Social Change and Personality: Essays in Honor of Nevitt Sanford PDF
Preview Social Change and Personality: Essays in Honor of Nevitt Sanford
Recent Research in Psychology Social Change and Personality Essays in Honor of Nevitt Sanford Edited by Mervin B. Freedman Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York London Paris Tokyo Editor Mervin B. Freedman 866 Spruce Street Berkeley, California 94707, USA ISBN-13: 978-0-387-96485-0 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4615-7864-2 DOl: 10 .1007/978-1-4615-7864-2 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photocopying machine or similar means, and storage in data banks. Under § 54 of the German Copyright Law where copies are made for other than private use, a fee is payable to "Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort", Munich. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1987 281713140-543210 To Nevitt Sanford this book is dedicated by students and colleagues for whom he has been an inspiration by virtue of his unique ability to grasp the essence of a social problem, to see research issues in the widest theoretical perspective, and to explicate the human relevance of scientific, intellectual, and academic concerns. Table of Contents Preface 1 Mervin B. Freedman 1. Introduction 4 Mervin B. Freedman 2. The Anatomy of a Paradigm Shift: Toward a theory of learning, with 15 exhibits from the Humanities and other disciplines Joseph Axelrod 3. Hazards of Goliath in the Nuclear Age: The need for rational 40 priorities in American peace and defense policies Christian Bay 4. American Anti-Semitism Now: A political psychology perspective 80 Mervin B. Freedman 5. Changed Sexual Behavior and New Definitions of Gender Roles 116 on the College Campus Joseph Katz 6. The Lonely Presidency 140 David Riesman 7. personality Development in Highly Educated Women in the 152 Years Eighteen to Forty-five Emily J. Serkin 8. Dying, Denying, and Willing the Obligatory 177 Edwin S. Shneidman 9. Psychology and Humanism 199 M. Brewster Smith 10. Bibliography of Nevitt Sanford 214 11. Index 227 Preface Nevitt Sanford's career in psychology has spanned the years from the 1930's to the present. The canon of his works is vast--eight books and some 200 chapters, monographs, and articles. The contributions to this book, by students and colleagues, remind us of the great variety and significance of the concerns and interests he has addressed--development over the course of a human life, education (with emphasis upon higher education), personality theory, and political psychology (incorporating the concept of social action). Arriving upon the scene in psychology when he did, one of Nevitt Sanford's first publications, KhY~i~~~, K~~~££~li!r, ~££ ~£~£l~~~~iE (1943), reflected the interest of that time in biology and physiology (a concern of psychology which declined for some time thereafter, to be revived in the 1960's). It was also, however, the decade after psycho- analysis and Marxist ideology had made their dramatic entrance upon the stage of American intellectual life, and these two schools of thought, in many ways contradictory, have profoundly influenced him ever since. Nevitt has never lost his fascination with the power of infancy and childhood to affect development, and with the workings of the unconscious. See his article, "Individual and Social Change in a Community under Pres sure: The Oath Controversy" (1953), in which he explicated the manner in which shared unconscious defenses in individuals contributed to a political and organizational crisis. To be sure, he has not reflected the influence of class and economic analysis as dogma, which comes down over the senses like a butterfly net. Rather, he has been ever aware of the significance of political, economic, and social power, culture, lang uage, role, and status in determining the behavior and characteristics of individuals, organizations, and societies. F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945) wrote that the test of a first-rate in telligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. Nevitt Sanford has maintained self and society, internal urges and external constraints and shaping, in a perilous but functional equipoise. In the discipline of psy chology, marked as it is today by increasing and often dysfunctional specialization, this capacity to entertain paradox, to forestall pre mature closing of the boundaries of a system, warrants both close at ten- 2 tion and emulation. One may spend much time explicating the specifics of the contribu tions Nevitt has made to the psychological sciences. He is in the tradi tion of the British school of philosophy founded by Jeremy Bentham, known to us as utilitarianism, with its anti-elitist stance, its empha sis on the power of education, and its concern for universal human rights. Bertrand Russell said of it: "As a movement devoted to reform, utilitarianism has certainly achieved more than all the idealist philos sphies put together, and it has done this without much fuss "(1959, p. 265). So it is that Nevitt views communities, agencies, institutions, organizations primarily from the perspective of their contribution to the development of their constituent individuals. The fulfilled individ ual is his measure. For him, for example, the gross national product is not the sole index of national progress; rather, such an index should be based in considerable part on enhancement of the skills, knowledge, and capacities of the people who contribute to economic growth. Also deeply influenced by John Dewey, who imposed upon the scholar the obligation to put knowledge to work in the solution of social prob lems, it follows that the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the International Society of Political ~sychology have been dear to Nevitt's heart. As all who have come to know him cannot fail to be aware, Thomas Jefferson and Sigmund Freud occupy the places of honor in Nevitt Sanford's pantheon of heroes. In many ways, he is a child of The Enlightenment, committed to an Apollonian vision, a world of form and functional struc ture in which reason, intellect, cognition are to serve to fashion a more just society. His thinking and his work also have been permeated, however, with the cognizance that the Age of Reason produced the Marquis de Sade. Irony, conflict,tragedy perforce are part of his weltanschauung. Bridging the mind and the heart is an Herculean task, but Nevitt has not despaired over the duality and pessimism contained in the psychoanalytic vision. The questions and problems really worth addressing have no easy answers or solutions, and sometime no answers or solu:icns at all, but it has been a fundamental tenet of Nevitt's professional life to shed what light he could, and to extend a measure of human sympathy along the way. Through his teaching and his writing Nevitt Sanford has helped many to see more clearly. This festschrift is an occasion to honor him as a scholar, a teacher, an always generous disseminator of the word he shaped so assiduously for so many years. "Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style," wrote Jonathan Swift in 1720. And those who have known Nevitt are wont toconjure up images he conveyed to them, 3 social and psychological concerns marked by his signature. Passionate pursuit of the intellectual life needs witnesses. Dr. Nevitt Sanford has been a witness. REFERENCES Fitzgerald, F.S. !~! Crac~=£E. New York: New Directions, 1975. Russell, B. Wisd~ £! the ~!!!. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959. Sanford, R.N. "Physique, Personality, and Scholarship." Monographs of !~! ~£ci!!Z !£! ~~rc~ l~ Chil~ Development, 1943, ~, No.1, whole issue. Sanford, N. "Individual and Social Change in a Community under Pressure: The Oath Controversy." ~£~~al £! ~££ial l!!~!!, 1953, ~, 25-42. Mervin B. Freedman Berkeley, 1985 Introduction Mervin B. Freedman The essays in this book written by colleagues and former students of Nevitt Sanford are more than encomiums designed to honor him. Because they offer valuable information about and insight into human and social existence in the vein of the spirit and character of this work, they are of interest to social and behavioral scientists. But they are of interest as well to readers who have but little technical background in such fields, for they make human and social life more vivid. The vagar ies of sexuality, the professor in the classroom, the foreboding and fear of death, nuclear war and disarmament, anti-Semitism and the Ameri can character, the lives of highly educated women are among the topics addressed. Formally the authors represent the disciplines of psychology, so ciology, philosophy, political science, literature, and the humanities. Their thinking unfolds, however, in ways that are truly interdisciplinary and underlying the concept of an interdisciplinary approach are a host of significant considerations. Nevitt Sanford has been ever alert to the limitations of the view from one discipline alone; he has known that to ask a question such as, "What can psychology contribute to an understand ing of the nuclear arms race?," is to open the door to a circumscribed vision. The issues involved in nuclear disarmament, for example, are economic, political, psychological, sociological, technological, mili tary, to cite but some, as Christian Bay's chapter, "Hazards of Goliath in the Nuclear Age," explicates. One is struck by the proliferation in the social and behavioral sciences of books and researches that focus on pushing narrow domains of knowledge ever farther out. Underlying such activity is an implicit assumption that in time such accretions of information will eventuate in a systematic or integrated body of knowledge. That this rarely hap pens, however, is overlooked. Consider the many, many thousands of re searches in psychology devoted to human learning. As Nevitt Sanford has pointed out (1962), if a faculty member in a college or university were to inquire as to which of these researches might be of help to him, the answer would be that except for a relatively small body of research con cerned with attitude change none would be relevant to his teaching con cerns. Joseph Axelrod's chapter, "The Anatomy of a Paradigm Shift," well 5 illustrates the enormous distance between a sophisticated and complex approach to classroom teaching and most laboratory representations of human learning. An interdisciplinary approach to issues in the social and behavior al sciences raises the questions as to how and when to define parameters or limits to the system under investigation. The answer for Nevitt San ford, and hardly a simple answer, begins with the selection of a human or social problem, a problem-centered approach to the generation of hu man knowledge. The question, which then becomes, "What do I need to know in order to understand this problem?," does not stand alone, but is tied closely to another: "How may I utilize this knowledge or understanding to meliorate this problem?" In the tradition of Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Giambattista Vico, knowing involves not only perceiving but also doing or making. Bergson emphasizes action in contrast to the ap plication of a static and rigid rationalist approach to scientific in quiry. (Sanford, however, although attuned to Bergson's pragmatism, rejects his more irrational and romantic dispositions.) For John Dewey the role of the scholar should be to put knowledge to work in the solu tion of social problems. For Vico human beings can best understand what they themselves fabricate. The utilization of knowledge is not only de sirable for practical reasons; it is also an avenue for producing more sophisticated knowledge. Perforce, these issues take one into the realms of values, goals, feelings, and emotions. Much of psychology operates still on the Enlight enment basis that the physical universe is external to observers and is not influenced by their presence. After the fashion of Isaac Newton, Adam Smith, and John Locke, human beings and society could be studied "in the light of the supposed clock-work regularity and predictability of the physical world" (Goldfein, 1974, p. 85). Vico's instrumentalism, Franz Brantano's intentionality, and Edmund Husserl's phenomenology remind ob servers that they themselves are part of the very thing they have crea ted. Addressing some of these issues in his essay, "Psychology and Hu manism," Brewster Smith supports the humanists in psychology and the be havioral sciences who oppose the forcing of human behavior into pre determined patterns. He suggests, for example, that psychology might best be conceived as comprising two systems, one emphasizing understand ing, the other understanging plus prediction and control. In promoting a humanistic psychology, Smith does not, however, desert empiricism and realism. He cautions against the subservience of truth to ideology, the choice of hope or wish over experience, the dissolution of the ego or the observer in the quest for wholeness, the triumph of rhetoric over actuality.
The list of books you might like
