to gain a clear understanding of arguments through analysis
of scholarly material.
2. Research and writing skills: development of an argument using clear reasoning and
language skills.

If you would like to see some samples of well-written work, please see your lecturer.

ASSESSMENTS
One essay: 45%. One exam: 45%. Tutorial attendance: 10%.
I. Essay: students will choose one of the following two options
A. History of Psychiatry Essay, 2,500 words, due week 7, Monday 12 April,
before 5 pm,
OR
B. History & Philosophy of Psychology Essay, 2,500 words, due week 12,
Monday 24 May, before 5 pm.
Psychology and HPS students may choose either option.

II. Exam: students will sit a formal 2hr. exam (4 x 30 min. long essay questions) during the
June examination period. The exam paper contains 4 sections. The questions for
sections A and B (dealing with Dr. Pols’ part of this Unit of Study) will be
available on Web-CT after lecture 13. The questions for sections C and D
(dealing with Dr. Hibberd’s part of this Unit of Study) will be available on Web-
CT after lecture 25. Students are required to answer one question from each section
(four questions are provided in each section). Exam questions will cover both lecture
and tutorial material.
In order to be eligible to complete HPSC 3023, completion of one essay and the exam is
required.

READINGS
A required reader of texts for the lectures and the tutorials is available for purchase at cost
from the University Copy Centre. You will be expected to have read the tutorial material in
advance of the tutorial for which it is scheduled. In addition, books associated with the topics
of this unit of study will be placed in the special reserve section of Fisher Library. Some
readings, particularly historical primary sources, may contain sexist or other types of
potentially offensive language, and are used for pedagogical purposes, but in no way
represent the endorsement of such language or views. The Unit for HPS promotes and
requires critical and analytical reading of all materials used in its units of study.

Journals in which articles on conceptual issues in Psychology most frequently appear:


American Psychologist; Theory & Psychology; Philosophical Psychology; Journal for the
History of the Behavioural Sciences; Journal of Theoretical & Philosophical Psychology;
New Ideas in Psychology; Journal of Constructivist Psychology; Journal for the Theory of
Social Behaviour; Behavior & Philosophy; Journal of Mind & Behavior; Mind; Philosophy,
Psychiatry & Psychology

Journals in which articles on the History of Psychiatry appear:


History of Psychiatry; Journal of the History of the Behavioural Sciences; History of
Psychology; Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Journal of the History of Medicine and
Allied Sciences, Social History of Medicine. For Australian sources see: Health and History
(http://www.historycooperative.org/hahindex.html)

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Background readings:
Leahey, T. H. (2004). A history of psychology: Main currents in psychological thought.
Upper Saddle River, NJ, Pearson Prentice Hall.

Eghigian, G., Ed. (2010). From madness to mental health: Psychiatric disorder and its
treatment in Western civilization. New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press.

TIMETABLE – SECTION A
Week 1.
Psychiatry, Mental Illness, Mental Disorder
1 March. What Is Mental Illness? Asylums, Anti-Psychiatry and Labelling
Theory
Psychiatry has always been controversial. Critics have claimed that mental illness is not a
disease and that psychiatrists merely medicalise and pathologise deviant or unusual
behaviour, thereby forcing individuals to conform to middle-class standards of propriety. In
this lecture, an overview of the main criticisms that have been levelled against psychiatry
(asylums, anti-psychiatry and labelling theory) will be given.

Reading
Szasz, T. S. (1974). Introduction. In The myth of mental illness: Foundations of a
theory of personal conduct (revised ed., pp. 1-13). New York: Harper & Row.
Rosenhan, D. L. (1973, Jan. 19). On being sane in insane places. Science, New Series,
179, 250-258.
Slater, L. (2004). On being sane in insane places: Experimenting with psychiatric
diagnosis. In Opening Skinner’s box: Great psychological experiments of the
twentieth century (pp. 64-93). New York: Norton.

Further Reading
Thomas S. Szasz. The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the
Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse
University Press, 1997, or. 1970;
For labelling theory see: Thomas J. Scheff. Being Mentally Ill: A Sociological Theory.
3rd ed. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1999.
About Laing consult Daniel Burston. The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of
R.D. Laing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996; The Crucible of
Experience: R.D. Laing and the Crisis of Psychotherapy. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000.
For historical overviews of anti-psychiatry see: Paul Laffey. “Antipsychiatry in
Australia: Sources for a Social and Intellectual History.” Health and History 5,
no. 2 (2003): 17-36.Erving Goffman. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation
of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Achor Books/Doubleday,
1961.

4 March. Mental Illness and Mental Disorder in a Global Perspective


The expression of mental disorder is historically and culturally variable. We will investigate
what it depends on, and how new models for mental illness come about.

Reading
Watters, E. (2010). “Introduction,” and “The Rise of Anorexia in Hong Kong,” in:
Crazy like us: The globalization of the American psyche. New York, Free
Press.
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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Week 2. Mind and Mental Illness


8 March. Mind, Body, and Psychosomatic Medicine
An interest in the many connections between the mind and the body has characterised
medical, popular and theological thought for centuries. After the rise of modern medicine,
with its focus on physical lesions, infections, and surgery, it became much harder to pursue
these interests within medicine.

Reading
Harrington, Anne. The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine. New York:
Norton, 2008. Pp. 88-101; 126-133.
T. H. Leahey, A history of psychology: Main currents in psychological thought. 6th ed,
pp. 209-211; 228-243.

Further reading
Harrington, Anne, ed. The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Explanation.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.

11 March. The Origin of the Asylum


Psychiatry as a discipline originated in the mental hospital. Initially, lunatics were considered
animals because they had lost their reason. Harsh and brutal treatment awaited them. In the
beginning of the 19th century, a different approach to mental illness became popular: moral
treatment. Doctors advocating moral treatment considered the mad as confused children in
need of a gentle guidance. The treatment of the mentally ill improved considerably when the
ideals of moral treatment became popular. After mental hospitals increased in size and
became overcrowded, the ideals of moral treatment were impossible to maintain.

Reading
Scull, A. (1989). The domestication of madness. In Social order/mental disorder: Anglo-
American psychiatry in historical perspective (pp. 54-79). Berkeley: University of
California Press.

Movie
The Madness of King George.

Further Reading
For moral treatment see Nancy Tomes. The Art of Asylum Keeping: Thomas Story
Kirkbride and the Origins of American Psychiatry. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1994; Anne Digby. “Moral Treatment at the Retreat, 1796-
1846.” In The Anatomy of Madness: Essays in the History of Psychiatry, edited by
W.F. Bynum, Roy Porter and Michael Shepherd, 52-72. London: Tavistock, 1983.
For psychiatry in Australia and New Zealand see: Catharine Coleborne, and Dolly
MacKinnon, eds. ‘Madness’ in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum.
Brisbane, Qld.: University of Queensland Press with the API Network, 2003.

Friday 12 March. Excursion to the site of the former Callan Park Mental
Hospital
Excursion to the site and buildings of the former mental hospital at Callan Park, now the
Sydney College of the Arts. Callan Park was one of the first mental hospitals in Australia and
was built according to the principles of moral treatment. When it opened in 1877, it was the
most expensive structure ever built in Australia.
Attendance is voluntary.
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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Week 3. Neurasthenia and Hysteria


15 March. Neurasthenia and the Rest Cure
In the 1870s, the American neurologist George Miller Beard introduced neurasthenia, which
was characterized by vague complaints such as depression, restlessness, irritability,
sleeplessness, fatigue, headaches, and the like. It primarily affected upper-middle class men
engaged in desk work and intellectual labour. According to Beard, neurasthenia was one of
the consequences of the advances of civilisation, which taxed our brains beyond its natural
capacities.

Readings
Rosenberg, C. E. (1962). The place of George M. Beard in nineteenth century psychiatry.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 36, 245-259.

Further Reading
For a more general history of vague complaints within psychiatry see Edward Shorter.
From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era.
New York: Free Press, 1992. For an international perspective on neurasthenia see
Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra, and Roy Porter. Cultures of Neurasthenia: From Beard to
the First World War. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001.

18 March. Hysteria, Hypnosis, and Jean-Martin Charcot


In the 1880s, Jean-Martin Charcot introduced the diagnosis of hysteria for a wide variety of
psychological phenomena he had observed in his female patients in a Paris mental hospital.
Hysterics generally suffered from local paralyses for which no neurological explanation could
be found. They were unusually susceptible to hypnosis. After Charcot’s death, the diagnosis
disappeared.

Reading
Showalter, E. (1985). Feminism and hysteria: The daughter’s disease. In The female
malady: Women, madness, and English culture, 1830-1980 (pp. 145-164). New
York: Pantheon.

Further Reading
Georges Didi-Huberman. The Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic
Iconography of Salpetriere. Translated by Alisa Hartz. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003;
Sander L. Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, G.S. Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter.
Hysteria Beyond Freud. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993; Mark
Micale. Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995.
For hysteria today see Elaine Showalter. Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern
Culture: Alien Abduction, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Satanic Ritual Abuse,
Recovered Memory, Gulf War Syndrome, Multiple Personality Syndrome. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

Week 4. Psychoanalysis and mental hygiene


22 March. Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
In 1900, Sigmund Freud published his Interpretations of Dreams and developed his talking
cure for the treatment of hysteria and other mental disorders. According to Freud, mental
disorders are rooted in life experiences and the internal psychological dynamics of desire and
its repression. Psychoanalysis, although always controversial, has profoundly influenced the
history of psychiatry.

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Reading
Forrester, J. (1998). Portrait of a dream reader. In M. S. Roth (Ed.), Freud: Conflict
and culture (pp. 51-61). New York: Knopf.
T. H. Leahey, A history of psychology: Main currents in psychological thought, 6th
ed., pp. 264-293.

Further Reading
For a great (and adoring) biography of Freud see Peter Gay. Freud: A Life for Our
Time. New York: Norton, 1988; for a more critical analysis of Freud’s work
see Frank J. Sulloway. Freud: Biologist of the Mind. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992.
For recent debates on Freud’s influence see, for example, Frederick Crews. The
Memory Wars: Freud’s Legacy in Dispute. New York: New York Review
Book, 1995; and Frederick Crews, ed. Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront
a Legend. New York: Penguin, 1998.
For psychoanalysis in Australia see: Joy Damousi. Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural
History of Psychoanalysis in Australia. Kensington, NSW: UNSW Press, 2005
and Stephen Garton. “Freud and the Psychiatrists: The Australian Debate, 1900
to 1940.” In Intellectual Movements and Australian Society, edited by Brian
Head and James Walter, 170-87. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988.

25 March. Mental Hygiene and the Psychiatric Diagnosis of Society


Mental hygienists were psychiatrists who wanted to bring psychiatry out of the mental
hospital and into the community. They wanted to make treatment available to more people
before more severe forms of mental illness could develop. They believed that prevention was
better than cure. Mental hygienists also advocated far-reaching measures of social
reconstruction to create a better society in which there would be fewer cases of mental illness.

Reading
Albee, G. W. (1990). The futility of psychotherapy. Journal of Mind and Behavior,
11(3/4), 369-384.
Pols, H. (2001). Divergences in American psychiatry during the Depression: Somatic
psychiatry, community mental hygiene, and social reconstruction. Journal of the
History of the Behavioral Sciences, 37(4), 369-388.

Further Reading
Ken Smith. Mental Hygiene: Classroom Films, 1945-1970. New York: Blast Books,
1999.

Week 5. Biological psychiatry


29 March. Somatic Treatments in Psychiatry
The only Nobel Prize ever awarded for research in psychiatry and neurology went to the
Portuguese neurologist Egaz Moniz, the inventor of lobotomy, in 1949. At the time of its
introduction in the 1930s, lobotomy was heralded as an exciting new surgical technique that
could liberate thousands of patients from the mental hospital. Other somatic treatment
methods that were common before 1940 were: malaria fever therapy, metrazol shock therapy,
insulin coma therapy, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).

Reading
Braslow, J. T. (1996). The influence of a biological therapy on physician’s narratives
and interrogations: The case of general paralysis of the insane and malaria fever
therapy, 1910-1950. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 70(4), 577-608.

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Further Reading
For a history of somatic treatments in psychiatry see Joel T. Braslow. Mental Ills and
Bodily Cures: Psychiatric Treatment in the First Half of the Twentieth Century.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. For a critical perspective
see: Elliot S. Valenstein. Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental
Health. New York: Free Press, 1998. For a favourable (and uncritical) perspective
see: Edward Shorter. A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the
Age of Prozac. New York: John Wiley, 1997.
About lobotomy see: Elliot S. Valenstein. Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and
Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness. New
York: Basic Books, 1986. Jack D. Pressman. Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the
Limits of Medicine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
About ECT: Shorter, Edward, and David Healy. Shock Therapy: The History of
Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2007.

1 April. DSM, Biological Psychiatry, and the Pharmaceutical Industry


The DSM is the Bible of diagnostic psychiatry. When your condition can be labelled with one
of the many diagnoses of the DSM, you have a disorder. In the past, psychiatric diagnoses,
however, have turned out to be remarkably flexible. In 1980, homosexuality was voted out as
a mental disorder, at the same time when Posttraumatic Stress Disorder was voted in. Is there
an objective or empirical basis for many of the disorders in the DSM?

Reading
Horwitz, A. V. (2002). The emergence of diagnostic psychiatry. In Creating mental
illness (pp. 56-82). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Moynihan, R., Heath, I., & Henry, D. (2002). Selling sickness: The pharmaceutical
industry and disease mongering. British Medical Journal, 324, 886-891.

Further reading
For a well-known critiques of DSM-III see Stuart A. Kirk, and Herb Kutchins. The
Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry. New York: Aldine de
Gruyter, 1992; Herb Kutchins, and Stuart A. Kirk. Making Us Crazy: DSM, the
Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders. New York: Free
Press, 1997. Paula J. Caplan. They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most
Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s Normal. New York: Perseus, 1995.
Vladan Starcevic. “Opportunistic ‘Rediscovery’ of Mental Disorders by the
Pharmaceutical Industry.” Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics 71, no. 6
(2002): 305-310.
For philosophical deliberations see: John Z. Sadler, ed. Descriptions and
Prescriptions: Values, Mental Disorders, and the DSMs. Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002 and Rachel Cooper. “What Is Wrong
with the DSM?” History of Psychiatry 15, no. 1 (2004): 5-25.
Barber, Charles. 2009. Comfortably numb: How psychiatry is medicating a nation.
New York: Vintage.

Week 6. War and Trauma


12 April. War, Trauma, and Psychiatry
Is participating in war inherently traumatic? The number of veterans with psychiatric
complaints has always been high. During World War I, soldiers were diagnosed with shell

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

shock. During World War II, with war neurosis, combat fatigue, or combat stress. And after
the Vietnam War, the diagnosis of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was introduced.

Readings
Pols, H. (1999). The repression of war trauma in American psychiatry after World
War II. In R. Cooter, M. Harrison & S. Sturdy (Eds.), Medicine and modern
warfare (pp. 251-276). Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi.
Summerfield, D. (2001). The invention of post-traumatic stress disorder and the social
usefulness of a psychiatric category. British Medical Journal, 322, 95-98.

Further Reading
Pols, Hans. “War Neurosis, Adjustment Problems in Veterans, and an Ill Nation: The
Disciplinary Project of American Psychiatry During and after World War II.”
OSIRIS 21 (2007): 72-92.
Pols, Hans, and Stephanie Oak. “War and Military Mental Health: The US Psychiatric
Response in the Twentieth Century.” American Journal of Public Health 96,
no. 12 (2007): 2132-42.
Wilbur J. Scott. “PTSD in DSM-III: A Case in the Politics of Diagnosis and Disease.”
Social Problems 37, no. 3 (1990): 294-310; Ben Shephard. A War of Nerves:
Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914-1994. London: Jonathan Cape, 2000; Hans
Binnenveld. From Shellshock to Combat Stress: A Comparative History of
Military Psychiatry. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1997; Simon
Wesseley, and Edgar Jones. Shell Shock to PTSD: Military Psychiatry from
1900 to the Gulf War. Vol. 47, Maudsley Monographs. New York: Psychology
press for the Maudsley, 2005; Allan Young. The Harmony of Illusions:
Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1995.

Essay Assignment on the History of Psychiatry due today

15 April. Trauma, Repressed Memories, and False Memory Syndrome


In 1980, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder became part of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual, the diagnostic Bible of psychiatry. Psychiatrists applied this diagnosis to victims of
rape, sexual abuse, violence, and natural disasters. These experiences are, not surprisingly,
associated with painful memories. Advocates of psychotherapy argued that therapy helped in
uncovering memories which have been repressed because of their painful nature; critics
argued that psychotherapy merely created these memories, and that these were thereby false.

Reading
Loftus, E., & Ketcham, K. (1994). Entranced. In The myth of repressed memory: False
memories and allegations of sexual abuse (pp. 8-19). New York: St. Martin’s
Press.

Further Reading
For an overview of medical and psychiatric reactions to trauma see Mark S. Micale,
and Paul Lerner. Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the
Modern Age, 1870-1930. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Chris R. Brewin. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Malady or Myth? New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2003. Richard J. McNally. Remembering Trauma.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Week 7.
19 April. Psychology and Psychiatry in the non-Western World
Both psychologists and psychiatrists claim to deal with universal categories. Yet some critics
argue that they embody Western approaches to Western minds. What about psychology and
psychiatry in other parts of the world?

Reading
Pols, H. (2007). The nature of the native mind: Contested views of Dutch colonial
psychiatrists in the former Dutch East Indies. In S. Malone & M. Vaughan
(Eds.), Psychiatry and empire. London: Palgrave MacMillan.
Saminaden, Annick, Stephen Loughnan, and Nick Haslam. 2010. Afterimages of
savages: Implicit associations between ‘primitives’, animals and children.
British Journal of Social Psychology. To be published; available on the web.

Further Reading:
Pols, Hans. “Psychological Knowledge in a Colonial Context: Theories on the Nature
of The “Native” Mind in the Former Dutch East Indies.” History of Psychology
10, no. 2 (2007): 111-31.
For psychiatry see: Megan Vaughan. Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African
Illness. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991; Jonathan Sadowsky.
Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999. For psychology see:
Psychology around the world.
See also: Nandy, Ashis. “The Non-Paradigmatic Crisis of Indian Psychology:
Reflections on a Recipient Culture of Science.” Indian Journal of Psychology
49, no. 1 (1974): 1-20; Nandi, Ashis. The Savage Freud and Other Essays on
Possible and Retrievable Selves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1995.
Sexton, Virginia Staudt, and John D. Hogan, eds. International Psychology: Views
from around the World. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

TIMETABLE – SECTION B
Psychology and the Philosophy of Science
Week 7
22 April. The relationship between Psychology and Philosophy
In examining this relationship, we need to establish what is meant by the ‘philosophical test’
or ‘conceptual analysis’ and why the philosophical test is so important to all science,
including Psychology and Psychiatry. This is done through examining the nature of theory
and the hypothetico-deductive method. We also consider a metaphysical reason for
philosophy’s relevance to Psychology.

Week 8
29 April. Logical Positivism and its Impact on Psychology: Operationalism
In this and the next lecture we examine the most influential of the philosophies of science on
Psychology – logical positivism. A little of this philosophy needs to be understood in order to
recognise the role that it’s played in shaping Psychology as a discipline. The most important
legacy has been operationalism, i.e., the methodological dictum that Psychology operationally
define its variables. We examine operationalism’s insurmountable logical difficulties and
consider why the doctrine continues to live on.

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

Week 9
3 May. Logical Positivism and its Impact on Psychology: Intervening variables
Logical positivism’s scepticism towards metaphysics also influenced a scepticism in
Psychology towards hypothetical constructs. In this lecture, we differentiate between
hypothetical constructs and intervening variables, and we examine the logical problems
involved in the latter.

6 May. Instrumentalism and Popper’s theory of falsificationism in Psychology


Neither instrumentalism nor falsificationism make the truth of a theory the scientific priority.
In this lecture, we examine both doctrines, consider examples of them in Psychology, and
identify the problems associated with both.

Week 10
10 May. Is Psychology still waiting for its first scientific paradigm?
What, if any, have been the influences of Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions on
Psychology? In this lecture, we examine Kuhn’s account of science before considering
Psychology’s appropriation of the Kuhnian model.

13 May. Are Psychology’s observations theory-laden, theory-dependent, or theory-


neutral?
If Kuhn et al. are right, all the observations made by scientists are paradigm/theory-laden. In
this lecture, we discuss this possibility and its implications for an objective science of
Psychology.

Week 11
17 May. Social constructionism and post-modernism in Psychology
Kuhn’s account of science was a significant influence on the social constructionist movement
which developed in the 1980s. Social constructionism offers a radical alternative to
positivist-empiricist philosophies of science, and its influence in Psychology is greatest in the
‘softer’ areas of the discipline. We consider some of constructionism’s central tenets and the
logical problems they encounter.

Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind


20 May. Descartes, Dualism, and Cogito Ergo Sum
In this and the following lecture, we provide the intellectual context for the concepts of mind
that subsequently informed Psychology and Psychiatry. We examine Descartes’ meta-
physics, his mind-body dualism and his Cogito Ergo Sum argument.

Week 12
24 May. John Locke and British Empiricism
This lectures provides an overview of Locke’s concept of ‘idea’ and primary and secondary
qualities in the context of Cartesian and Newtonian physics.

Essay Assignment on the Philosophy of Psychology due today.

27 May. The concept of behaviour


This lectures examines what must, and what cannot, be meant by the term ‘behaviour’? We
demonstrate three necessary components of any item of behaviour and explain why other
analyses run into problems.

Week 13

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HPSC3023 Syllabus

31 May. The observability of mental processes and the concept of cognition


In these next two lectures, we consider whether cognition can be observed, mind-brain
identity theory, and a non-Cartesian, relational analysis of cognition.

3 June. The concept of motivation


In this lecture, we examine the concepts of intention, purpose, disposition and instinctual
drives.

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