Personal Blogs

In recent meetings, the Culture and Social Psychology group have been revisiting some of the ‘big debates’ within the psychology discipline. In December 2020, invited by Sebastian Bartos, members discussed the relevance of history to psychology.

Psychology and history have an awkward relationship. Most students will be taught about the history of the discipline as part of a recognised topic ‘Conceptual and Historical Issues in Psychology’, commonly referred to as CHIP - a somewhat dismissive acronym (an Open University CHIP resource can be accessed here https://www.open.edu/openlearn/chip ). One relevant issue is whether psychology should be categorised as a science (the planned topic for another CuSP meeting, in February 2021) in contrast to history, which is generally located with the arts and humanities. A scientific status is often associated with a claim that psychological knowledge is ahistorical and universal, providing once and for all ‘truths’ about people and their behaviour, regardless of ‘who’, ‘where’ or ‘when’. Many psychologists, especially social psychologists, would challenge this, claiming instead knowledge must be contextualised, and what holds for people in one situation may not be ‘true’ for others, in a different place and time.

At the CuSP meeting, academics from the group talked about the relevance of history to their research.

Dr David Jones researches mental health and criminal behaviour. He described how in one research project he found that care for the mentally ill continued to be dominated by the closure of the UK’s asylums (in the 1980s) because new forms of community care variously mirrored or reacted to the earlier provision. In David’s words, the asylums ‘cast a long shadow’, both on understandings and treatments of mental health, and this shadow needed to recognised. 

Read more about David Jones here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/dwj88

Dr David Kaposi is currently re-examining some of the most famous research in the history of psychology, Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience. David pointed out that the relation between psychology and history is further complicated by the need also to consider historiography, the writing of history and, more generally, the forms of record-keeping that conventionally support it. Researchers who use archived material and written accounts need to understand the circumstances and assumptions that shaped what was recorded and also, therefore, what was omitted. It’s not appropriate to treat ‘history’ as a neutral record of the past.

Read more about David Kaposi here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/dk3936

Examples that supported this point were evident in Prof. Peter Hegarty’s discussion of the particular relevance of history to his research on intersex surgery. He noted that over time there have been shifts not only in terminology, with earlier terms now seen as pejorative (e.g. ‘hermaphrodite’), but also in the medical focus brought to intersex (for example, on chromosomes or hormones).

Read more about Peter Hegarty here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/ph8658

Dr Johanna Motzkau offered further examples from her research on children as witnesses, and the extent to which their voices are listened to, and heard. A key premise of her research is that ‘each instant of listening is shaped by and expresses political, social and experiential circumstances, i.e. cultures’ (Motzkau and Lee, 2021). So, again, it is necessary to understand the history of an encounter, including a research encounter, and of the problem being investigated.

Read more about Johanna Motzkau here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/jfm238

Dr Rose Capdevila discussed the more general relevance of history to academic research, including how the values that prevail within a particular period, for instance, in favour of or against competitiveness, or ‘niceness’, or collaboration, will shape the research and its findings. Moreover, history is often linked to memory, and the value we place on remembering the past, including past researchers. Rose quoted Sara Ahmed: ‘Citation is feminist memory. Citation is how we acknowledge our debt to those who came before.’ (Ahmed, 2017, p.15).

Read more about Rose Capdevila here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/jfm238

Finally, Dr Sebastian Bartos used the lens of psychology to explore people’s personal understanding of history. In the UK, both laws and public opinions on sexuality have changed over the last 50 years. This provides an opportunity to talk to people about historical change they have personally witnessed – and their understating can be surprisingly nuanced.

Read more about Sebastian Bartos here http://www.open.ac.uk/people/sb42739

References

Sara Ahmed (2017) Living a feminist life. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Johanna Motzkau and Nick Lee (2021, in development) ‘Cultures of listening: psychology, resonance, justice’

The Culture and Social Psychology group (CuSP) in the OU’s School of Psychology and Counselling spearheads a distinctive and innovative approach to the psychological as materially embodied, culturally mediated, and embedded in social practices. CuSP's focus is on social and cultural psychological research into emergent and liminal cultural and political issues. CuSP research is providing new empirical insight into processes of gendered and political subjectivity, the navigation of boundaries (e.g. identities of place, gender, sexuality), emotional dynamics and affective relationships (including group conflicts), contemporary governance through self (work, media, migration) and the power dynamics and phenomenology of health concerns, including real-world applications and impacts. In addition, a number of members are internationally recognised for their methodological expertise and innovation.

A recent CuSP meeting discussed two new pieces of writing by group members. Each output centres, in rather different ways, on problems connected to listening, hearing and voice.

Dr Lisa Lazard presented a chapter on The Sexual Harassment of Hollywood Men, to be part of her new book Predator and Prey? Sexual Harassment, Psychology and Feminism under Neoliberalism. The chapter discusses a recent development in the #MeToo movement, the publicising of men’s accounts of sexual victimisation. The chapter discusses the significance of these different voices, of victims who are male, not female. Will hearing their accounts force people in our predominantly heterosexual culture to reconsider established ideas? Will there be an erosion of an old binary by which men are positioned as active and women as passive or constrained? Dr Lazard argues that the vulnerabilities and power relations involved are more complex.

You can read more about Dr Lazard’s research on her webpage http://fass.open.ac.uk/people/lml279  

Dr Johanna Motzkau presented a new article on her research into why child victims of sexual exploitation are so frequently not heard, even when they speak out. The article, by Johanna Motzkau and Nick Lee, is titled Cultures of listening: psychology, resonance, justice. It reviews social and psychological theories which consider how communication is shaped by power relations that determine who will be listened to, and heard. This is, of course, particularly relevant to child protection, including the many horrific cases in which the victims of organised groups of abusers had repeatedly asked for help but, somehow, not been heard. The paper argues that the necessary response is not to blame the professional front line workers involved but to challenge the cultures in which they must operate. We need to develop different, more open listening practices to be receptive to what has previously, too often, gone unheard.

You can read more about Dr Motzkau’s work on her webpage http://fass.open.ac.uk/people/jfm238

You can learn more about the Culture and Social Psychology collaboration, CuSP, on this webpage http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/groups/cusp  which also contains details of some future events.

Dr David Jones, from the School of Psychology and Counselling, explains how the cross-disciplinary field of psychosocial studies makes a special contribution to criminology, going beyond either psychological or sociological accounts of criminal behaviour. The second edition of his book, Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Perspectives on Criminality and Violence (2019), is published by Routledge.

I wrote the first edition of Understanding Criminal Behaviour  as there seemed to be such a significant gap between the literature that was being produced within the discipline of criminology and the psychological theories that could be applied to criminal behaviour. The effort to build a version of criminology that was shaped within the field of ‘psychosocial studies’ is a response to the problem created by that chasm. I have felt that the project to understand criminal behaviour and its causes has been too long damaged by the failure to fully integrate the emotional, psychological, social and cultural influences on people’s behaviour.  The publication of the 2^ndedition is perhaps some testament to the interest in the area. The new edition has wholly new chapters on what I call ‘public violence/ that includes acts of extremist terror and on ‘race’ and crime. 

The need for such an approach emerges in part from the shape of the criminology discipline as it came to be dominated by sociological thinking, emphasising the socially structured inequalities as the chief causes of crime. Rejection of psychological theorisation was part of this political standpoint. Meanwhile, much academic psychology did little to construct dialogue. Psychology’s focus on the individual appeared to consist of a circular exercise of blaming the criminal for their own criminal propensities. Few psychologists engaged with criminological theory, and the discipline of psychology was dominated by methodological concern to mimic the success of the natural sciences and study people using experimental methods. Questions about the messy lives of those who end up on the wrong side of the law, and how they got there, do not lend themselves well to the methods of experiment and the laboratory.   

Psychosocial Studies began to emerge as a distinct disciplinary area in the late 1980s (albeit with a longer intellectual history) growing from dissatisfaction with mainstream sociology that was viewed as unable to sufficiently engage with the world of subjectivity and agency and also with the discipline of psychology to engage with the significance of the social and cultural domains. It can now best be described as a cross-disciplinaryfield of enquiry that recognises the immanent connections between social and cultural conditions and the ‘internal’ world of the individual. 

There are two outstanding reasons to take forward a psychosocialcriminology. The first is straightforward; there is clearly something lacking in any study of human behaviour that excludes the subjective world of experience. The widely acknowledged impasse in which criminology has found itself is suggestive of that problem (eg, Young 1999). The second is more pressing and contemporary; the functioning of human societies, particularly as they developed within a western context, have become, over the last several centuries, more dependent on the engagement of individuals in the worlds of emotion in order to function.

In order to understand how‘society’ is functioning it is necessary to understand the inevitable interactions between social structures and the subjective and agentive worlds of individuals. Following profound changes in the relationship of the individual to the social world, we have moved towards social conditions in which an understanding of the often reciprocal relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’ has become more prominent. 

These shifts can be described in a number of ways but,  have been described most helpfully by Norbert Elias, mainly through his considerable text The Civilising Process (1939/1994) as he traced the evolution of human western societies since the middle ages. He argues that western civilisation has to be understood as emerging from the development of the modern state as it demanded ever more of its citizens to control the expression of emotion and behaviour. A prominent manifestation of this process was the means through which western nation-statesgradually monopolised the right of violence by restricting its legal use to their own military and police forces,  thus usurping that right from its citizens. 

In partthis was organised through the development and extension of the criminal justice system and the associated systems of policing and control. Far more substantially, according to Elias, this was accomplished through various means that have encouraged the individual to internalise social inhibitions and to take control of their own behaviour.  An important mechanism for this control is the development of the capacity to reflect on ourselves and thus regulate our own behaviour.  This capacity for control has most obviously been brought about through the use of familial relationships to transmit ever more intensive practices that demand that behaviour bereflected upon and thus controlled (Wouters 1999).  

An underlying argument of this book is that shame has been used as a crucialmechanism through which behaviour is regulated; an ever more important social force that directs and inhibits human social behaviour that can also be highly provocative of violence. In particular shame, amalgamated with issues of identity, underlies a great deal of gendered violence. Of course, shame as a hidden and intimate emotion presents major challenges for conventional methods of enquiry. 

At the same time, an extremely important dimension of the social changes wrought over the past several centuries, that have facilitated these moves, has been the influence of what Jurgen Habermas (1962/1989) termed the ‘public sphere’. He identified this as an abstract space that opened up between various influential groups from around the dawn of the 18^thcentury beginning in Europe. Whilst changes in government and the economy were vital, it was the development of forms of public media (originally in the form of the printing press) that was to eventually allow for messages to be transmitted across the globe about how people should behave and be. The public sphere was to have profound implications for how individuals were to relate to another and for the development of individuals’ identities. 

Whilst this occurred initially across western countries, it has impacted on individuals across the world, as the influence of the public sphere has spread across the globe (Malouff 1996). As a number of commentators have argued, following in the work of Foucault (1967), the development of psychiatry and associated mental health services has been a key force in western societies’ demands for particular forms of subjectivity and control. Thus as the requirement that individuals develop the capacity to reflect upon and direct their own lives and behaviour has increased, so too have the various mental health services grown to support these developments  (Rose 1989). 

There are therefore three outstanding issues that have emerged from these historical processes, that are significant for this book: 

Western societies have put increasing emphasis on childhood as a key period in life when children have to internalise the mores, expectations and, values of the culture. This increase is signalled by the length and intensity of formal education and in the emphasis placed on families to provide a foundational and nurturing experience. As we will see a propensity towards criminality and particularly violence is often associated with what are understood to be unsatisfactory early experiences in families. 

The past 200 hundred years have witnessed an explosion of interest in, and the significance of, the ‘mental health’ of the population. Most obvious symptoms of this shift have been the emergence and growth of the various psychological and psychiatric professions. Meanwhile, the criminal justice system has become interlinked, albeit uneasily, with concerns of mental health. We can see this relationship develop over the past couple of centuries as courts at different times have recognised forms of mental disorder that might be associated with types of offending and people fitting those categories began to be treated differently. Contemporary surveys of prison populations suggest that large proportions of inmates can be identified with suffering from a significant form of mental disorder.   

The influence of the public sphere on individual identity has become a more pressing feature of everyday experience. The influence of the public sphere means that we are no longer negotiating our identities solely through our relationships with those individuals and communities who live around us, but with the more global forces of the public sphere. 

As a discipline,criminology has not been engaging in a sustained way with these key issues. The aversion to psychological theorisation has stymied the capacity of the discipline to engage with such highly significant issues. A psychosocial approach is therefore required and this book is offered as a contribution to that end. 

Dr David Jones is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Counselling. He is currently working on a new module called ‘Exploring Mental Health and Counselling’ (D241) that is due to run from October 2020 . You can read more about his research and teaching here 

http://www.open.ac.uk/people/dwj88

References

Elias, N (1994/1939) The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigation.  Trans Edmund Jephcott. Blackwell: Oxford.

Foucault, M. (1967)  Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.Translated by Richard Howard. Tavistock Publications: London

Habermas, J. [1962] 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An

Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. translated by Thomas Burger with the

assistance of Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Jones, D W. (2020) Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Perspectives on Criminality and Violence.Routledge: Abingdon

Maalouf, A. (1996)  In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong.  Trans. Barbara Bray New York: Arcade Publishing.

Rose, N. (1989)  Governing the soul: the shaping of the private self.  Routledge: London.

Wouters, C. (1999) ‘Changing patterns of social controls and self-controls.’ Brit. Journal  of Criminology 39 (3) 416-432

Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society: Social Exclusion, Crime and Difference in Late Moderntiy.  Sage: London.

In this week’s social psychology blog, Sue Nieland writes about a category of voters who are usually disregarded in political polls, known as the Silent Generation. She reflects on the political failure to acknowledge their experience and viewpoint, and explains their special importance for her PhD research.

I voted to remain in the EU in 2016, and I am classed as an older citizen. I soon grew tired of the constant clustering together of anyone over 60 as ‘old and voted leave’ as I definitely am not, did not and neither did many of my contemporaries (vote leave, that is). 

Looking at this further when thinking about my  PhD in political psychology, I found that the use of categories to cluster people, whilst convenient, hides some deeper meanings in political decision-making, particularly for the older citizen. Many researchers are busily investigating reasons for the unforeseen outcome of the UK-EU referendum. I wanted to explore how experiences of Europe and our relationship with it influenced the vote. I decided it was particularly important to hear from the voters who have lived the longest and whose experiences include the Second World War and its aftermath. 

Polling data by YouGov, Ipso MORI and Survation clusters voters by age. Survation’s categories are typically 18-24, 25-34 up to 65-74 followed by a final category of 75+. Ipso MORI are similar, featuring 65+ as a final category, or occasionally 75+ depending on the data collection. YouGov use a final 65+ category for most of their survey research. There is therefore a general tendency to cluster everyone over 65 into a single category or occasionally to subdivide them at 75. The message from this is that once you are over 65 years old, you are part of a group spanning possibly 40 years. Your opinion and political choices are no longer important enough to disaggregate further. 

This leads to generalisations around citizen choices. The important one for my PhD is that ‘older people voted to leave the EU’. This, though, may not be an accurate conclusion. Evidence is emerging that whilst someolder people did vote to leave the EU (the so-called Boomers), those older still were more likely to vote to remain. My PhD will explore this in detail, and particularly around the experiences of a unique cohort of people, the Silent Generation, born between 1927 and 1946 – now aged between 73 and 92 years. Participants in this group may remember World War II and its aftermath. They will certainly recall the rise of the European Union and the first referendum in 1975.  Their political decision making will be influenced by experiences that other younger citizens nostalgically refer to (without actually having been there), such as the ‘Blitz spirit’ and war-winning achievements that are often cited as reasons why a hard Brexit will be survivable (even if we have to eat turnips for ten years). 

There are further categories that also diminish the older citizen. The ‘third age’ is used to refer to the active aging, such as those who are still in some way contributing to society or using their retirement productively to continue working, learning or travelling. But there is also the ‘fourth age’, described by Gilleard and Higgs (2010) as a ‘black hole’ into which people who are infirmed and dependent, and (supposedly) of limited societal value, are aggregated. The ‘black hole’ metaphor is well chosen – it can suck those from the third age into it if they are not aging in a way that keeps them away from its edges. 

The Silent Generation received their label  because they tend not to talk about their experience of the Second World War and what came afterwards. But there is an argument that they are silent for other reasons – that their value as citizens and their opinions are not recognised. However, they have a form of ‘situated value’. This was seen recently during the 75^thanniversary of the D-Day landings on 6June 2019 when veterans were rolled out to reminisce about their experiences and revisit the horrors of that time, before being rolled back into silence. What was significant, though, about the events of 6 June 2019 is that the veterans were notsilent about the EU and our decision to leave. Some of them expressed regret at the decision to leave the EU in 2016 and the threat that brings to peace that has existed since then. As Will Hutton argued in the Observer just days after the event, there was a ‘disjunction’ between the values held dear by the veterans and Brexit. In his words, ‘it betrayed what they had fought for’ (Hutton, 2019). However, this message is now forgotten, for the value of the Silent Generation was only acknowledged around 6 June 2019 . Politically we have moved on. 

When building my PhD proposal, I believed that I could contribute to ‘giving a voice’ to the Silent Generation.  However, with the benefit of supervision and more reading, I realised that I want to explore this group of people from a dialogical approach, building on the work of Zittoun (2014) and others.  In my PhD, I intend to explore the voices of this generation and their political decision making. I will also investigate the role of nostalgia in politics. One important question will be whether political references to World War II do represent what the war meant to those who experienced it. 

References

Gilleard, C. and Higgs, P. (2010) Aging without agency: Theorizing the fourth age, Aging and Mental Health, 14:2, pp. 121 – 128

Hutton, W. (2019) ‘These old heroes evoked a glorious shared purpose. It’s now under threat’, The Observer, 9^thJune, p. 45

Zittoun, T. (2014) Three dimensions of dialogical movement, New Ideas in Psychology, 22, 99 – 106. 

This week’s blog is the first in a new series from PhD students in the School of Psychology and Counselling. Sue Nieland is a member of the School’s staff who is studying for a PhD in social psychology. You can read more about the School and its staff here http://fass.open.ac.uk/psychology

 You can watch a short video about the Level 3 Social Psychology module DD317 here https://learn2.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=1258641

You might also be interested in the Open Learn short course DD317_1 Social psychology and politics: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/health-sports-psychology/social-psychology-and-politics/content-section-0