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History & Philosophy of Psychology (2010), Vol. 12(1), 4649.

The British Psychological Society

Change and Invariance in the History of

Psychology

Arthur StillDurham University

In an important paper over 20 years ago Roger Smith asked the question Does the

History of Psychology have a Subject? He was questioning the assumption that there

is an invariant essence to which the word psychology (and other words like

memory and emotion) corresponds, and criticising histories based on this

assumption. Given this assumption, a history of psychology has simply been an

account of how this timeless and universal subject matter has been studied and written

about over some 2500 years, as in the standard texts of G.S. Brett and GardnerMurphy. The assumption also lends itself to a comparative approach: how have othercultures dealt with this human universal?

Rogers question arises from a contextual approach to history, and his answeris to deny any such human universal. Instead psychology has emerged out of a

particular context at a particular time, and it is a mistake to assume its existence inother cultures, either Western cultures at earlier times, or in other cultures. This is

also true of the familiar psychological categories, such as memory and emotion. We

distort the record when we impose our categories upon the past. Their referents are

not there, waiting to be scientifically observed and understood, like rainbows or

beetles. The categorical systems that govern discourse about these physical entities

may change beyond recognition, but the discourse is still about rainbows and beetles.So histories of meteorology and entomology study their social and cultural contexts,

but they also have their invariant objects in the world to anchor them independently of

such contexts. Roger Smith, and other recent historians of psychology regard

psychology as lacking referents of this kind, and therefore there is nothing but

changing context to hold the subject together. There is something very liberating

about this. Freed of the invariances of real essences, Smith and others have been ableto suggest constant movement rather than stasis as they focus upon changes in

categorical systems and differences between them. This emphasis shows itself in anumber of places in Smiths paper.

1. Statements about being human . . . have meaning because they occupy a

place in ways of life that have a history. (p.26; authors italics). He argues from thisthat To comprehend a scientific proposition we understand something of the

unfolding story or history in which both scientists and their subjects are actors. He

qualifies in a parenthesis; the understanding may be tacit, following from the persons

membership in a community. Nevertheless, the informed psychologist should know,

he concludes, the historical and social conditions that make this unfolding flow of

meaning possible (hence one reason for teaching history to psychology

undergraduates; in the talk on which Smiths paper is based he put it more strongly,

arguing that we needto know the history in order to know the meaning).

2. When psychologists create knowledge about themselves or other people,they change their nature and the nature of others (p27; authors italics). Roger uses

Hackings concept of looping to emphasise this constant change. Looping acts onwhat Hacking calls human kinds. These are used to categorise people, with no

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Change and Invariance in the History of Psychology 47

implication that they are universal like natural kinds. Looping refers to the way thatcategorisations and therefore human kinds themselves, change when we come to

investigate them and understand them, suggesting a continuous state of flux.Individuals change by talking about themselves, hence the talking cure of Anna O,

and Smiths conclusion that A persons articulated self-knowledge is the vehicle for

changing herself (p.27).Given such constant change it is not surprising that an unbridgeable distance

will be found between ourselves and writers in the past, especially in psychology if

there are no essences to hold the discourse together. Thus:

3. Did Homers heroes, as they battle to the death on the plain before Troy,

describe and experience fear in the same way as modern soldiers? The common-sense

answer, and the answer, I assume, of most psychologists, is that of course all soldiers

have and experience similar psychological states, including fear (p.33; authors

italics). Challenging this assumed response, Smith goes even further and questions

whether they even had psychological states at all. I would add, in support of this, that psychological states may be like the non-existent beetles in Wittgensteins box

(Wittgenstein, 1953), rather than the visible, tangible and sometimes audible beetlesencountered under rocks, both now and 2500 years ago. These non-existent beetles

come into imaginary being as part of a modern language game revolving around innerthoughts and feelings, which was not played by the warriors of the Trojan War they

were not much given to introspection. Context therefore is all, and the context of

Homers heroes was certainly very different from today. Quite rightly Roger rejects

the argument from putatively similar brain states. Perhaps the day is approaching

when fear will be reduced to a brain state, and treated as a natural kind that may well

be shared with Homers heroes. When that day arrives we wont have to ask a child

whether she is frightened or happy, but can verify it scientifically, and sometimes

have gently to tell her that she is wrong. But that will be a different language game,and not what is meant by fear at present.

4. This emphasis on difference and change rather than invariance is summed

up in the stern moral warning of the final sentences. To presuppose that the past is

simply another version of ourselves is to refuse the possibility of an encounter.Concern with context is the historians version of the respectful attitude of mind

which exists in good conversation.Thus Roger Smith presents a view of the world of psychology as a vehicle for

change, including change in the meaning of psychology itself. It is a refreshingcontrast with the earlier view of psychology as a fixed but dimly discerned reality

towards which psychologists struggle. I would question only his emphasis; he has

gone too far in his apparent neglect of invariants, of what doesnt change in the midstof change and of the forces that resist change. To remedy this, here is an alternative

tale for each of the 4 points above.

1. Emphasize the relatively invariant language game in which the actors

participate. Consider for instance the use of experimental method and statistics. The

diligent researcher may participate skilfully in this language game, while being

ignorant of the history of the words and practices involved. Asking historical and

philosophical questions is not part of the language game, and would be a cause of

some embarrassment if raised at a research presentation.1 Such taboos against history

are what preserve the language game from change. They are part of the resistance tochange of a self-organising system. Very successfully in the case of statistics in

psychology. I agree that Without historical knowledge it is simply impossible tounderstand the viewpoints of the present as well as the past. When we look at a

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Arthur Still48

scientist, we may ask: why did she take the point of view and value the particular kindof objective truth or practice which she did? (p.30). But it is a double-edged

argument for teaching history to psychologists who are immersed in their languagegames it could be too unsettling. The great material success of experimental

psychology and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy has not been attained by exploring

origins.2. Human kinds are invariants (though not eternal) and they preserve

themselves as well as change through looping. New knowledge about emotions or

memory may confirm rather than change our ways of talking about them. The

psychiatrist applying DSMIV can reinforce the human kinds embodied there, even

when doing research and generating new knowledge. Clients in therapy like Anna O

do not change just by talking about themselves. Mostly their talk about themselves

serves to fortify the invariants that are the clients problem. In Anna Os case it was

the unresolved complex of images, thoughts and feelings set up by her fathers death.

Nowadays it might be object relations set up in childhood, or the core beliefs; in bothcases it is an invariant, and the business of therapist and client is to become aware of

the invariant as a prelude to undoing its baleful influence.3. Although categorisations may change, and neither Aristotle nor the

Homeric heroes had the categories of psychology or emotion, changes in context andcategories are not all that is important, and they may mask the invariance of what is

equally important. To take a tentative example: When Aristotle in his Physics ended

with a discussion of the psyche, in the book that became known as De Anima, he set

up the grounds for seeing the human being as the joint product of a linear causal chain

and an immaterial, rational soul. This was the invariant structure, present in Aristotle

(and perhaps even Homer) elaborated by Aristotelianism, spelt out by Descartes in a

new language, and now embodied in the thinking and the apparatus of most academic

and applied psychology. This important invariant can be easily obscured behind thetransformations in the systems of categories that have occurred.

4. Concern with context is essential, but not just in bringing out change and

difference; it is also necessary in understanding invariance and resistance to change,

and in bringing out the invariants that seem remarkably resistant to changes incontext. To assume that the other or the past is a version of ourselves is the way of

ignoring context stressed by Roger; but to assume that they are totally different isanother, equally important. Both shut off the openness required for encounter, and

which, in psychotherapy, can reveal the pathological invariants.An emphasis on change and an emphasis on invariance are not symmetrical.

Change is easy to detect over a short time; but invariants need time to become

apparent, and tend to be taken for granted. In a trivial sense looping will always produce some change, even when by far the dominant effect is maintenance of the

self-organising system. It is a matter of degree. Perhaps more than context is needed

to tease out convincingly the long-term invariants that are unaffected, or maintained,

by short-term changes in an evolving intellectual system.

Roger quotes from De Certeau to illustrate the need for study of the past in

order to see ourselves: We travel abroad to discover in distant lands something

whose presence at home has become unrecognizable (p.35). As Roger says, These

distant lands are historical as well as geographical. Stuck in our language games we

need to step outside to see them as they are, since One is unable to notice something because it is always before ones eyes (Wittgenstein, 1953, p.51). But what if the

past contains those very same invariants that are always before our eyes, invisiblebecause they are so familiar? Perhaps then we need to take De Certeaus remark not

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Change and Invariance in the History of Psychology 49

just as a metaphor for the past, but literally. Find a culture that does not have thesame invariants, just as Montaigne used travellers reports of other cultures, as well as

classical literature, to ground his sceptical relativism. So we travel abroad to discoverwhat is different in order to recognize the contingency and the arbitrariness of what

we had thought unquestionable at home.

Buddhism offers a number of interesting advantages in this respect. It isfamiliar in the West and most of its major texts have been translated. The extensive

writings of Pali Buddhism attracted the interest of the British colonial civil service in

the 19th century, as a Godless alternative to Christianity and as a more rational basis

for ethics. The translations of over 100 years ago helped it to fit easily into the

psychological framework in Britain and Germany. At the heart of it, and of all later

forms of Buddhism are the ultimate constituents of experience, the 5 khandhas (or

skandhas in Sanskrit). They are rupa, vedana, sanna, sankhara, vinnana. These areusually translated as body or corporeality, sensation or feeling, perception, thinking or

mental formations, and consciousness. But no deep knowledge of Pali is needed tosee that these translations involve merging the Pali categories into those of Western

psychology. In particular there is more than a hint of a linear causal chain, with thephysical world, leading to sensation, then to perception, thinking and consciousness.

But the Pali categories are not ordered events; they are unordered classificatorygroups of labels within which every experience without exception can be placed. The

aim is not knowledge, but to enable the meditator to classify each experience and

ultimately to recognise and draw back from the constructions of the false reality of

objects that can seem permanent and comforting, such as self, or my lovely new

BMW, and the attachments that go with these, thereby going beyond the dukkha

(suffering or unsatisfactoriness) that is inherent in ordinary existence. Thus Pali

Buddhism, and the later versions of Buddhism built on this, offer a very different

perspective on what it is to be a human being in the world.The hope is that this trip to a foreign culture (having thrown away the

guidebooks which make it seem reassuringly similar to our own), will enable us to

discover, within a very different set of goals, and of categorisations in the service of

these goals, the material for recognizing a set of invariants so at odds with our ownthat they reveal in sharp relief the contingency of what we had taken for granted.

References

Smith, R. (1988) Does the history of psychology have a subject?History of the

Human Sciences, 1(2), 14777.

Wittgenstein, L. (1953)Philosophical Investigations.Oxford: Blackwell.

Address for correspondence

Arthur Still,

6/7 Hadden Farm Cottages, Sprouston, Kelso, TD5 8HU. UK.

Email: awstill@btinternet.com

1There are hints that Rogers emphasis on change is distantly influenced by Kuhns romantic contrast

between revolutionary and normal science. He refers to Kuhn and opposes specialised activity (the

stuff of average scientific careers) to what sounds like the more exciting knowledge of what is meant

by truth and to understanding the social, ethical and political context of psychology. He believes thatthe majority of students will not be satisfied with specialist activity, but doesnt address the tension

between the two.

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