✍ Scribed by Ian Nicholson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
This paper explores the development and subsequent transformation of a "radical" professional model in American psychology. Its focal point is Goodwin Watson and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), an organization Watson helped found in 1936. During the Depression, he and many of his SPSSI colleagues called upon psychologists to abandon value neutrality and political disinterestedness in favor of an explicit set of social democratic goals and left-wing political alliances. Government service and political persecution during World War II led Watson to conclude that his Depressionera calls for sweeping change in psychology had neglected a number of significant political dimensions. Of particular importance was the problematic interface between psychological expertise and policy formation. In response to this concern, Watson encouraged the development of the now familiar model of the psychologist as a disinterested purveyor of value-neutral expertise.
In 1939, the recently created Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) published an edited book entitled Industrial Conflict: A Psychological Interpretation. 1 With articles on "workers as a potentially dominant class," a Marxist history of industrial conflict, and a critique of "liberal" social science, the book was a novel departure for American psychology. Not only did the book examine subjects traditionally avoided by American psychologists, it did so from a politically and intellectually unorthodox point of view. Most of the contributions to Industrial Conflict were clearly informed by a socialist politics, and many questioned either directly or indirectly the very possibility of an objective science. Although the book was by no means indicative of American psychology as a whole, it was, however, representative of a significant minority of the field's membership. Industrial Conflict spoke for many of the field's younger members, and perhaps more significantly, it represented the views of those psychologists who wished to expand the field's role in everyday life.
Less than ten years later, in 1945, the SPSSI launched its own journal, the Journal of Social Issues. The topic and the tone of the discussions in the new journal were very different from those that had appeared in Industrial Conflict. The 1945 issue on the "Problems of Bureaucracy" is a case in point. 2 The revolutionary images that had colored the pages of the Depression-era book had given way to a gradualist vision of liberal progress. Concerns about the relationship between psychologists and the general public were eclipsed by an emphasis on the place of psychological expertise in bureaucracy. Finally, the self-criticism that had characterized Depression-era discussions of social science had been replaced by a quiet confidence in the discipline's methods and vision. Eleven years on, the progression from radicalism to liberalism, from disgruntled outsiders to contented insiders was complete. In 1956, David Krech and Dorwin Cartwright published a brief historical overview of the SPSSI that effectively captured social psychology's prevailing political mood. 3 The organization was presented as a stable and robust entity dedicated to liberal reform through
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