Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Psychological discourse in historical context: An introduction
- Part I Disciplining psychological discourse
- Part II History as culture critique
- 6 Power and subjectivity: Critical history and psychology
- 7 Cultural politics by other means: Gender and politics in some American psychologies of emotions
- 8 Principles of selves: The rhetoric of introductory textbooks in American psychology
- Part III Early antecedents
- Part IV Lived history
- Author index
- Subject index
7 - Cultural politics by other means: Gender and politics in some American psychologies of emotions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- 1 Psychological discourse in historical context: An introduction
- Part I Disciplining psychological discourse
- Part II History as culture critique
- 6 Power and subjectivity: Critical history and psychology
- 7 Cultural politics by other means: Gender and politics in some American psychologies of emotions
- 8 Principles of selves: The rhetoric of introductory textbooks in American psychology
- Part III Early antecedents
- Part IV Lived history
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
The long historical view of psychology as an enterprise with fundamentally sociocultural roots, taken in this book, complements work in anthropology. Early in that discipline's history, the encounter with other peoples' differing assessments of the self and modes of evaluating their compatriots led to the historicizing and relativizing of aspects of Western commonsense psychology. The first wave of such critiques was led by Benedict (1934), whose eloquent work argued for the arbitrariness of contemporary standards of psychological normality. As one of many examples, she described the favorable way Native Americans of the Plains looked upon the widespread institution of the berdache, in which certain men took up women's dress and work at puberty. She goes on to note that societies that condemn such behavior often inaccurately identify the deviant's resulting guilt and stress with personality rather than with social process. And she took the critique still further in concluding Patterns of Culture by noting that:
Arrogant and unbridled egoists as family men, as officers of the law and in business, have been again and again portrayed by novelists and dramatists, and they are familiar in every community. … their courses of action are often more asocial than those of the inmates of penitentiaries. In terms of the suffering and frustration that they spread about them there is probably no comparison. […]
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Historical Dimensions of Psychological Discourse , pp. 125 - 144Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
- 3
- Cited by