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Psychology as science of reactions and of behavior In proposing to define Man [l’homme] as a living organization serviced by intelligence, Maine de Biran marked in advance—better, apparently, than Gall who thought, according to Lelut, that “man is no longer an intelligence but a will serviced by the organs”9—the terrain on which a new psychology would be constituted in the 19th century. But, at the same time, he assigned it its limits since, in his Anthropology, he situated human life between animal and spiritual life.
The 19th century sees the biology of human behavior emerge (alongside psychology) as a nervous and mental pathology, as the physics of external sense, as the science of internal and intimate sense. The reasons for this emergence seem to be the following. First, scientific reasons to know: the constitution of Biology as a general theory of the relations between organisms and their milieus, which marks the end of belief in the existence of a separate human reign. Then, technical and economic reasons to know: the development of an industrial regime that directs attention to the industrious character of the human species and marks the end of belief in the dignity of speculative thought. And, finally, political reasons that mark the end of belief in values of social privilege and result in the diffusion of egalitarianism: conscription and public education become State affairs, and the demand for equality in military positions and civil functions (to each according to his job, works, or merits) becomes the real, though often overlooked, foundation of a phenomenon proper to modern societies, that is to say, the generalized practice of expertise, in every sense of the word, as the determination of competence and the test for simulation.
At any rate, what characterizes this psychology of behavior, in comparison to other types of psychological investigation, is its constitutional incapacity to grasp and present with clarity its founding project. If among the founding projects of previous types of psychology, there are some that pass for philosophical counter-senses [des contre-sens philosophiques], here, to the contrary—all links to philosophical theory having been refused—the issue is to figure out from where a given psychological investigation gets its sense. In accepting to become, under the sponsorship of biology, an objective science of aptitudes, reactions, and behaviors, psychology and psychologists completely forget to situate their own specific behaviors in the context of their historical circumstances and the social milieus in which they propose their methods or techniques, and in which they make their services accepted.
Nietzsche, adumbrating the psychology of the 19th century psychologist, writes: “We, psychologists of the future, view the instrument that wishes to know itself almost as a sign of degeneration; we are the instruments of knowledge and we would like to have all the naïveté and precision of an instrument; so we must not analyze ourselves, know ourselves.” 10
9 Qu’est-ce que la phrénologie? Ou Essai sur la signification et la valeur des systèmes de psychologie en général et de celui de Gall, en particulier, (Paris, 1836), 401. 10 Nietzsche, La volonté de puissance, translated by Bianquis, Book 3, §335.
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Astonishing misunderstanding, and how revealing too! The psychologist only wants to be an instrument, without knowing of what or of whom. Nietzsche seemed more inspired when, at the start of The Genealogy of Morality, he applied himself to the enigma represented by English psychologists, that is to say, the utilitarians who were preoccupied with the genesis of moral sentiments. He wondered what had pushed them in the direction of cynicism when explaining human behavior in terms of interest and utility, and in the direction of forgetting these fundamental motivations. It is precisely here that, in the face of the behavior of the psychologists of the 19th century, Nietzsche provisionally renounces all cynicism, which is to say, all lucidity!
The idea of utility, as a principle of psychology, is linked to the philosophical understanding of human nature as a power of artifice [comme puissance d’artifice] (Hume, Burke) or, more prosaically, to the definition of Man as a toolmaker (the French Encyclopédistes, Adam Smith, Franklin). But the principle of a biological psychology of behavior does not seem to have been disengaged, in the same fashion, from an explicitly philosophical conscience, without a doubt because this principle can be activated only on the condition that it remain unformulated. This principle is the definition of Man himself as tool. Utilitarianism (which implicates the idea of utility for man, the idea of Man as judge of utility) was succeeded by instrumentalism (which implicates the idea of the utility of man, the idea of Man as mean to utility). Intelligence is no longer what organizes the organs and avails itself of them, but what services them. And it is not with impunity that the historical origins of the psychology of reaction must be sought in the works produced by the discovery of “the personal equation” of astronomers using the telescope (Maskelyne, 1796). Man was studied first as the instrument of the scientific instrument, before being studied as the instrument of all instruments.
The investigations of the laws of adaptation and learning, of the detection and measurement of aptitudes, and of the conditions of output and productivity (whether concerning individuals or groups)—investigations that are inseparable from their applications to selection or orientation—admit a common implicit postulate: the nature of Man is to be a tool, and his vocation is to be put in his place, to his task.
Nietzsche, of course, is right to say that the psychologists would like to be the “naïve and precise instruments” of this study of man. They have struggled to reach objective knowledge, even if the determinism they seek in behavior is no longer the sort of Newtonian determinism familiar to the first physicists of the 19th century, but rather a statistical determinism, progressively resting on the findings of biometrics. But what is the sense of this instrumentalism to the second power? What is it that pushes or inclines psychologists to appoint themselves, of all men, the instruments of an ambition to treat Man as an instrument? In the other types of psychology, the soul or the subject—as natural form or consciousness of interiority—is the principle used to justify the value a certain idea of Man
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relative to the truth of things. But for a psychology in which the word “soul” causes flight and the word “consciousness” laughter, the truth of Man is captured by the fact that there is no longer any idea of Man as anything other than a tool. We must recognize that to talk about the idea of a tool, it is necessary that not every idea belong to the rank of a tool; and that in order to assign a value to a tool, it is precisely necessary that not every value be that of a tool whose subordinate value consists in procuring some other thing. Now, if the psychologist cannot derive his psychological project from an idea of man, does he think he can justify this project with his behavior of the utilization of man? We say it well, “his behavior of utilization,” in spite of two possible objections. Someone could say that, in a way, this type of psychology does not ignore the distinction between theory and application and, in another way, that this utilization is not ultimately the doing of the psychologist himself but of the person or persons who ask him for reports and diagnostics. We will respond that, unless one is going to confuse the theoretician of psychology with the professor of psychology, one must recognize that the contemporary psychologist is, more often than not, a practicing professional whose “science” is completely motivated by that search for “laws” of adaptation to a socio-technological environment—not to a natural environment—, for that which confers on his operations of “measure” a signification of evaluation and a range of expertise. In this way the behavior of the psychologist of human behavior involves, almost by necessity, a feeling of superiority, a good dirigist conscience, the mentality of a manager of the relations between man and man. That is why we must go back to the cynical question: who designates psychologists as the instruments of instrumentalism? How do we recognize those men who are worthy of assigning to instrument-man [l’homme-instrument] his role and function? Who counsels the counselors?
Needless to say, we do not place ourselves on the terrain of capacities and technique. Whether there are good or bad psychologists—that is to say, technicians skilled due to learning and technicians noxious due to stupidity not forbidden by law—is not the issue. The issue is that a science or a scientific technique do not contain, within themselves, any idea that could confer them their sense. In his Introduction to Psychology, Paul Guillaume described the psychology of a man taking a test. The subject [le testé] defends himself against this investigation, fearing that an action is being exercise over it. Guillaume sees in this state of mind an acknowledgement of the efficacy of the test. But one could also see here the embryo of the psychology of the tester. The defense of the subject being tested is the repugnance of seeing itself treated like an insect by a man who is not recognized as having the authority to tell him what he is or what he must do.
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takes it from Cuvier.11 What if we treated the psychologist like an insect? What if we applied to the dismal and insipid Kinsey, for example, Stendhal’s recommendation?
In other words, in 19th and 20th centuries, the psychology of reaction and behavior thought it made itself independent by separating itself form all philosophy, that is to say, from the kind of speculation that looks for an idea of Man beyond the biological and sociological facts. But this psychology could not prevent the recurrence of its results in the behavior of those who obtain them. And, to the extend that one forbids philosophy from furnishing the answer, the question “What is psychology?” becomes “In doing what they do, what do psychologists hope to accomplish?” “In the name of what are they instituted psychologists?” When Gideon takes command as the head of the Israelites and escorts the Midianites beyond the Jordan (The Bible: Judges, Book VII), he uses a test of two degrees that permits him to keep only ten thousand out of thirty-two thousand men, and then three hundred out of ten thousand. But this test owes to the Eternal the finalization of its use and the process of selection used. To select a selector, it is normally necessary to transcend the blueprint of technical selection procedures. In the immanence of scientific psychology, the question remains: Who has, not the competence, but the mission of being a psychologist? Psychology always relies on an doubling up [dédoublement], but this is no longer the doubling of consciousness (according to the facts and norms entailed by the idea of man); it is the doubling of a mass of “subjects” and of an elite corporation of specialists who invest themselves with their proper mission.
In Kant and Maine de Biran, psychology situates itself in an Anthropology, which is to say—despite the ambiguity, much in vogue today, of this term—in a philosophy. In Kant, the general theory of human ability is still connected to a theory of wisdom [sagesse]. Instrumental psychology presents itself as a general theory of ability outside any reference to wisdom. If we cannot define this psychology via an idea of man, that is to say, if we cannot situate psychology within philosophy, we do not have the power to prevent anyone from just considering themselves “psychologists” and calling whatever they do “psychology.” But neither can we prevent philosophy from continuing to interrogate the ill-defined status of psychology, ill-defined from the viewpoint of the sciences as much as from that of techniques. In doing this, philosophy carries itself with a constitutive ingenuity that is so different from gullibility that it does not exclude a provisional cynicism. This ingenuity leads philosophy to return, once again, to the common sector, to the side of non-specialists.
It is rather vulgarly, then, that philosophy poses to psychology the question: tell me what you aim for so that I may find out what you are? But a philosopher can also address
11 “Instead of hating the small bookseller of the neighboring town who sells the Popular Almanac, I used to say to my friend Mr. de Ranville to apply to him the remedy indicated by Cuvier: treat him like an insect. Find out what are his means of sustenance, try to guess his ways of making love” (Stendhal, Mémoires d’un Touriste, Calmann-Lévy (ed.), Book 2, page 23).
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himself to the psychologist in the form of offering orientation advice (one time does not a habit make!), and say to him: when one leaves the Sorbonne by the street Saint-Jacques, one can ascend or descend; if one ascends, one approaches the Pantheon, the conservatory of great men; but if one descends, one heads directly to the Police Department.
Georges Canguilhem Transl
