Psychology and Capitalism

One of the troubles with statistical norms is that from being purely descriptive their use can shift imperceptibly to being prescriptive –used as a basis for saying not how things are but how they should be.

The development of statistics as a discipline leads to normative descriptions of human beings and human social groups –height, weight, family size, age etc. Only in the 19th century did statistics escape this enclave to become a general method of analysis and interpretation of data.

Despite the almost ubiquitous presence of statistics in contemporary psychology, it is imperative to stress that it began not to enhance human well-being or to promote a deeper understanding of the natural world, but to serve the needs of government and central administrative bodies

Here begins the numerical disci- plining of people and the social spaces they inhabit into various boxes, categories and packages.

was thus in the 18th century and the beginning of the industrial revolution that psychology got its modern impetus. The young discipline, as yet lacking any demonstrable utility, was able to acquire it through the help of another new discipline then pushing out its first shoots above the soil of the new social order. That discipline was statistics. The impetus behind its foundation was to construct a science of the state –hence its name.

As the divisions of labour multiplied, it became increas- ingly important to be able to categorise this potential workforce in terms of who could and couldn’t do what kind of work.

The early period of industrialisation saw marked increases in the human population and the rapid rise of industrial centres of production to which people from the country flocked. With rapid urban growth there were an entirely new series of problems about how power and control were to be maintained. The ruling class of the day sought to exert this control through gathering ever more information about the hordes of people who not only were occupying the new urban spaces but also constituted the producers of the various forms of new wealth through their labour.

The key developments for psychology as a discipline were historical, political, cultural, social and technical.

What psychology claims in effect is that its growth and influence stem from the scientific and intellectual strength alone of its arguments, and not the touch nor the influence of politics, power, privileged interest, money or emotion. This was an account which American textbook writers at the end of the 19th century wished to promote, but it was far from the truth

If we are to fully consider the central thesis of this book –that the nature of psychology as an academic discipline is inextricably bound up with the character of the socio-economic and political realm –we must of necessity examine the historical contexts within which it first arose and then subsequently developed.