Jean Piaget

Richard Kohler, Richard Bailey

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781472518880
• eBook ISBN: 9781441144447
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Jean Piaget was one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. His influence on developmental psychology, education and epistemology has been enormous. This text undertakes a reconstruction of the contexts and intellectual development of Piaget's numerous texts in the wide-ranging fields of biology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, child psychology, social psychology, theology, logic, epistemology and education. Richard Kohler reconstructs the often overlooked theological basis of Piaget's theories and analyses the influence this had upon the various areas of his research and reflections, particularly in relation to education.

Part 1

Intellectual Biography

1

Piaget’s Background

Neuchâtel

Jean William Fritz Piaget was born in Neuchâtel on 9 August 1896, the first child of Arthur and Rebecca-Suzanne Piaget. Neuchâtel, where Piaget grew up with his two sisters Madeleine (1899–1976) and Marthe (1903–1985), is the capital of the canton of the same name in west Switzerland. The canton, which at the time had 134,000 inhabitants, is situated in the Jura, a mountain range along the border with France. Piaget was to pursue his career as a developmental psychologist and cognitive theorist 120 km away in Geneva. His other places of work were at Lausanne and Paris, at distances of 75 km and 500 km respectively.

The Piagets are an old family from Neuchâtel. In the mid-seventeenth century, one branch of this family settled in the small village of La Côteaux-Fée, in the Val de Travers, near the French border. After the failed Royalist Rebellion of 1856, however, Jean’s grandfather Frédéric (1830–1884) left the canton of Neuchâtel and moved to nearby Yverdon in the canton of Vaud. In the eighteenth century, Neuchâtel was officially a principality of Prussia but, in practice, it was almost autonomous. After French rule, from 1806 to 1814, the principality once more came under the control of the Prussian Hohenzollern family yet, paradoxically, at the same time it became a canton of the Helvetic Confederation. An initial revolution by the Democrats failed in 1831, but after the peaceful revolution of 1848, the Republic was declared. When a Royalist counter-revolution was defeated in 1856, the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV renounced his claim to power, and the Treaty of Paris guaranteed independence. Ever since, the republican system and the integration of Neuchâtel into the Swiss Confederation have remained largely undisputed (Barrelet 1996).

Around the turn of the century, the French-speaking part of Switzerland (the Romandy) was “a haven for intellectuals with high moral behavior, who were open to the world and to universal questions, as well as being sufficiently confined to this corner of the country, so that every utterance reverberated there and produced multiple effects” (Robert-Grandpierre 1996: 122). The intellectual climate was characterized by a free and scientifically oriented exchange, by a patriotic attitude and by the omnipresence of religious-moral discourses.

Neuchâtel with its 20,000 inhabitants was considered conservative and provincial compared with the larger and more fashionable La Chaux-de-Fonds. Wealth and political power were concentrated in Neuchâtel and in the lower part of the canton, near Lake Neuchâtel. The watch- and clock-making, machinery and jewelry industries had made the town wealthy, and some merchants and bankers owed their wealth to the slave trade (Fässler 2005: 207–219). From the mid-eighteenth century, the growing clock-making industry in Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds, in the upper part of the valley, allowed peasants and herdsmen to work and earn from home during the hard winter months. Industrialization, especially the modernization of clock production, led to renewed social tension during the second half of the nineteenth century. ‘The Mountains’ became a center of socialist, anarchist, communist and Christian-socialist movements (Perrenoud 1990). The Radical Party, which arose from the revolutionary republican environment, represented progressive, laicist, bourgeois forces (62 mandates in the canton parliament in 1904); the conservative Liberal Party, with 30 seats, united the more federalist and traditional thinking citizens. Due to the majority system these two parties had been dominating the political scene since 1888 and joined forces against the rising socialists who, in 1904, sent 15 representatives to the parliament. Despite its election successes in the workers’ regions, the pacifist Socialist Party remained a marginal political force until the introduction of proportional communal representation in 1912. In the town of Neuchâtel, the Liberals now gained 15 seats, the Radicals 14 and the Socialists 11, while La Chaux-de-Fonds was run by a left-wing council.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, due to industrialization and a growing population, Neuchâtel invested considerable sums in the expansion of its educational system by building six primary schools, the canton grammar school, a museum of art and one of natural history. One of the most influential figures in Neuchâtel’s system of science and education was Piaget’s father.

Arthur Piaget

Arthur Piaget (1865–1952) was born in Yverdon, where his parents Frederic and Marie-Adele produced the Piaget-Allisson clocks. His prosperous family background allowed him to study philology, Modern Greek and medieval literature in Leipzig, London, and Paris. One of his professors in the French capital was Gaston Pâris (1839–1903), a champion of critical source-based historiography. At the same time, Arthur Piaget studied in Neuchâtel, and in late 1888 he received his doctorate from the University of Geneva for work on Martin Le Franc. From 1891 to 1894 he taught courses in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French literature at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where he met the primary teacher Rebecca-Suzanne Jackson (1872–1942). Thanks to their marriage, he was introduced to the Protestant upper class society of Paris, because the Jacksons were an English immigrant family of industrialists whose wealth was based on English steel.

In 1895, Arthur Piaget was appointed lecturer for Romance languages and literature at Neuchâtel Academy. In his opening lecture, he exposed the Canons’ Chronicle, which had been the most important document to prove the affinity and cooperation of Neuchâtel with the Swiss Confederation since mediaeval times, as an eighteenth-century fake. This historiographic dismantling of Neuchâtel’s patriotic myth was seen as an attack on the political identity of the young canton and caused such strong polemics that Piaget considered leaving the town. Yet in 1898, despite opposition from conservatives, the critical historian was appointed manager of the state archives. In 1906, Piaget breached a further historic taboo of Neuchâtel canton by painting a more balanced picture of Prussian politics before the revolution of 1848. This is why Jean Piaget admired his father as “a man of a painstaking and critical mind, who dislikes hastily improvised generalizations, and is not afraid of starting a fight when he finds historic truth twisted to fit respectable traditions” (Piaget 1952/1: 106). At the same time, the pugnacious historian took over the editorial office of the canton’s history journal, Neuchâtel Museum, which allowed him to reach out his scientific standards to interested amateurs. In 1909, Arthur Piaget was appointed founding rector of Neuchâtel University, where during his first year 39 professors and 11 associate professors, as well as 11 private lecturers, taught 169 matriculated students and 156 non-matriculated listeners (Schaer 1996: 70). Despite his senior position, he remained excluded from the aristocratic circle of traditionalists who dominated Neuchâtel because he had destroyed local myths. Among the intellectuals, however, Piaget counted as a philologist of international repute, whose unbiased and meticulous attitude impressed students and colleagues alike. His far-reaching network of connections was to allow his son access to specialists, academic societies and publishers.

According to witnesses, Arthur Piaget was “a fantastic father, broad-minded and full of understanding for his son’s vocation” (Tribolet 1996: 48). The uniting element between father and son was intellectual achievement, as the father taught his son “the value of systematic work, even in small matters” (Piaget 1952/1: 106). The only conflict Piaget described in his autobiographical writings arose in connection with the first work that he produced as a 10-year-old. His strict father devalued the roughly 100-page-long book with the title Our Birds “as a mere compilation” (Piaget 1952/1: 107). One can imagine how proud the boy must have been to have written a scientific work, like his father, and how disappointed and hurt he must have felt when he was accused of eclecticism. The father’s reaction was in line with Protestantism that educates man to be “his own slave-driver” (Fromm 1941: 86). Although Arthur Piaget was not a practicing believer he had nonetheless internalized the Protestant ethics of achievement. The “inner world asceticism” of Protestantism is expressed above all in the duty to lead a rational lifestyle. In order to fulfil this duty, a Protestant is “urged to use the excellent means of working relentlessly. Work, and work alone, is supposed to dispel religious doubt, and to guarantee the state of grace” (Weber 1905: 105f.).

Jean copied his father’s attitude to such an extent that he “was considered slightly abnormal” because he “did not move around much” and that he later had “not a single memory of play” (Piaget 1973/17). He even assigned therapeutic functions to work. “I simply have to get back to work, then all the anger of life will disappear!” (Piaget and Bringuier 1977: 89). The identification with his father’s expectations of achievement and truth probably constituted the most important motivational factors for his immense work. Apparently, this identification was interspersed with resentment and feelings of rivalry. In his account of psychoanalysis, Piaget uncritically adopted the Oedipus situation. The

father, when he first appears, is a stranger. Therefore he is hostile. He does not nourish, and he is incapable of maternal warmth. Also, the mother seems to be a different person when he is not around, at least in the little one’s fears and suspicions it appears to be so. Thus, the father falls into the category of things that cause distance from the mother. Moreover, he will soon prove his authority, he’ll demonstrate a terrifying voice if the little one cries too long, even if these cries–above all, so it seems when these cries are calls for the mother. The father, therefore, must be removed; the father is despised as much as the mother is loved. It is difficult to contest this psychology [. . .] It will certainly not take long until the father, too, is loved. He will form a true unit with his wife in the baby’s mind. Yet he will be the object of a new sensation, which is not like the elementary tenderness the mother enjoyed, but will be a secondary fondness into which enters the fear that is still active. This sensation is respect, composed of love, but also of fear and distrust. (Piaget 1920/2: 36f.)

Father and son had an ambivalent relationship: Jean admired his father and was fond of him, but fear and distrust marred this fondness. Anxiety was to dominate Piaget’s life: “Fundamentally I am a worrier that only work can relieve” (Piaget 1952/1: 138). By concentrating on his work he was able to suppress his nagging self-doubts, his feelings of loneliness and insecurity, and in addition he could hope for social acclaim. “His restless temperament and [. . .] his almost pathological need of security” (Hameline 1996: 251) seemed to be the consequence of the exaggerated demands and of the humiliations that had been inflicted upon him. Young Jean hoped to gain his father’s recognition by even surpassing his father’s expectation and scientific achievements. It would not be far-fetched to define Piaget as a workaholic, who derived his identity almost exclusively from his professional success.

The Mother

Piaget described Rebecca-Suzanne Piaget-Jackson as “very intelligent, energetic, and fundamentally a very kind person” (Piaget 1952/1: 106). Thus, her kindness was hidden, and “her rather neurotic temperament [. . .]made our family life somewhat troublesome” (Piaget 1952/1: 106). The instability of her state of mind and her fits of temper were not conducive to a home environment that would have offered the children care and support. Piaget’s sister Marthe characterized her mother as “an authoritarian woman who made their childhood unhappy” (in Vidal 1994a: 14). Even if Dr Henri Bersot’s diagnosis of a‎lienation and paranoia should be taken with a pinch of salt (because in those days women used to be very quickly seen as pathologically nervous or hysterical when they displayed spontaneous or nonconforming behavior), her mental illness seemed to be the main reason why young Jean spent part of his childhood with his grandmother in Paris.

Trying to escape from his mother’s fits of temper and to do justice to his father’s expectations Piaget took “refuge in both a private and a non-fictitious world” (Piaget 1952/1: 106): the collection and classification of pond and land snails. “Piaget explored the marshes for his malacology at a very early age, basically a lonely search, and when he returned, his social relationships remained tense” (Muller, oral communication cited in Perret-Clermont 1996: 263). Evidently, Piaget suppressed his feelings of loneliness by occupying himself with scientific activities and philosophical rationalization. In his autobiographical novel Recherche, he complained that his life was only taking place on an intellectual, abstract, and unreal level, and that he was craving an intensive life (Piaget 1918: 96, 104, 114). Sébastien, the protagonist and Piaget’s alter ego (Piaget and Bringuier 1977: 32) suffered from manic and depressive conditions, from anxiety, phases of depersonalization and loneliness, which he wished to control and neutralize by means of reason. Indeed, Piaget’s descriptions of family situations frequently contained an ambivalent and hostile atmosphere:

At a very early age, even before speech develops, the child is constantly either punished or rewarded. Depending on the circumstances, the infant’s behavior is either approved of and one smiles at him, or one frowns at him and leaves him to cry. Even the tone of the voices that surround him is enough to create an atmosphere of permanent retribution. During the following years, the child is under constant surveillance. Everything he says or does is supervised. (Piaget 1932: 364)

Experience of restrictive supervision, punishing educational measures and affective coldness led him to conclude that the parent–child relationship could only be determined by constraint and heteronomy. “The adult is both very superior to the child and very close. He dominates everything, yet still penetrates into the innermost core of every wish or thought” (Piaget and Leuzinger-Schuler 1947/9: 71). Piaget appeared to have felt powerless and at the mercy of both parents. The picture of the mother, which Piaget painted in his psychoanalytical writings, is as ambivalent as the picture of the father. On the one hand, “the infant experiences his greatest pleasure in his mother’s gifts” (Piaget 1920/2: 38). On the other hand, in an autobiographical dream ana...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1 Intellectual Biography
• Part 2 Critical Exposition of Piaget’s Work
• Part 3 The Reception and Influence of Piaget’s Work
• Part 4 The Relevance of Piaget’s Work Today
• Bibliography
• Name Index
• Subject Index
• Copyright