Preface to Georges Canguilhem's What is Psychology?
by R. Groome
The name George Canguilhem is contemporaneous with the introduction
of psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and Marxism in France. His What is Psychology? first appeared in
the Revue de Métaphysique et de
Morale in 1958 in an era of postwar France in which psychology was
largely contested in its project and scientific pretensions. It remains
with Georges Politzer's Critique
of the Foundations of Psychology (1928) and Sartre's Sketch of a Theory of Emotions (1938)
part of the French tradition seeking to establish a concrete definition
of Man on the basis of phenomenological, existentialist, psychoanalytic,
and Marxist perspectives. During this time, Daniel Lagache responded with
a theoretical counterattack -The Unity
of Psychology (1948) - aiming to reorganize psychology in the hopes
of establishing a unified program in the French university. For according
to Lagache, it was necessary to conjoin experimental psychology and clinical
psychology, respectively its naturalist and humanist traditions, under
One unified psychology.1
This short study aims to show how Lagache’s project to unify psychology,
and thus to constitute the field for a scientific study of Man, was deconstructed
in France in two different ways: in a critical undermining initiated by Canguilhem's
return to Descartes, introduced
in his 1958 article What is psychology?
and a clinical undermining initiated
by Lacan's return to Freud,
introduced in his 1958 article Remarks
on the Relation of Daniel Lagache. For just as Canguilhem would
deconstruct Lagache's global
project to unify the field of psychology, Lacan would deconstruct Lagache's
local project for a unified
theory of the personality.
No doubt, if these brief indications were merely of a nationalistic
or historical concern, there would be little need today to write this introduction
or an English translation of Canguilhem's What is Psychology? For if the desire
for the unification of the psyche was put to rest in France with Canguilhem’s
and Lacan’s critique, today it's cadavre has returned with even more pressing
projects and missions.
Canguilhem's Return to Descartes
Canguilhem deconstructs the desire for a unified
psychology in 4 steps.
(I) Division: by showing
how the response to the question What
is Psychology? requires the elucidation of an internal division of Man by language (that is then
dissimulated into differences between animal and human language, experimental
and clinical research, etc.).
(II) Subject: taking
up this division in the 17th century birth of the Cartesian cogito – I think, therefore I am – Canguilhem shows
how a science proper cannot begin with Descartes' universal doubt, for this
properly divisive and metaphysical doubt only becomes scientific the moment
it is trivialized to a methodic doubt and the divided subject unified.
(III) Object: hence,
not only is a theory of the Cartesian subject missing, but so is its object: that is to say, instead of interrogating
its object in the hallucination
and fantasy proper to the division
of its subject (and universal doubt), it has become historically trivialized
to theories of illusion and
error proper to a unified
subject (and methodic doubt) of psychology.
(IV) Project: in default
of establishing the rigorous grounds of its subject and object in theory,
psychology is left with the task of trying to unify its project as the mission of the researcher.
Textual Indications
To support argument (I), Canguilhem shows how
the division of Man is assimilated
by the desire for a unified psychology to a disciplinary double – natural (experimental) and
humanistic (clinical) psychology – thereby trivializing the problem language
poses the moment the speaking subject is taken as an object of investigation.
In spite of appearances,
it is by its object rather than its method that psychology is called clinical,
psychoanalytical, social, and ethnological. All these adjectives are indicative
of a single and same object of study: Man, talkative or silent, sociable
or unsociable. This much said, can one speak rigorously here of a general
theory of conduct without resolving the question of knowing if there is
a continuity or a rupture between human language and animal language, human
society and animal society?
(Qu’est-ce Que La
Psychologie, G. Canguilhem, 1958, French republished in Études D’Histoire et De Philosophie Des
Sciences, J.Vrin, 1968; p.367)
To support argument (II), Canguilhem has critiqued throughout his
career as a historian not only the pretensions of a science of psychology,
but those claiming to found science on psychology, that is, those attempting
to found the objectivity of science on a rectification of psychological
error and the formation of thematic categories of observation. Writing of
Bachelard's enterprise of writing an epistemology of L'Espirit Scientifique, Canguilhem states:
Bachelard continues to utilize
the vocabulary of psychology and interpsychology to present an axiology
of rationalism. The divided Subject whose structure he presents is only
divided because it is the axiological Subject. "Every value divides the
subject" if we admit the concepts of normative psychism and of normative
psychology, is it any wonder that we find the results in a 'psychologism
of the normative'?
(Dialectic and Philosophy of the
Non with Gaston Bachelard, G. Canguilhem, 1963, in Études D’Histoire et De Philosophie Des
Sciences, J.Vrin, 1968; p.205)
By extrapolating on argument (III), Canguilhem shows how the divided
Cartesian subject and its hyperbolic doubt, only becomes a science of subjectivity by a psychological
assimilation to a physics of external sense (become a science of behaviour)
and internal sense (become a science of intimate sense). Hence, Canguilhem
claims these assimilations of the Cartesian subject are normative psychological
misreadings resulting in a field of applications that are neither Cartesian
nor anti-Cartesian; thus, out of step with the true foundations of modern
science.
To support (IV) Canguilhem shows how the desire for the unification
of the doubles of psychology cannot be achieved in a psychological
theory. This does not mean
to say, however, that the project
– or mission – of the psychologist
cannot be determined:
In the immanence of scientific
psychology the question remains who has, not the competence, but the mission
to be a psychologist? Psychology always relies on a de-doubling, but it
is no longer that of conscious, under the facts and norms that the idea
of Man brings forth, but it is from a mass of "subjects" and a corporative
elite of specialists investing themselves in their proper mission.
(Qu’est-ce Que La Psychologie?,
G. Canguilhem, in Études D’Histoire
et De Philosophie Des Sciences, J.Vrin, 1968; p.380)
Although Canguilhem shows the de-doubling
of psychology necessary to its unification can never be achieved in a
scientific theory, it is precisely this impossibility that is determinative
of both the history and heterogeneity of its field.
Return to Freud: Lacan’s Critique of Lagache
In laying bare the impossibility of Lagache's
unification of psychology, Canguilhem's critique served to further show
how the divided Cartesian subject had been trivialized and assimilated
by the post-cartesians and modern psycholgists. This much said, it was not
until Lacan's celebrated return
to Freud that Canguilhem’s return to Descartes was given its theoretical
development.
(to be continued)
by Robert Groome
Santa Monica, CA
2005
Translation of What is Psychology? (pdf
download)
NOTES:
1Lagache held the chair of General
Psychology at Normale Superieure
and was from 1953 one of the founders of the second Society of French
Psychoanalysis.
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