The mechanical spirit: The Stalinist marriage of Pavlov to Marx
About: This article is published in Theory and Society.The article was published on 1977-12-01. It has received 9 citations till now.
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23 Aug 2018
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explored how psychologists, educators, and students navigated between a utopian communist dream and Chinas harsh socioeconomic reality in the creation of the new socialist student ideal, and how educators tapped into students subjectivity to produce a new citizenship identity capable of dismantling existing social relations.
Abstract: Between 1949 and 1958, the nascent Peoples Republic of China witnessed a radical shift of knowledge about the human mind that transformed pedagogy. Against the Cold War and the changing Sino-Soviet relation, Chinese psychologists progressively repudiated American and Soviet schools for their shared deterministic philosophy and disinterest in human agency and class struggle. In light of this critique, educators abandoned psychological science as the basis of pedagogy and endeavored to create a supreme new socialist student to meet Chinas economic and political agendas. This dissertation explores this exteriorization epistemic transition by juxtaposing psychology and education. Taking advantage of so far untapped archival and published sources, this dissertation explores how psychologists, educators, and students navigated between a utopian communist dream and Chinas harsh socioeconomic reality in the creation of the new socialist student ideal. Chapter One Wrestling with Human Nature argues that the critique of psychology instantiated Chinas progressive ethos that, in the endeavor of transforming human mentality, rejected scientific discovery of mental laws. Chapter Two Laborizing Education argues that students faced excessive academic and labor tasks due to Chinas pursuit of post-war recovery, of success in Cold War competition, and of forestalling future labor-based class stratification. Chapter Three Engendering Citizenship scrutinizes how educators tapped into students subjectivity to produce a new citizenship identity capable of dismantling existing social relations.
36 citations
Cites result from "The mechanical spirit: The Stalinis..."
...Second, Chinese psychologists frequently quoted Lenin’s (1908) statement that the mind was a function of the brain and the reflection of the outer world....
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...Although Chinese psychologists had often quoted Lenin, in practice they were primarily interested in the function of the brain....
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...24 They argue that Pavlov’s approach was fundamentally mechanistic, reductionist, and incompatible with the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (Joravsky, 1977; Spencer, 2004)....
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...72 Lenin (1908) proposed a synthetic view to the form versus content controversy, arguing that the mind was a function of the brain as well as the reflection of the outer world....
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...…contemporary Marxist scholars outside the communist block often refute the association between Pavlov’s theory and Marxism.24 They argue that Pavlov’s approach was fundamentally mechanistic, reductionist, and incompatible with the writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (Joravsky, 1977; Spencer, 2004)....
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TL;DR: The authors examines the Marxization of psychology in the first decade of socialist China between 1949 and 1958, between Mao and Mao, by a loose group of radical intellectuals called for the replacemen.
Abstract: This article examines the Marxization of psychology in the first decade of socialist China, between 1949 and 1958. In this movement, a loose group of radical intellectuals called for the replacemen...
14 citations
Cites background from "The mechanical spirit: The Stalinis..."
...Stalin heavily promoted Pavlovian psychology as a Marxist science, a synthesis later considered highly controversial (González-Rey, 2015; Joravsky, 1977; Spencer, 2004)....
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TL;DR: This article excavates Chinese Marxist critiques to rethink Western natural-scientific psychology regarding its disciplinary identity, subject matter, research methods, and social commitments, and argues that whereas natural scientific approaches of the West served scientific modernization, Chinese revolutionaries' sociopolitical approach to psychological research was tethered to class struggle.
Abstract: This article investigates the history of psychology in China from 1949 to 1965, with a focus on the geopolitics involving Western, Soviet, and Chinese schools of psychology. In the early 1950s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) pressured psychologists to replace existing Western approaches with Pavlov's Soviet-sanctioned psychological theory. The shaky marriage of Pavlovian theory with Marxism, coupled with domestic and international political shifts, paved the way for two leftist criticisms of psychology, one in 1958 and the another before the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Both criticisms demanded that psychologists conceptualize mental phenomena as sociopolitically contingent and replace experimentation with class analysis. The clash between two views of human nature-the natural-biological view, which emphasized intrapersonal mental processes, and the revolutionary view, which highlighted individual connections to the sociopolitical milieu-stemmed from the Cold War ideological division, shifting Sino-Soviet relations, the CCP's conflicting commitments, and the power dynamic between the CCP and psychologists. Both critical movements were self-undermined by their violent enactment and failed to generate a fully developed Marxist psychology. In tracing these historical events, this article explores two questions. First, inspired by postcolonial historiography of psychology, it excavates Chinese Marxist critiques to rethink Western natural-scientific psychology regarding its disciplinary identity, subject matter, research methods, and social commitments. Second, by situating various schools of psychology in China's revolution, it argues that whereas natural scientific approaches of the West served scientific modernization, Chinese revolutionaries' sociopolitical approach to psychological research was tethered to class struggle. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
12 citations
TL;DR: The parallels between the highly modern psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth and traditional folk beliefs about childbirth are uncovers to argue that traditional culture and modernity are not binary opposites.
Abstract: Soviet physicians viewed biomedicine and ethnomedicine as binary opposites. This mutual exclusivity reflected physicians' perception of themselves as harbingers of modernity to a Soviet society steeped in superstition and religiosity. Using sources that privilege the voice of medical experts, historians have often reproduced this binary. (1) Soviet medical professionals were not completely divorced from the rural population, however, and neither were they free of superstitions and folkways. In analyzing Soviet science, the historian should not forget that the majority of the population lived in the countryside until the 1960s. Many medical practitioners came from peasant and working-class backgrounds and had benefited from Soviet affirmative action programs. (2) But one did not have to come from the village to be marked by traditional culture. As Irina Aleksandrovna Sedakova argues, traditional culture "is common knowledge, ingested since childhood through bylichki [narratives relating to personal experience]." (3) The coexistence of traditional culture and medical science is particularly apparent in practices associated with pregnancy and childbirth. However, direct connections between traditional culture and Soviet natal science are difficult to prove. In fact, since the late 18th century, many Russian doctors had been repulsed by folk practices and invested in a mission to eradicate them. (4) Yet the ways the Soviet medical model of childbirth paralleled folk beliefs suggest that, though scientists were most likely unconscious of the effect rural culture had on them, their worldviews were nonetheless shaped by it. This article uncovers the parallels between the highly modern psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth and traditional folk beliefs about childbirth to argue that traditional culture and modernity are not binary opposites. Rather they are best viewed as braided: the traditional is subsumed into the modern, which reconfigures traditional folkways to fit within its logic. Any attempt to transform Soviet birthing practices along scientific and rational principles had to take into account the deep structure of rural culture. The psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth was based on the idea that "normal" childbirth was not painful, and that women who did not expect pain would not experience it. Since the 1920s, II'ia Zakharevich Vel'vovskii (1899-1981), his mentor Konstantin Ivanovich Platonov (1877-1969), and others had been developing a psychotherapeutic drugless method for preventing birthing pains primarily by using suggestion and hypnosis on pregnant women. Finally, in 1947, Vel'vovskii put forward a method that combined a completely new perception of childbirth with the mobilization of the parturient. The goal was to prevent labor pain by heightening women's self-awareness and teaching them techniques of bodily control. In a six-session training course conducted at local maternity homes, pregnant women learned the physiology of pregnancy: how their bodies would change and prepare for birth. This information was designed to reassure them that pain was an unnecessary aspect of childbirth. In addition, pregnant women were taught a series of techniques to control their body during labor. These included controlled breathing, massaging the abdomen, rubbing pressure points, adopting correct lying positions, and identifying, recording, and monitoring birth pangs. Women could prevent labor pain by taking control of their bodies, their environment, and the overall birthing experience. (5) John Bell and Paula Michaels have studied the development and application of the Soviet psychoprophylactic method of painless childbirth, In his groundbreaking article, Bell uncovered the evolution of the psychoprophylactic method from the early 1920s until the Soviet Ministry of Public Health endorsed it in February 1951 and decreed that it be used in all Soviet birthing facilities. …
8 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that practicality is itself an ideological concept which can be understood only by reference to particular historical contexts, and that the conflict between ideology and practicality shapes the evolving mentality of communist regimes.
Abstract: "Mentality" has become a fashionable term among historians, as a supposedly neutral way of pointing to a pattern of beliefs that are typical of a particular group. "Mentality" seems to avoid the metaphysical mystery of phrases like "the spirit of Russia," or the Marxist anger in the term "ideology," which carries a charge of grandiose delusion, of self-interest disguised as universal truth. In deference to fashion and to the goal of irenic discourse, let us use the word "mentality," though we know that new words do not remove old difficulties. A central difficulty is the facile assumption that ideology and practicality are elemental contraries, that the conflict between them shapes the evolving mentality of communist regimes. This essay on Soviet history rests on a different assumption: that practicality is itself an ideological concept which can be understood only by reference to particular historical contexts. It is an illusion to imagine that practicality can be defined by reference to technics, a supposedly autonomous force that pulls all societies into a single anthill system. That technological fantasy has subverted the grand ideological theories of previous centuries and increasingly undermines even academic theorizing about human beings. Ideologists become servile functionaries "public relations experts," as we say in the West while academics are reduced to other forms of technical expertise and to purely decorative functions. Soviet history presents an extreme version of that characteristic triumph of "pragmatism" in the twentieth century. To a large extent, I shall try to show, such "pragmatism" is mythic self-delusion, a way of avoiding dangerous threeway conflicts of forthright political rule, openly avowed ideological prophecy, and relentlessly quizzical higher learning.
5 citations