At the root of psychology which has nourished French philosophy for more than a century, a name: that of Ignace Meyerson. With him, the question of a scientific psychology arises, which replaces the innate freedom of the individual with the liberation conquered by a subject in history.
Psychology, between science and philosophy
The work of Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos offers an original panorama of post-war French philosophy in its close but also conflicting relationships with psychology. It also offers, one could say, an overview of a certain branch of French psychology, today largely ignored, in its relations with French philosophy: this is the historical psychology of Ignace Meyerson (1888- 1983). Historical psychology, invented by Meyerson, aims to be a psychology objective which, rather than relying on “ immediate data of consciousness », carries out a comparative analysis of the productions (or “ works “) of the mind in history: we can only understand objectively the functions of the mind (among which Meyerson counts for example the function of person or that of work), themselves historically moving, only by means of such an analysis. Fruteau de Laclos not only intends to bring to light the more or less explicit influences that this historical psychology may have exerted on the thinkers of his time and on those who succeeded him. But he also intends to restore his image by showing the current relevance of the discussions and approaches it has generated. We thus come across in this work, in addition to Ignace Meyerson and his uncle Émile, Henri Bergson, Henri Delacroix, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Paul Veyne, Maxime Chastaing, Arnaud Dandieu, Philippe Malrieu, Henri Wallon, Gilles Deleuze, Marinette Dambuyant, Olivier Revault D ‘Allonnes, Bruno Latour, Etienne Souriau, Jean-Paul Sartre, François Châtelet, Michel Foucault and others…
Psychology as an autonomous and institutional discipline has in fact emerged from the more or less happy marriage between experimental and clinical sciences (which study lesions, mental illnesses, but also the physiology of perception, dreams, memory, etc. ) and a philosophy of mind that offers theories of consciousness, memory, language, perception and intentionality. The objective of this book is not to retrace the history of this emergence, but to consider, based on a meeting which has not yet taken place but which the author calls for between psychology of today and historical psychology (of Meyerson), the conditions for the development of a scientific psychology. If we follow the criteria imposed by a certain positivism which would like to reduce its object to biology or behavior, this historical psychology would not be scientific. But, as it is a science of the human, other epistemological criteria are imposed on it ; it cannot ignore the social, language and cultural phenomena specific to its subject. These are, among other things, the criteria that must be revealed here.
Ignace Meyerson, the forgotten master of historical psychology
The historical psychology of Ignace Meyerson constitutes for the author (with some adjustments) the paradigm from which this scientific psychology can emerge. For Meyerson, we must analyze the functions of the mind from his works. This method breaks with spiritualism and the introspection of consciences. It is historical because it does not consider the functions of the mind as fixed and universal categories (as the classical philosophers did in their analyzes of imagination, understanding, memory, etc.). She believes that these functions have a history, that this history can be restored by analyzing the works of the mind and the evolution of its functions in the works. The work admirably shows how the work of Jean-Pierre Vernant is an application of this historical psychology to the ancient Greeks.
It is with Henri Delacroix and his dialogue with Henri Bergson that “ the anamnesis of historical psychology » (Part I), the story of its philosophical origins in the meeting between Bergson and Delacroix, its birth with Meyerson and its various applications in Vernant, Veyne and Chastaing. We then understand that the issue of the work is indeed a philosophical issue, but that it has major consequences on the way of thinking about the subject of psychology. This issue is no less important: it aims to locate thought in order to determine where the psychologist and the philosopher must look to study it. But be careful, it is not a question of reifying the mind as neo-Cartesian philosophies have tended to do. We must find the places of the spirit without hypostasizing it, making it an autonomous reality. It is in this direction that Bergson lays the first stone: thought is expressed in language although it is incommensurable to it. Therefore, if we rid Bergsonism of its metaphysical vitalism, of its idea of a vital continuity between instinct and intelligence, there is only one step left to take: “ our hypothesis is that the “metaphysical psychology” of Bergson gave rise, through the mediation of the philosophical psychology of Delacroix, to a scientific practice, to an objective psychology, which is in no way reduced to an alignment with “positivism” such as it was thought up at the same time by Théodule Ribot and some of his students » (p. 36). Without reducing thought to its expressions, Delacroix pushes the externalism of thought to its paroxysm: it is expressed and done entirely in language. ; it is visible in social phenomena, culture and civilization. What nevertheless legitimizes the existence of a psychology alongside a sociology is precisely that psychology focuses on the way in which individuals modify the social, which is therefore not a primary given for her: “ thought, far from being only produced by structures, participates in the process of production and structuring » (p. 47). The psychology of philosophers aims precisely to analyze this dialectic between thought and structures to reveal the best possible theory of its functioning.
Neither phenomenologist nor structuralist, but nevertheless Marxist
“ It is not a question of separating the poles of subject and culture, of spirit and works, rather of dialectizing them » (p. 279-280), this is what the philosopher seeks, through careful historical and conceptual detours, to convince his reader of. We must therefore go beyond the “ parallelism of the mental and the socio-economic defended by Meyerson and Vernant » to enter “ the entanglement of the psychological and the material » (p. 98). The task of the historian of philosophy is then to forge a path between the refusal of the psychological and the individual, as it comes from the structuralism of the 1960s, and the return of the individual (still very much in vogue). in contemporary psychology) in the 1980s, going as far as complete ignorance of the socio-historical dimension of psychology. But what historical psychology shows, and which gives it all its importance for the thinkers who will inherit it directly or indirectly, is that it is possible to create a psychology without individualism.
Such psychology finds its realization in the works of Malrieu and Revault d’Alonnes. The first rethinks, using genetic psychology, the processes of personalization: becoming a person is not acquired for everyone, it is a process determined by social conditions ; to become a person you must have the means to develop a life project, to stand out. We will recognize here the implicit rejection of an existentialism which poses freedom as the primary condition of individual becoming. ; position to which Sartre will return in his last Marxist period, that of Critique of dialectical reason. Revault d’Alonnes, in turn, rehabilitates (without reducing it) the role of the living subject in the process of creation and emancipation from psychological categories and existing structures.
The last stone in the building was laid by François Châtelet, a discreet disciple of Meyerson: he managed to accurately carry out the synthesis between Marxism and historical psychology by moving away from “ two branches of (the) French “psycho-philosophy”, the spiritualist-Bergsonian and the phenomenological-Sartrian » (p. 251). It then allows us to rethink the processes of creation and revolution without reference to a model of these, by means of a historical anthropology. What Michel Foucault would have missed in part by making a history that wanted to be “ situating » (who wanted to restore the socio-historical conditions of the emergence of institutions and concepts) a history « located » (which itself becomes dependent on the categories and theoretical models specific to its socio-historical context) (p. 265) ; thus forgetting the human behind the works. But his interest in what is being done » rather than for the “ all done » (p. 276), unquestionably associates Foucault with Meyerson’s approach.
Manifesto for a “ psychology of liberation »
The work invites the human sciences in general and psychology in particular to move away from a certain positivist and materialist reductionism ; reductionism which ignores the difference between mind and nature and considers the status of sciences human as temporary, destined to be replaced by the natural sciences. On the contrary, he defends a type of scientificity specific to these human sciences, which is found in the good articulation between individuals and structures. This good articulation can only be historical, because the evolution of individuals and structures can only be thought of by examining the way in which, over the course of history, structures shape individuals and individuals modify the structures. This examination is thus necessarily situated, historically, but also culturally and socially: it therefore combines historical, anthropological, psychological and philosophical analyses.
It is necessary to implement, according to the author, a “ psychology of liberation » rather than “ of freedom “. The first, heir to existentialism, is a bourgeois psychology which does not think about the structural and social conditions for the emergence of freedom. But the second is not, however, reduced to the study of these structural and social conditions: “ the simple understanding of the structures of domination » is not enough to make individualization or creation possible (p. 288). We need a psychology capable of both accounting for structures of domination and criticizing them in order to “ unleash inventiveness » (p. 284) ; “ a psychology which, strong in the meaning and truth of the structure, and conscious of the ideological illusion produced by individualist psychology, draws the consequences to bring about the development of subjects by encouraging a liberating equalization » (p. 289).
This liberating utopia has the merit of making the reader aware that there are and have been possibilities for a non-reductionist scientific psychology. The question which remains unanswered and which deserves separate treatment is that of knowing what would be the modalities of putting such psychology into practice. How to make this psychology of liberation compatible with today’s institutional psychology and with all the research and care structures that frame it ?