5 - Legitimation strategies and professional policy

Summary

If a professional group is to become fully professional, it is advantageous if it is able to give a convincing account of the usefulness of its activities and to present a united front. This chapter will look first at how psychology presented itself and what claims it made for itself. Second, it will consider to whom these claims were addressed and the expectations they aroused. Finally, it will examine which steps were undertaken by the profession to achieve a uniform representation of group interests.

It is not usual to raise the question of legitimation strategies in the literature on the history of psychology. The term “legitimation” here refers to attempts to use specific arguments to prove the necessity or usefulness of psychology to those important for the recognition of the subject. In Chapter 2 legitimation strategies were considered as an aspect of attempts to institutionalize academic psychology. There the aim was to show the usefulness of psychology to related subjects and to the science administration in the restricted context of university appointments. Here strategies will be considered in the wider framework of professional politics. This will involve examining general and programmatic scientific texts to determine which legitimation strategies they express, irrespective of their methodological and theoretical tendencies.

Individual scientists are also engaged in self-legitimation vis-a-vis the scientific community or the state administration. Such attempts at legitimation increased as infighting flourished under the Nazis, and political careerists abounded. Scientists distanced themselves from others or claimed that their theories were the ones closest to Nazi ideology.