Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science

The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations

Patrick L. Schmidt

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Year: 2022
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781538168301
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

In Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science, Patrick L. Schmidt tells the little-known story of how some of the most renowned social scientists of the twentieth century struggled to elevate their emerging disciplines of cultural anthropology, sociology, and social and clinical psychology. Scorned and marginalized in their respective departments in the 1930s for pursuing the controversial theories of Freud and Jung, they persuaded Harvard to establish a new department, promising to create an interdisciplinary science that would surpass in importance Harvard's "big three" disciplines of economics, government, and history. Although the Department of Social Relations failed to achieve this audacious goal, it nonetheless attracted an outstanding faculty, produced important scholarly work, and trained many notable graduates. At times, it was a wild ride. Some faculty became notorious for their questionable research: Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (reborn as Ram Dass) gave the psychedelic drug psilocybin to students, while Henry Murray traumatized undergraduate Theodore Kaczynski (later the Unabomber) in a three-year-long experiment. Central to the story is the obsessive quest of legendary sociologist Talcott Parsons for a single theory unifying the social sciences– the white whale to his Captain Ahab. All in all, Schmidt's lively narrative is an instructive tale of academic infighting, hubris, and scandal.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Psychoanalytic Thought Arrives at Harvard: Roiling the Disciplines
• 2 World War II Changes Everything: Interdisciplinary Research Emerges
• 3 The Founding of the Department: A Determined Dean Acts
• 4 The First Five Years: A Golden Age but Integration Proves Elusive
• 5 The 1950s: A Decade of Disunity
• 6 The 1960s: Drugs and Departmental Drift
• 7 The Final Unraveling: Soc Rel 149 Disrupts and Sociology Departs
• 8 Conclusion and Summary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• About the Author