Course Description for History of Psychology: Dialectics of Social & Cognitive Psychologies

Philogéne & Johnston
Sarah Lawrence College

The aim of psychology is to study mind and behavior at a variety of levels from neural to cultural. Historically the strategy employed to investigate such a vast field is the division of the subject into many independent subdisciplines with their own histories and terminologies. One such crucial separation within the field began early in the history of the discipline with Wundt's presumption of a dual agenda for psychology with separate experimental and cultural/social psychologies. In this seminar we seek to explore the evolution of this dual agenda through the articulation of a dialogue between cognitive psychology and social psychology. It is through the framework of a critical historical review of modern psychology that such an exchange can take place and shed light on the different development of these two subdisciplines. While social and cognitive psychologies developed independently they have connected and mutually influenced each other at various points, usually at times of theoretical crisis within the discipline. These times of theoretical upheaval were sometimes occasioned by the transplantation of a group of psychologists such as the movement of the cognitively oriented Gestalt psychologists into the social psychology departments of behaviorist America. At other points in time the rediscovery of an earlier thinker's ideas have fueled shifts in the blending of social and cognitive psychologies, such as the North American reinvention of Vygotsky's cultural psychology. These points of connection and their embedding within American psychology will form the focus of this advanced seminar. Previous coursework in psychology is required.