Psychology from the Standpoint of the Subject

Selected Writings of Klaus Holzkamp

Andrew Boreham, Klaus Holzkamp, Tod Sloan, E. Schraube, U. Osterkamp, E. Schraube, U. Osterkamp

• Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137296436
• Categoría: Psicología
• Categoría: Personalidad en psicología

This book introduces the groundbreaking work of the German critical psychologist Klaus Holzkamp. In contrast to contemporary psychology's worldlessness, the writings present a concept of psychology based on the individual's relations to the world and open up new perspectives on human subjectivity, agency and the conduct of everyday life.

Part I

Basic Concerns and Concepts of Subject Science Psycology

1

Basic Concepts of Critical Psychology

The relationship between individual and society

When it comes to individuality or the human psyche, society cannot be ignored. Surely, no one doubts this. The question, however, is how society is taken into account. It is a current and widely held view that society is merely an environment that has effects upon people. This is, first of all, the case in the conditioning model of traditional psychology that, as you know, works with independent and dependent variables, conducting experiments in which conditions are set up in order to study their effects upon the individual’s behaviour. Society appears here, if at all, as an independent variable, as, for example, in studies of the effects of socioeconomic status on individuals. Yet similar notions of society can be found, for instance, in sociological role theory, in which society appears as a network of expectations to which individuals are exposed, and into which they then have to integrate. There are even Marxist theorists who understand society in this way, mistakenly interpreting the Sixth Thesis on Feuerbach to mean that the individual is the ensemble of societal relations. Thus, here too the individual’s behaviour is assumed to be determined by societal conditions. However, this stands in stark contradiction to the basics of Marx’s theory, according to which human beings are distinguished from all other species as they produce the means and conditions of their own lives, i.e. they do not simply live under conditions, but produce the conditions under which they live.

While Marx’s theory focuses on the overall societal coherences of societal production and human living conditions, we are trying to conceptualize this relationship at the level of the individual. Contrary to the prevailing understanding of individuals as solely determined by societal conditions, we are engaged in developing a concept pertinent to the two-sided reality of individuals as not merely subject to their life conditions, but simultaneously creating them. Of course, it is clear from the start that this is a complex relationship. The way in which we here − in this lecture hall, in Berlin, in Germany, or anywhere − are subject to conditions and how we can influence them is not simply symmetrical, but mediated in very complex modes. A basic principle of Critical Psychology is that we cannot assume human beings are the producers of their life conditions at the overall societal level and yet, in terms of psychology, hold notions which totally fail to explain how they became able to participate in this process. We call this conception of traditional psychology “homunculus theory” since it implies an idea of human beings which makes it impossible to understand how they could have survived for even three minutes. If they behaved as traditional psychology suggests they would have died out long before they entered the process of natural history. To recap, we are attempting to elaborate this two-sided relation as an interrelationship, i.e. to analyse human beings as producers of the life conditions to which they are simultaneously subject, and to conceptualize the mediation between the vital necessities of sustaining the societal system as a whole and these necessities on the subjective level of the discrete individuals. This is based on the idea that human beings not only live under conditions, but also need to control the conditions of their lives. Producing the conditions under which we live means that every single individual is, in one way or another, participating in the production, transformation, affirmation, and reproduction of the circumstances under which we live. Our main task, then, is to psychologically concretize this interrelationship.

Generalised human agency

The basic category in our efforts to develop this concretisation is agency (Handlungsfähigkeit). Here, it is not confined to the individual, but is defined as mediating between individual and societal life-sustaining activities. It refers to the human capacity to gain, in cooperation with others, control over each individual’s own life conditions. Thus, the central psychological conception we have developed and tried to substantiate in our work is the coherence of the type and degree of human agency and the subjective quality of our existential orientation (Befindlichkeit). Each individual’s existential orientation is a subjective aspect of the type and degree of her/his agency – that is, opportunities to act and constraints on those opportunities. Human suffering or, generally, any injury, including anxiety, has the quality of being exposed to and dependent upon other-directed circumstances, dissociated from possibilities of controlling essential, long-term conditions, i.e. constraints on possibilities to act. Correspondingly, overcoming suffering and anxiety, and the human quality of satisfaction is not obtainable merely by actual satisfaction and protection, but only by achieving control over the resources of satisfaction – that is, the conditions upon which one’s possibilities for living and developing depend.

On the human level, being at the mercy of others and the immediate experience of deprivation are two sides of one and the same situation. Hence, actual privation is not surmounted simply by others’ giving, by becoming satisfied and full, but only by overcoming the situation of subjection and apprehension by simultaneously gaining control over the sources of satisfaction – that is, the conditions upon which it depends whether I will suffer deprivation, or not, in future. This is an essential point. Take hunger as an example. On the one hand, hunger surely is a painful immediate experience, but this suffering is not merely grounded in direct deprivation; it results from being in a situation where one has to suffer hunger, i.e. where my satisfaction depends on the mercy of others. For instance, the fundamental inhumanity of the situation of the unemployed is not really resolved by giving them enough to eat. The pertinent point is that one is subject to conditions over which one has no influence, and dependent upon allowances that might be taken away again at any time. Dependency on current situations and the impossibility of gaining influence over my own life prospects, however, is the central moment in the injury of my subjectivity, and overcoming this dependency is virtually identical to the prospective possibility of developing my individual life quality. In other words, according to our basic concept, the psyche is not merely an individual or inner affair, but the subjective aspect of the way and the degree to which I am in control of the objective conditions of my life. My existential orientation is the experienced quality of my opportunities to act, or their restrictions. Accordingly, it cannot primarily be changed on the psychic level; a real improvement in the subjective quality of my life is synonymous with enhanced influence over my objective life conditions – that is, with my opportunities for forming alliances, i.e. uniting with others. On this basis, we have developed a differentiated criticism of various concepts in traditional psychology and simultaneously re-conceptualized the various functions of the psyche, such as thinking, emotions and motivation.

In traditional psychology thinking is generally reduced to problem solving in a given context which the individuals have to get along with. In contrast, we try to conceptualize it as “developmental thinking” – that is, as thinking with reference to real contradictions. While in traditional psychology contradictions only seem to exist in thinking, and are regarded as being resolvable by thinking, i.e. through pure psychic processes, we try to show that thinking is essentially the possibility of reproducing real contradictions in a contradiction-free reasoning so that they can be recognized as aspects of reality and be overcome in practice. This also means that, in traditional psychology, thinking is a process which occurs from an external standpoint. The person who thinks stands outside the processes s/he is thinking about; s/he is virtually a neutral entity, beyond history, who somehow tries to comprehend reality. In contrast, we accentuate the subject standpoint of thinking, i.e. as the thinking of the subject involved in the process s/he tries to comprehend. The issue here is that we ourselves are part of the society which we have to reproduce in thinking. At first glance, this implies a kind of circle, but it is one that can be overcome by epistemic distance. By realizing such approaches we try to get beyond traditional psychology’s individualistic mental shortcuts in thinking.

In a similar way, we have tried to show that emotionality in its developed form – that is, as a moment of human agency – is a specific form of assessing the subjective relevance of actual possibilities of living and acting in given circumstances. From there we criticize the notion of emotions as mere inner processes, dissociated from knowledge and actions. We oppose the traditional theories on emotionality, which basically view it as interfering with a rational penetration of the problem, and instead explicate the function of emotionality in guiding the acquisition of knowledge and actions, thus characterizing it as the essential prerequisite of any adequate cognitive perception of the world. From there, it becomes possible to recognize the “internalisation” of emotionality, juxtaposed with rationality, as an aspect of the bourgeois “private” existence in which any emotional involvement in fighting inhumane living conditions is factored out.

Now to motivation: We have tried to show that motivation, the possibility of pursuing a goal, cannot be dissociated from the goal’s content. I can only pursue a goal in a motivated way when I can anticipate that its realisation also entails an enhancement of my life possibilities and life quality. Hence, it is not primarily a psychic matter whether I am motivated or not; rather, it is dependent upon the goal’s objective features.

The concept of restrictive agency

Up to this point I have presented our criticism of traditional psychology from the perspective of what we consider to be a more developed concept of agency. The question now is why traditional psychology conceives of the psychic in this foreshortened way and, more vitally, why this kind of mental shortcut occurs in our own perception of everyday reality so that we can hardly dismiss traditional psychology as simply wrong: evidently it reproduces something of our reality. How, then, can we explain the contradiction that a theory so substantially criticized nevertheless adequately depicts aspects of our subjective reality? To answer this question we have to realize that we do not live in an abstract society, but rather under distinct historical conditions – here, the antagonistic class conditions of capitalist society. Consequently, efforts to increase one’s capacity to act, i.e. to extend control over the conditions of one’s life, always entail, on every level, the risk of coming in conflict with authorities who claim control over the societal process for themselves. Hence, such expansive endeavours cannot be smoothly and easily realized, but always contain, on the one hand, the conflict between the subjective need to enhance the possibilities of determining the conditions of one’s life and, on the other, the risk of clashing with given power relations which this entails. Though such power constellations primarily characterize the overall societal–political level, they also affect the most concrete situations of an individual’s life. Even where one appears to be on one’s own, one is subject to the curtailing, contradictions, experiences of competition, privatizing tendencies, etc. that are an inherent part of capitalist society in general.

In that case, the capacity to act can be striven for in two ways, depending on how I seek to resolve this contradiction between the subjective need to extend my influence on the condition of my life and the anticipated risk of thereby provoking further restrictions. Although in principle there is always the possibility to develop the capacity to act in trying to extend one’s own influence over the conditions of one’s life, there are many situations where it may seem more reasonable to content oneself with acting within given limits, i.e. to come to some arrangement with those in power to participate in, or at least to neutralize, its latent threats and so preserve some freedom of action in defined areas. This second option for accepting existing limits in complicity or arrangement (or however you wish to call it) with prevailing power relations in order to achieve a certain sphere of influence is what we call the “restrictive” alternative of agency.

We have put considerable effort into describing the particular experiential quality and contradictoriness of restrictive agency. In this context, the central contradiction to be considered is that by attempting to obtain some discretion to act through participating in power and utilizing the allowed leeway, one concurrently confirms and reinforces the conditions of one’s own dependency. If I attempt to gain some freedom of action within given power relations, in a certain sense I negate this freedom myself, since it is vouchsafed by the particular authorities and can be rescinded at any time. In such a situation, for the sake of short-term security and satisfaction, I violate my general long-term life interest. We call this contradiction “self-hostility”. We have tried to show that the self-curtailments implied in attempts to come to terms with actual power relations cannot be conscious; they have to be kept unconscious. From there we developed our concepts of the “unconscious”, “defence”, “repression”, and so forth.

This restrictive alternative of agency, pointing to the contradictoriness of acting, is a central concept in our psychological analyses. It is to be conceived of as a means in the hands of each individual her/himself to penetrate the surface of her/his existential orientation in those moments where one counteracts one’s own long-term interests due to a short-sighted way of pursuing them, i.e. undermining the basis for extending one’s possibility to act by being merely concerned with one’s own immediate benefit. The crucial point, however, is that in “restrictive agency” joint control over common life-circumstances is replaced by control and dominance over others. Wherever one accepts suppressive conditions in order to benefit from them and defend one’s position within them, one inevitably passes suppression on to others who are even more dependent. This moment of control over others − safeguarding oneself by trying to control others − is a basic quality of restrictive agency. Once again, this illustrates its contradictoriness: by living at the cost of others I am restricting and isolating myself; I am reducing the possibilities for forming alliances. Thus, trying to win out over others necessarily narrows the basis of my own life. This is the societal dimension of “self-hostility”; it manifests itself in the fact that living at the cost of others is identical with curtailing one’s own possibilities in life.

Absolutizing restrictive agency in traditional psychology

The thesis that we are trying to argue is that, strictly speaking, traditional psychology can be seen as a kind of scientific conventionalizing of the restrictive alternative of agency; psychic functions – thinking, emotions and motivation, for instance – are discussed as if putting up with given conditions and coping with them are the general human form of mastering one’s life. Hence, what we said earlier can now be specified: though traditional psychology depicts given living conditions in line with reality, it does so on the assumption that only the possibility of adjusting to given conditions and coming to terms with them exists, and its concepts of the psychic are fitted to this restrictive alternative. The other possibility for extending agency, and its associated import on emotions, motivations etc., are bracketed out. However, by depicting prevailing conditions as an unchangeable natural reality one inevitably sides with them.

Let me illustrate this by taking the example of motivation. I said earlier that we want to show that motivated actions can only be understood by the content of the particular goals. I can only pursue goals in a motivated way when their realisation, due to their content, holds the chance of extending my life possibilities. Hence, whether I am motivated or not is not a purely a matter of my mental state, but is dependent upon the goal’s substance. I am unable to pursue goals in a motivated way when I have to anticipate detrimental and restrictive consequences or when I cannot be sure about their impact upon me.

Yet in traditional psychology one tries to conceptualize “motivation” without considering the content of the goal and, with it, the interests implied. Hence, the questions of how far these interests correspond to one’s own intentions or in whose interest one act’s if one adopts given goals, are also excluded. However, by ignoring all of this, motivation is reduced to the problem of how one can prompt others to voluntarily do what they are supposed to do. Thus, the motivation process in traditional psychology is actually a concept of “inner compulsion”, a motivationally-disguised internalisation of external constraints which allow me to persuade myself to pursue the predefined goals of my own accord so that the question of the interests they might serve does not even cross my mind. In this kind of “motivation as inner compulsion”, or coercion in the form of motivation, I simulate a sphere of influence by banishing its factual limitedness from my mind.

It can thus be shown, as we have tried to do in various contexts, that this idea is a version of what can be designated as the bourgeois understanding of freedom. Freedom exists as long as I move within the limits of what is allowed; as soon as I bump against these limits, I immediately realize that this freedom is rather limited. If, for example, our colleague, H.A. had not made the wrong use of this freedom by giving a speech at the Party Congress of the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin (SEW), he would not have lost his job despite life-time tenure. Hence, in order to feel free I have to prevent myself from touching such limits. Actually, I have to repress any knowledge of these limits, otherwise I know that I am not free. This kind of freedom is evidently characteristic of the “free world”; it can best be illustrated by the metaphor of a goldfish in a bowl, which can easily imagine itself to be swimming in the Atlantic as long it manages to swim without touching the sides.

Overcoming restrictive agency

The explications above show the direction of our criticism of traditional psychology. It points to the conventionalizing of a certain (adequately depicted) aspect of our reality, namely putting up with prevailing power relations, as a general human form of life, thus pinning individuals down to their subjectedness to given conditions. From there it is clear that our main criticism, on the basis of the concept of agency that we have developed, is directed against all forms of psychologizing and personalizing of restraints and conflicts. In other words, we are striving against registering objective restrictions on our life possibilities as merely psychic or social hindrances by trying to explicate, from a more advanced position, the restrictedness of such a concept. In this perspective it is important to show that referring individuals back to their immediate subjectivity and social relations is only apparently oriented to their subjective needs; though restrictions and contradictions are directly experienced on this...