On Dec 17, 2012, at 6:44 PM, James Heartfield <james at heartfield.org> wrote:
> Of sociology and psychology, Doug writes 'What kind of distinction is that?'
>
> You are kidding, right? Or are you really saying that you don't know the difference between psychology and sociology. Would you ask a sociologist to organise a series of experiments in cognition or memory; or to treat an anorexic? Would you ask a Rogerian therapist to oversee a crime survey? The reason there are two different words is because they are two different things.
Please, James. The things you say when you're following the party line. And to be reduced to citing David Brooks. Really.
No less a psychologist - in the sense that he's not known for the social dimensions of his thought - than Freud thought that the ego was formed in part by models appropriate to "family, class, and nation." The stresses experienced by individual families, not to mention norms, are heavily shaped by the society people live in, and their particular niche in it. All the ideas around guns and masculinity - social. Ditto the alienation experienced by various nerds and misfits.
> Doug 'Psychology is shaped by social circumstances.'
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> No, not wholly. Many aspects of psychology are shaped by human biology (all the lower psychological functions, according to Vygotsky).
Lower? Which are those?
> But setting that too one side, and considering that psychology that is shaped by social circumstance (and even here there are some missed out mediating factors, such as intersubjective relations). Does it follow that the one, psychology, is reducible to the other, society? Not at all.
Of course not. Who said they were? You're making debating points (see above re: party line).
> Photo-synthesis is shaped by sunlight, but it is not sunlight. Car maintenance is shaped by social circumstances, but I wouldn't ask a sociologist to fix my car.
Can I quote you on that?
Doug