“Psytizens”: The construction of professional identity of Psychology students in
the Post-Modern World.
Jorge Castro-Tejerina
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
The emergence of “Psitizenship”: a framework between the historiogenetic and
genealogical perspective
The deeper roots of this work grow from a historical-genealogical perspective
on the relations between cultural functions of Psychology and the constructions of
modern subjectivity. Subjectivity is understood here –following Rose (19??) and
Foucault (1???)– as the “relation with ourselves”, derived from the semiotic and
material artifacts that a culture makes available to individuals. Moreover, we also
underline the specificity of the experience that this relation causes in the subject, and,
joined to it, the emergence of conditions of possibility to stabilize certain courses of
individual and social activity or to open new ones in the interactions with the
environment and other subjects (Middleton and Brown, 1???). Complementarily, we
understand identity not as an essence or a structure, but as a semiotic-linguistic and
embodiment process or act geared in the different socio-institutional practices of a
certain cultural group (Ingold, ?????, Rosa & Valsiner, 2???).
From the temporal dimension and, at least the historiogenetic point of view of
this framework, we consider theories and Psychological theories and practices –in a
broader sense than applied Psychology- as one of the artifacts that Western cultures
have been using to actively construct the subjectivity and its possible identity
adjustments. Psychology is one more among the Foucaltian “technologies of the Self”
(Foucault, 1????), but also one of the most important in the socio-historical context of
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the Western Modernity. At the end of the 19th century and the very beginning of the
20th, the positivistic principles of “Order and Progress” boosted a very narrow relation
between Scientific Psychology and the administration of population in the NationStates in all Western and “Westernized” countries (Castro, 1????). The relation
implies, of course, a very complex socio-cultural scenario, but here we will only
outline the more important genealogical clues to present and discuss this
“psytizenship” issue.
Psychology as a theory and an engineering of the collective self
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, the psychological
discourse was implied in the construction of a broad theory of culture throughout the
works of authors such as Spencer, Wundt, Le Bon, Taine or Baldwin. One of the
targets was to define the character, will, soul, mentality, and, at least, the
“psychology” of the peoples, as a place between the idiosyncratic national features
and general humanity qualities. As Sluga (1???) have pointed out, the explicit concept
of “self-government” was also very important in this context. It was not only
concerned with the psychological elements and processes of the individual -which
were supposedly advancing from unconscious and affective stages to conscious and
reflective ones-, but also with the maturity and qualities of the peoples and nations.
Particularly, politicians and intellectuals were very interested in valuing the capacities
of a national population to govern and drive its conduct by themselves –or to be
governed and commanded by other nations-.
In any case, within this historical context, Psychology became not only a
cultural theory, but also a social engineering. Its applied dimensions were especially
developed through the main gears of the western culture structure, such as education –
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devoted to the gregarious and well trained citizen-, work –devoted to the productive
and consumer citizen-, and health and security –devoted to the normalized and
controlled citizen-.
The emergence of the Modern governmentality: core and limits
The “technology of the self” face of this scenery has been analyzed by Nikolas
Rose’s genealogical studies (Rose, ????). He has shown how applied psychology was
used to place the main locus of the human self-experience in a very internal instance.
That is to say, a project devoted to construct self-reflective subjectivities and selfcontrolled individualities in Western democracies –overtaking the traditional
institutions and strategies for external control. Following Foucault (19???), Rose calls
this new psycho-political phenomenon as “governamentality” and it implies that
Western people assume new individualistic and psychological meanings, and they act
in coherence with them in order to achieve new moral or cultural values such as
happiness, autonomy or freedom.
Without any doubt, Rose’s perspective is very well suited for the most
progressiveness versions of the public and private self-reflexivity and selfgovernment of the liberal democracies. But the concept of “governmentality”
becomes, certainly, very ambitious, and, therefore, standardized if we don’t take into
account the specific socio-cultural practices which articulate it1. On one hand, selfgovernment seems, effectively, a clue inherent to all process of westernization, but
not all State-Nation projects interpreted and solved the self-government of their
populations in the same way. At least, other culture domains permeate Psychology as
much as Psychology permeates the different culture domains. On the other hand, the
However, this is not the case of Rose, who uses the concept of “assembling” (?????) to preserve the
idea of a self constructed through many kinds of mediators.
1
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individualistic self-government must be understood in a relative way: social
professionals and “technicians” -as psychologists- have kept on actively monitoring
and telling “externally” how human beings have to live their life. We delve into these
two issues in the next point.
Separate lifes: the double fate of the psytizenship
The end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th is the key moment of
the “psychologization” of Western culture. The Psychological discourse filtered in all
kind of socio-cultural theories and practices -formal or informal, little or much
institutionalized- and colonized all ways to explain and to manage human nature and
experience. Moreover, in this movement, Psychology became hybridized with other
traditional grammars of socio-cultural activity and classical devices for the control of
the human beings, such as legal precepts or religious beliefs. Up to a point, this
merging resulted in two tendencies –complementary and, at the same time,
contradictory, of the “psychologization” of the Western culture.
On one hand, from the second decade of the 20th century the great
psychological matrix ended up being dissolved in other cultural discourses and
practices. It was stabilized some kind of genuine “popular psychology” derived and
filtered from intellectual and academic discourse of the 19th century. This popular
psychology preserved the reflexivity features of the original project and offered tools
for the citizen to participate in the government of the public sphere. This tendency
implies, therefore, the idea of “active psitizens”, citizens capable of constructing
themselves as socio-political agents.
On the other hand, the “official psychology” -that is the Academic and
Professional- achieved its institutional status being restricted to very technical and
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welfare social functions (Castro and Rosa, 2???). During the 20th century, official
Psychology was progressively forgetting an ambitious interpretation of the sociocultural phenomenon and becoming a simple –although powerful- social engineering
in the service of socio-political strategies2. In this tendency, therefore, there is
implicated an idea of “passive psitizens”, i.e. citizens waiting for being constructed as
socio-political agents.
The student of psychology as a key subject to study the modern project of
Psychology
The genealogical framework is basic in our research because it does not only
explain but also marks the basic socio-cultural functions and identity means that
Modernity still expands over the Psychological domain even nowadays. In this work
we are especially interested in what happens when that “identity” and “functions” are
replaced in the so-called post-modern world, particularly in relation with its global,
new-technological and multicultural conditions.
To explore this issue, we have developed a research line to analyze the
discussions and reflections of a group of students in their first course of the
Psychology degree. They are key-subjects because part of their “personal cultures”
includes proleptic meanings related with “becoming a psychologist” as part of their
life project (on personal culture see Rosa, ????; Valsiner, 2000, 2004 & 2007). Of
course, these personal meanings necessarily maintain a close dialogue with the ones
that modernity has stabilized, from a historiogenetic point of view, for the
“psychological -formal and informal culture” in the Western context. In this sense,
2
Of course, this is a complex genealogy and we can find some other genealogical paths, like the
Skinnerian Utopia of Walden 2 –where psychology must monitor everything–, or the historical
development -and continuity in the current Cultural Psychology- of Vygotski, George Herbert Mead or
Maurice Halbwachs’ theories, which preserve an important socio-cultural scope. But I’m mostly
pointing to the mainstream and the popular and social image of our science.
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novice students are excellent resonators to this “general psychological culture” before
a full immersion in the process of professional socialization – facing to the
professional specialness and academic reflexivity. As Kullapsep has noted in her
works (20??), this process implies a “transition zone” where students are not simply
encultured in a role, but they continuously renegotiate meanings which affect not only
personal identity but also the professional one.
However, it is evident that the process of socialization doesn’t pass without
leaving a specific trace into the “personal culture”3. As far as the socio-institutional
domains and practices of the “general culture” are the source that provides meanings
to people, any new field of socialization offers to the individual identity tools and
grammars shared by a community. Because of this, the focus of our study is not on
the end of this process, but on the very beginning. Summarizing, we are interested
into the popular images about Psychology that any person especially interested in it,
and without expertise, could get to acquire and elaborate in the Western context.
Students are this kind of persons.
But the purpose of this work is not to establish a general profile of the
professional identity of Spanish students of Psychology (see, ????). In the Kullapsep’s
vein, we are interested in the specificity of the identity process and its contextualized
appearance. And, because of this, we have designed a methodological artifact, i.e.
virtual discussion forums, which promote negotiation and discussion about the
functions and identity clues of the professional psychologist. The aim is not so much
to detect and analyze the meanings handled by each student during the interactions –
as part of their “personal culture” becoming “psychological personal culture”- but to
analyze what kind of re-significations and reflective processes appear in the
3
In order to confirm and carry out a thorough analysis of these issues, we are also collecting data about
students in last courses; i.e., after the socialization process in the University.
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discussion when our subjects face the “psytizenship otherness” (other theories, other
ideologies, other images of the self, etc.). Of course, this target implies taking into
account the genealogical focus provided by the Modern agenda of the “Psytizenship”
and, regarding to it, the way our students face their double identity condition of future
“social engineers” and current “free and reflective citizens”. We wondered,
specifically, if they were able to realize and to be critical about the socio-cultural codependences –links, contradictions, etc.- of this Modern duality when is replaced in
the post-modern World.
Theoretical and methodological precisions about the forums as research artifacts
The subjects of this research were students of the first school-year of
Psychology in the open university of Spain, the Universidad Nacional a Distancia
(UNED). Educational new technologies are the main way of working and
communication at UNED, and we use the course “History of Psychology” –a semester
compulsory course- to collect our data. Several administrative and teaching forums
compose the formal course, but we created a new one and invited students to discuss
freely about the identity and functions of psychology today.
Of course, using a virtual space allows us to improve data recollection and
processing. But, as globalization or multiculturalism, in our research the cyberspace
also concerns to the novelties of the post-modern world and their possible effects over
the construction of modern identities and professional functions. Without any doubt,
being skilled in dealing with new technologies (NT) has been acclaimed as one of the
most important educational tools and targets –so in Europe, for example, after the
implantation of the European Space of High Education in 2010 (bibliography????).
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Mastering new technologies is considered the new and genuine literate condition of
the western or middle-class citizen into the global world.
It is important to note that NT are not proposed as a topic to discuss in our
forums but, rather, they are taken into account in our analysis from theirs uses and
operational conditions. Regarding these formal condition, and its centrality in the
post-modern world, is very important to clarify what NT are and are not from our
methodological and analytical point of view.
What they are not: NT as revolutionary identity devices
The recent importance of NT in educational and professional contexts is a
direct consequence of its growing presence in all everyday life contexts of Western
World. Authors as Sherry Turkle (????) or Bonny Nardy (????) have claimed
enthusiastically that internet improves radically the resources and faces of the human
identity in the post-modern context, in contrast with a supposed traditional and
monolithic subjectivity typical of modernity. NT would open new possibilities to
construct multiple and self-reflective identities, and thereby, upgrades agency skills.
NT are really a new and singular socio-historical artifact, which allows a
human interaction different from the one established through other classical
communicational devices –face to face, by letter, by phone, etc.-. But, from our point
of view, the optimistic brave new impact of the NT over subjectivity proclaimed by
Turkle or Nardy’s postmodernist view must be very nuanced.
Socio-cultural functions of NT, as educational and identity artifact, are
genealogically or historiogenetically linked to traditional of reading, writing and oral
technologies. And, as in these ones, the socio-political purposes, cultural dynamics,
identity effects and agency consequences of the NT could be very varied, complex
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and heterogeneous: liberating or alienating, communitarian or individualistic, selfreflective or merely instructive, critical or dogmatic, empowering or tyrannical, etc
(bibliography, ????).
In a Foucaultian sense, literacy has been a liberating and self-reflective
technology to construct the self -for example, through diaries or letters- (Foucault,
????); but it has been also a powerful device for aligning when, through the state
education, literacy was used to convince millions of people, unknown to each other,
that they belonged to a same collective project –for example, a state-nation–, and they
should sacrifice their lives for it (Anderson, 1???). From an identity and self-reflective
point of view, the historical singularities and discontinuities of the very new
technologies, as a system of socio-cultural activity, must be sized up in relation with
those classical effects and well analyzed in practical and concrete examples. It is a
different socio-cultural activity to write a personal diary or a blog than to try to
answer a test -in a physical or online document. It is a different socio-cultural activity
to upload a professional CV than to explain your occupations in a gathering with new
friends
In connection with this, our hypothesis is that “new” educational technologies
have, at least, as many instructive and alienating effects as the “old” ones. In fact, in
the university context, the educational technologies are conceived in a very
formalistic way. At least, the main target is to reproduce and guarantee the classical
“Modern” identity and functions of the professionals, including Psychologists.
What they are: NT as systems of activity and semiospheres
As far as it is an environment to discuss freely, our research forum avoids
relatively great part of the most formal academic restrictions. But it doesn’t mean it is
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not subject to socio-cultural rules. NT configure a system of activity and its
operational singularities can be appreciated through the most important elements of
the mediation (Engestrom, 1???; Nardy, ????). In the next graphic, we adapt this
model to the concrete structure of the activity proposed in our forum.
Graphic 1: NT as system of activity (the forum in our research)
The first mediational element is the tool, that is, the virtual space configured
by the hardware, the software, and the reading-writing general conditions of the
device. The second one is the rules; that is, the design of the forum and the norms to
participate in it. The third and last one is the division of labour; that is, the different
profiles and functions (passive or active participants, formal or informal facilitators,
etc.) through which subjects are linked between one-another. In the system, the
“outcome” is the virtual identity scenerio, which seems to rise between the two
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contradictory conditions. On the one hand, it appears the immediacy, fleeting and
improvisation of the oral actuations: the interventions appear immediately in the
forums, in the way of a turn to speak and with many orthographical and grammatical
mistakes and carelessness. On the other hand, we detect the formalism, perdurability
and reflective possibilities of the reading-writing devices: the interventions are saved
literally, as letters, in the platform and participants can read, quote or retrace texts any
time.
NT are, thereby, a hybrid artifact whose operational conditions allows a new
intersubjective experience from a socio-historical point of view. These conditions
delimit a microcultural activity by means of rearticulating and contextualizing
specific semiospheres. By semiosphere we must understand a space of mutual –and
necessary- human entailment or symbiosis, which is articulated through signs and
meanings (Valsiner, 2013; Lotman, 1???). As a semiosphere, our virtual space
promotes the raise, circulation and negotiation of certain identity meanings –and not
others- among students. Logically, the rules and instructions given at the very
beginning in the forum play a very important role in the delimitation of the borders of
the semiosphere and the kind of intersubjective activity, at least, as far as they
produce an early demarcation and promotion of certain identity means –more than
others. But, throughout the interaction, participants reorganize and transform the
discourse in various and creative ways, moving continuously the boundaries of the
semiosphere. Therefore, our research artifact is not a close and reactive system –in
fact, no NT could be-: the students are co-affected in the interaction, co-construct
actively and dialogically the identity references, and positions themselves in relation
to those meanings.
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Reassembling psytizens?: the educational psychologist and the exhibition of
religious symbols in Spanish schools
The forum we used in our research was proposed as a space for free discussion
and no rewards –as improvements in the exam score- were offered by participation4.
Since the aim is to stimulate the students’ imagination and reflection about his/her
own identity and cultural functions as future “social engineers” in the context of
global citizenship, we proposed topics to discuss which mixed each of the three
archetypical applied domains of the Psychology: educational, clinic, and industrial,
with three polemic issues of the global, multicultural and postmodern World.
To canalize the interventions in this way, a basic formal structure was
established and students were required to respect it and to act within its limits. Hence,
three different and independent discussion threads composed the forum. The first of
them connected clinic psychology and global terrorism, taking into account the
terrorist act in Madrid on March the 11th 2004. The second one linked industrial
psychology and the economical agendas of the multinational enterprises, invoking the
example of films as the Spanish “The Method” (2005) or the American “Up in the
Air” (2009). The third one put in relation educational psychology and the presence of
religious symbols in the schools, reminding some conflicts in countries as Venezuela,
France or Spain. The number of participations is showed in Table 2.
Table 1: Number of participations and participants in the three threads
Participations
Total
Educational
Psychology
Clinic
Psychology
Industrial
Psychology
165
98
33
27
4
This is relatively important because pilot studies showed how rewards stimulate many strategic
interventions. These were more oriented to get the improvement of the exam score than to elaborate a
personal point of view about the issues. Therefore, the main target and meaning of the activity change
completely.
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Participants
?
49
?
?
The data we are going to present and analyze in this work are those of the
issue with most participations and participants: educational psychology. Choosing
only one thread allows us to deal with the specific discursive dynamics -particularly
those in which formal conditions are articulated with meaning elaborations-, and
“Educational Psychologist” is the most prolific and dense from the interactivity point
of view. Moreover, it is connected with religion, perhaps one the most critic and
complex issue –along with language- in the context of the multicultural citizenship
(see ??????). Religious beliefs and customs have been denoted as one of the cultural
products that make difficult the understanding and assembling among people from
different cultural-religious groups. In relation to migration fluxes, they could promote
more the processes of ghettofication than national or ethnic identities. In fact, the
latter are usually very linked to some kind of specific religion (1????). Religions are
worldviews and they structure basic –and sometimes exclusive- rules and norms of
social conduct and coexistence, just in the same territory occupied by the citizenship
aspiration to get universal “rights and duties” (????).
Taking into account this scenery, the initial instructions offered by the first
moderator’s intervention -in order to canalize the interventions about this specific
topic in the forum- were these:
“This forum is related with the polemic display of religious symbols –of any
religion- in the school context. This is an issue that has caused problems in different
countries, such as Germany, Spain, France, or Venezuela. The aim of this forum was
to reflect about if a Psychologist can help to solve these kinds of problems in school
centers, acting both in general or in specific cases. It is important to realize that we
are speaking about a context, the school, which is supposedly essential to educate
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individuals. Alike, we wonder if it is possible that psychologists could handle these
issues without taking an ideological position”.
To contextualize in an appropriate way this discussion issue it should be
clarified that Spain is officially a non-confessional country but with a very important
catholic tradition. There isn’t any explicit normative against the exhibition of
religious symbols in public spaces –as crosses on the walls of the classrooms-, but if
they must or mustn’t be showed is a source of polemics among the Spanish
citizenship –obviously, it depends on the political affiliation, conservative o
progressive. Alike, the presence of old and new religious and cultural symbols in the
Spanish public spaces -as crosses, veils or other ornaments and clothes dressed by
immigrants from other countries- have been also a source of polemic. It is due to the
competition between the traditional catholic symbols and the new ones –from some
conservative points of view- such as the possible coercive and intolerant meanings of
some religious symbols -from some progressive points of view-. Finally, it is also
necessary to note that, Educational Psychologists are a compulsory professional figure
in Spanish schools many years ago.
From a methodological point of view, we have used Atlas ti, the discourse
analysis software, for organizing the activity triggered by this issue; particularly, to
get an overview of the interactions, detecting the most important fields and categories
which hold the semiosphere and identify the most representative examples for our
research analysis. We assumed a mixed perspective between a “deductive prejudice”
–informed by our research interests- and an inductive preliminary exploration –in the
line of “grounded theory” (bibliography ?????)- in order to establish some analytical
basis. This dialogical strategy allowed us to define the same basic analytical
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categories: on one hand, main topics and related themes –in table 2- and, on the other
hand, identity groups implied, positioning, and rhetorical figures –in table 3.
Table 2: Main topics and related themes
MAIN TOPICS
RELATED THEMES
Educational Psychologist
cooperation / coexistence
autonomy / personal development
equality
respect
tolerance
values
knowledge / competence
others
professional identity: trainer, mediator, researcher, therapist.
Neutrality and ideology
technical efficiency
impartiality / neutrality
scientific objectivity
professional Ethics
ideology / opinion / belief
prejudices
values
respect / tolerance
others
Religious symbols
homosexuality
abortion / euthanasia
ablation / stoning
woman
integration
prohibition
fundamentalism / extremism
human rights
church-state relation
multiculturalism
future
cross
veil
assessment of themes: positive, negative, neutral
Islam vs. Christianity
Beliefs and customs
Table 3: Identity groups, positioning and rhetorical figures
IDENTITY GROUPS
Catholic
Islamic
other cultural groups
political
family
other social groups
educators
psychologists
health professions
other professions
POSITIONING
first person
third person
identity act
RHETORICAL
examples: biographical, fictional
uses: history, science, self-referential (forum)
changes: theme, theoretical, perspective
figures: rhetorical, ironical, courtesy
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Among other things, the organization of textual analysis through these
categories allowed establishing a preliminary and descriptive map of the activity from
a macroestructural point of view. Graphic 2 shows that most of the interventions as
well as the topics treated were concentrated in the first week of the course, whose
total duration was 12 weeks. There were six students especially proactive who
promoted –with their “polemic” interventions- a very intense, interactive, and
collective activity during that first week.
Graphic 2: Amount of participations in the forum
Of course, the amount and nature of participations varied according with the
controversial nature of the topic discussed. Regarding this, one intervention could
develop just one or several topics -that is, it could be monothematic or multithematic-;
but, in general, its main target concerned one specific discussion. Actually, different
discussions can be detected in the forum through the encounter between a concrete
and main topic and a specific communicational form, like question-answer structures
(interacting exclusive and directly with the first message of the moderator), dialogues,
and conversations (implying several participants). Meanwhile, five main topics could
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be identified, two of them devoted to professional issues and three to citizen-religious
issues. The professional topics were “The psychologist as cultural educator or
mediator” and “Neutrality and ideology in professional activity”; and the religiouscitizen ones were “Presence of religious symbols at schools”, “Islam vs. Christianity”
and “Beliefs and customs of different religions”. Next table shows the distribution of
communicational forms, amount and kind of interventions, and amount of students
among these basic five topics.
Table 4: Topics, communicational forms and amount of participations and
participants.
PROFESSIONAL TOPICS
COMMUNICAT.
FORMS
RELIGIOUS-CITIZEN TOPICS
1.Education.
Psychologist
2.Neutrality
and ideology
3.Religious
symbols
4.Islam
vs.
Christianity
5.Beliefs and
customs
Questionanswer
Dialogue
Conversation
Dialogue
Conversation
Conversation
INTER
.
MONO
17
12
9
20
8
MULTI
19
3
21
10
3
TOTAL
36
15
30
30
11
31
5
15
13
11
STUDENTS
Table 4 shows that topics 2, 4 and 5 were preferably treated in monothematic
interventions, meanwhile 1 and 3 appear more usually in the multithematic ones. The
latter could lead to the wrong conclusion that students were capable of establishing a
critical relation among the professional and citizen issues. But, actually, 1 and 3
interact exclusively between them most of the times, circumstance that explains the
multithematic weight of both. It can be observed that topic 1 has a predominant
question-answer structure –that is, a direct answer to moderator intervention-, what
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reveals that, although topic 1 appears in multithematic interventions together with the
topic 3, it is independent of the discussions generated by the other latter.
So, on the contrary, the macrostructure of the forum points the independent
way in which our students developed the “professionals” and the “religious-citizen”
topics; an effect that happens even in those multithematic interventions, both of which
are treated at the same time. But the process of signification implied in this game of
identity can only be totally understood when analyzing the develoment of concrete
interactions. In next section we start analyzing the “professional” topics and we will
review the “religious-citizen” ones afterward.
Constructing the educational psychologist image: the “cold” and “hot” respect
As the macroestructure of the forum revealed, topic 1 on “psychologist as
cultural educator or mediator” concentrate the largest number of participants and
number of interventions. In any case, we already had noted that the interventions were
no interconnected to each other, and, therefore, there isn’t a real discussion or polemic
about the identity and functions of the psychologist. The students answer directly to
the question offered by the moderator and they even simplify the original meaning
removing all trace of conflict. Most of them leave aside the religion-citizen issue to
focus on the construction of the general or ideal functions and the identity of the
educational psychologist.
In general, all the participants agreed to consider the educational psychologist
as a multicultural mediator and educator. Research and clinic functions rarely
appeared. In our examples, the psychological targets are very clear and homogeneous:
to promote among the youth tolerance, values, connivance, and, above all, “respect”.
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In the interventions, it seems coherent with an “evident” multicultural (and multireligious) reality of the Spanish society. Next examples show this tendency:
- Interv. 02.02: The fact that a religious icon is displayed in a classroom could be very useful for a
psychologist. This controversy could be taken into account to show students that no political debate is
above the RESPECT for everybody and for oneself.
- Interv. 94.94: let me say, objectively, as a psychologist, I think that my work would be focused on
helping the person (the student, in this case) to integrate within the school, with his/her teachers and
classmates, whatever their religions. I think my duty would be to promote respect and equality.
In the participations “respect” is not only a goal to be implanted among the
youth, but a feature which is expected from the Educational Psychologist too. As we
can see in next examples, in this other context “respect” appears closely linked to
other professional features such as “neutrality” and “objectivity”.
- Interv. 57.36 (…) in this cases, the psychologist should be objective and neutral because first of all
the basis is on RESPECT and TOLERANCE
- Interv. 72.50 [it is necessary] to explain how those symbols arrived there, and what do they mean.
Being very objective and with all due respect to the topic.
In these cases, “respect” is an epistemological guarantee or imperative to
operate with an “object”. These two meanings of “respect”, the “hot” citizen one and
the cold scientific “one”, are the first symptom of the historiogenetical rupture
between the field of the citizenship and the field Psychology in Western culture. On
one hand, as a social goal, the “hot respect” evokes the reflexivity and autonomy of
the citizen, who must realize his/her own cultural condition and others’, and,
therefore, behave accordingly, in order to get involved actively and a responsibly, in
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the construction of a socio-political utopia -an harmonic multicultural society-. The
“respect” implies personal positions towards social and moral values. On the other
hand, as scientific quality, the “cold respect” evokes the model of the technician who
observes, analyzes, and manipulates an object. The “respect” implies to attribute no
agency at the object under study, which is only a passive receptor of scientific actions
or, even, higher socio-institutional agendas.
As the macroestructure of the forum showed, the explicit and contradictory
duality between values and objectivity is the central issue of one wide dialogue
between two participants, the one devoted to topic 2: “neutrality and ideology in
professional activity”. The interaction produces a clear identity rupture between two
archetypical professional characters, which are exclusive: on the one hand, the neutral
and objective professional and, on the other the professional committed to the values.
But the dialogue is very general about professional ethics and identity, and, at the end,
it even drifts towards an encapsulated metadiscourse about the real targets of any
general discussion. Actually, the duality between values and objectivity, in relation
whit the disciplinary singularity of psychology, can be better traced in other
interventions.
The fringes between psychology and citizenship: explicit and implicit segregation
in the multi-thematic interventions
The duality between cultural values and scientific objectivity becomes more
evident in multi-thematic interventions, like the texts of the participants on both
“professional” and “religious-citizenship” topics at the same time but in a segregating
way. Most interventions present an implicit segregation, processed through discursive
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keys; only three offer an explicit and “self-reflective” rupture of both topics. These
latter, presented below, are very interesting for several reasons:
- Interv. 21.20: I haven’t taken part in this debate because I haven’t understood what was under
discussion. From my point of view, the issue of the presence of religious symbols in the state
institutions is a political issue that has to be discussed within an exclusive political frame. (…) I don’t
understand very well what can Psychology offer –or Medicine, or Sociology, or Political Science, or
Anthropology, or Theology, or Laws, e.g.- to this debate, which is, I insist, purely political. (…) To
explain it better I’ll give you a practical example. When the first Law about abortion was discussed, the
Medical College sent me a poll. To the question about my medical opinion about the Law Project, I
answered I don’t have legal opinions as a physician. To the question about if I would practice an
abortion, I answered “no” because I am not gynaecologist.
- Interv. 96.97 (…) If I were “the Psychology”, I would never get into the religious issue. Is this lawful
for a Science which denies Truth, which affirms that everything is relative, which states that everything
depends on perception, and so on? And if a symbol represents a reality, a faith dogma, and this reality
is neglected, then, as we say in an informal way, “mind your own business”. I think the Psychologist
can mediate and introduce mechanisms in order to train tolerance, respect, solidarity, intercultural and
inter-religious understanding from early ages. (…) [But] if I go to the school in Spain and there is a
cross in the classroom –and this isn’t anything new- then I agree, not because I am a Spaniard and a
Christian believer –that I am-, but because it is part of my social identity, which is very satisfactory to
me. It is my culture and I believe that it has the right to be respected. And the Psychologist… what I
said, let’s take care that he/she doesn’t become an imam or rabbi of the mind.
- Interv. 97.98: From the psychological point of view, [Psychology] should be useful for a respectful
coexistence among any belief or costume, without impairment in any case. But I understand that, in an
objective view, not all costumes are respectful; they are not those that bring a person –a woman he
most of the cases- under the will of another person; the submission cannot be [respectful].
First of all, each of them are proclaimed from very different ideological
perspectives –materialist, confessional, and personal points of view-, but they reveal a
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great deal when it comes to segregate the territory of the values –the “hot respect”and the territory of the science –the “cold respect”-. Second, they are critical against
the general issue of the discussion, which demonstrates the great recalcitrance of the
psychological culture against the dilemmas concerning ideological or moral values.
Finally, these kind of interventions are only a few –actually, only these three-,
pointing out that “future psychologists” couldn’t even perceive any conflict in the
topic under discussion.
Actually, as we said, the most multi-thematic interventions segregate both
topics not in explicit but in an implicit way. Without any trace of self-reflective
concern, the authors of these interventions have no interest or insight into the
relevance of treating both topics together. Let’s look at the rhetorical use of “on the
other hand” in the next example as a split-off.
- Interv .42.30: I think it is stupid to ban religious symbols for the classrooms. Therefore we should
also ban Christmas celebrations or the Easter ones [Holy Week]. I think that religion is part of the
cultural history of each country. Personally, I am not a religious practitioner but I respect the decision
of believing and practicing any religion, as far as the rest of the human beings are not harmed. On the
other hand, I think that Psychologists would be very good mediators in this kind of issues keeping on
impartial. I think that a good professional must be impartial although he has a very well defined
opinion.
Expanding this spirit, several interventions offer different and explicit acts of
identification to speak from different and exclusives positions (as a mother, a student,
a teacher, etc.). The following it most relevant example:
- Interv. 73.54: I would have to analyze in different ways the undertaken approach. (…) The fact of
having religious elements within classrooms offers several perspectives to me. Psychologist (…).everybody should respect every religion presented in the classroom, and if one of these were a majority
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then it would be respected and shared. But I understand more and better the fact that all the religions
presented in the classroom can exhibit its symbols in the same way. Teacher (my current profession).as agnostic person, it would be very uncomfortable to work under a crucifix (..) I teach English and,
perhaps for this reason, I understand better the great impact that the classroom decoration has in the
student’s learning, what remains in her/him without a direct training. Mother.- my offspring doesn’t
attend classes of Catholic religion (…), therefore, I wouldn’t understand that they see a crucifix during
five hours per day. Student.- I directly refuse that my training (…) were clouded with the suggestive
marketing that a symbol could produce inside of me.
In these cases, the “religious-citizen” one is no longer an issue related with
the targets of educational psychology, but it becomes a very personal position, a
reference for the acts of identification of our students. In fact, from a macroestructural
point of view, in the forum, the “religious-citizenship issue” is grammatically
managed by using first person singular forms, as well as through many biographical,
committed, and testimonial examples. In the next table, we show the frequencies of
the different positioning and uses of biographical or perspectival devices from a
rhetorical point of view.
Table 5: Frequencies of positioning and perspectival/biographical uses
1st person /
identity act
3rd person /
impersonal
Perspectivism
/ relativism
Biografical
example
PROFESSIONAL TOPICS
1.Education.
2.Neutrality and
Psychologist
ideology
RELIGIOUS-CITIZEN TOPICS
3.Religious
4.Islam
vs. 5.Beliefs and
symbols
Christianity
customs
13
1
24
19
10
19
3
4
11
1
13
3
2
9
3
3
2
7
8
6
On the contrary, it is more frequent the use of impersonal forms and the third
person singular in the treatment of the “professional” issue, as well as the appearance
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of a relativistic or distanced rhetoric very related to it –this rhetorical effect also
appears in topic 4, but its reason will be explained later. At this point we should
remember that “psychological relativism” was one feature denounced by one of the
explicit or self-reflective interventions (see intervention 96.97). This reveals a not too
strange alliance of scientific objectivity with relativism –over all, when it is contrasted
with the values for the “cold respect”. At least, if one aspires to look a subject of
study from a “nowhere place”, the final aim or result is to have the power to
manipulate them in any (moral) sense or direction. At the same time, no student
realizes or estimates that their own personal positioning could be relative, because, at
least, it is carrying a kind of essential and non-negotiable values for the maintenance
of -Western and Spanish societies. Hence, this promotes confrontations between them
because the social agendas implied are many from an ideological point of view. As
the “religious-citizen” issue, multiculturalism is no longer an evident status quo or a
simple object of the psychological appliances, but a territory for disputing values.
Religion ethics and the construction of citizenship: ruptures and contradictions
in Spanish students of Psychology
It seems logical that we didn’t find discussions and controversies in the forum
about the disciplinarian project of psychology. This is so because, from the students’
point of view, its commitment with values should just be one: the “cold respect” of
objectivity. But the scenario is very different when it comes to the topics segregated
and relocated in the “religious-citizen” field. From a macroestructural point of view
(see table 4), the three clusters of the forum, which develop these topics, have a very
branched and interactive conversational structure. This stream reflexes the very
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controversial nature of the interactions and the abundance of personal positioning and
acts of identification.
The intervention, which triggers the multi-thematic rupture and produces the
segregation of the “religious-citizen” topics, appears very early in the forum and it is
written by one the most active participants; and, as it was in the case of “professional
topics”, it transformed the original issue proposed to discuss:
- Interv. 16.06: uff… sorry but it is out of my control to say this… I know that the original question
wasn’t this, but… Regarding to religious symbols, I think that it is the time to speak about one point:
multiculturalism. Mainly, if we want to have a free environment from prejudices (as much as possible)
and to understand at once that anybody is not better than anybody, that there aren’t races but
ethnicities, and that differences are created by us; and if we want this, a fairer society, where all the
religions and ideologies are admitted (provided it doesn’t encourage discrimination), where everybody
is free and have the freedom to choose, then we must begin, among others, by understanding that
removing religious symbols from the schools (not the churches) is not an attack against the Catholic
beliefs, nor the Catholic people, but a progress toward the idea of religion as something that you
choose, that nobody impose, and something that you can log in the right place.
This discourse shows a personal point of view which pushes away the
professional topic and, at the same time, opens the one devoted to the “pertinence of
exhibiting religious symbols at schools”. Immediately, it triggered other comments
and opinions concerned with the details, exceptions or singularities of the topic, such
as the distinctions between a public or a personal exhibition or the differences
between a state and a private –mainly catholic- school.
There is a rich and
intersubjective elaboration about the prohibition of religious symbols, defining the
cross as an archetypical artifact and analyzing the cultural scenarios in which the
prohibition rule could be nuanced. In any case, a complete opposition to the
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prohibition of the religious symbols –concretely, Christian symbols- is constructed at
the same time.
Actually, this opposition produces a new thematic rupture and re-canalizes the
stream of activity towards other “religious-citizen” topic. It is generated by the answer
of another active participant who tried to defend the Catholic symbols against Islamic
ones. This is the intervention:
- Interv. 43.32: What at the very beginning appears as a sample of secularism and neutrality, in practice
it seems a mere attempt to attack a concrete religion and the cultural roots of our civilization. From the
same estates or tendencies that is advocated to retire crucifixes and other Christian symbols, it is
always defended the introduction of Islam. (…) Meanwhile obstacles are put to teach Christian
religion, commitments are signed with Islam entities to teach this religion at schools, although this
religion keep on state that the woman is inferior, or that no Imam or muslim cleric have condemned a
man who hits a woman, or the marriage with little girls. (…) I agree with the secular education, and
with the religion as an issue of the private domain of the person. But precisely for this, considering the
attempt to insert foreign religions in our culture, even quite intolerant religions, I prefer to defend the
status quo.
With this discursive movement, a new re-signification is produced over the
topic about “exhibiting religious symbols” which is transformed it in the topic about
“Secular vs. Christianity vs. Islam”. The latter triggers more interventions,
ramifications, and explicit acts of identification, belligerent positioning and
disagreements, than any other topic in the forum.
From a genealogical point of view, this discussion is related to two mythemes
very rooted in the Spanish culture from a socio-historical point of view. By mythemes
we must understand the kind of discourses and narrations or social acting settings,
which embroider relevant myth-stories for a community (Boesch, 1991). They are
usually constructed around a theme of the past, which is oriented towards a specific
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goal, and, consequentially, it models the relations between the human being and the
semiosphere (Valsiner, ????). One of its main features is the heterogeneity, which
opens several possibilities for the individuation processes and, therefore, could
become a source of social conflict.
This is the case of our forum, where one of the mythemes is related with a
positive perspective over the traditional identification between the Catholicism and
the Spanish Empire and Nation. This configures the pro-catholic positionings. The
other mytheme of our forum is very critical with this identification because considers
Catholicism as the main historical motive of the intolerance and backwardness
problems of Spanish culture. This configures the pro-secular positioning.
It is evident that the positioning of the participants is very related with both
mythemes. Actually, in the discussion about this topic it is very usual to appeal to
historical events to support such positioning: indeed a very different rhetoric strategy
from those of the “professional” topics, where scientific underpinning and authority is
the rule. In this vein, events as the intransigence of the Middle Ages and Franco’s
dictatorship -and its relations with the catholic official institutions-, or contrasts with
the ideological extremism represented by the Nazism appear recurrently in the
discussions:
- Interv. 54.72: The difference between, for example, Catholicism (the closest to us) and Islam is based
in the historical context. In the Middle Ages, the religious obscurantism didn’t allow the evolution of
Arts and Sciences, and promoted the Holy War, meanwhile developments in Medicine, Astronomy,
etc. took place in the land of the “infidels”. Instead, now the historical context is upside down, the
Islamic countries are living its obscurantist age and promoting the Holy War against the “infidels”.
- Interv. 60:49: The changes in a culture belong to that culture, and they are usually maddening due its
slowness, but if they achieve other conclusions by themselves, then the changes will be more durable;
if we impose those changes (Hitler also though he was favouring the society), they aren’t no longer
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changes and they become conditions.
Alike, the Islamic reference becomes a benchmark to establish, by relative
contrast, the real intransigence and modernity degree of Spanish Catholicism. In
relation to this, participants also handle examples that show controversial relations
between the laws of the State and the norms of the different religions. The most
common are the right to abortion, the homosexual condition (in relation to marriage,
adoption, etc.), the old fashioned sexist attitudes, or the ablation of the clitoris. Some
examples are presented below:
- Interv. 61.51: (…) Veil, ablation, and any other barbarity can’t be allowed. And realize that we begin
with the issue of tolerating their customs and (in the places where they became very numerous from the
demographical point of view) at the end it appears the request for being free from local laws, and the
right to practice the sharia (a request already done by some Imams of Great Britain and Canada).
- Interv. 20.31: (…) The Catholic Church shows its opposition to the homosexual marriage because it
considers that marriage is an exclusive joining between a man and a woman. That could be under
discussion, or you can being for or against of that position, but the Catholic Church makes no apology
for persecuting homosexuals, and (for all I know, I am not religious nor very informed) neither asks for
their excommunication.
Although these issues break the gap between pro-catholic and pro-secular
positions, they also reveal a tacit and very significant agreement about the
intransigence of the Islamic culture. It is very relevant at this point the role of
submission played by woman, a circumstance represented by the veil. In the forum,
this is a cultural artifact that concentrates the basic meaning of Islam in a very similar
way that crosses funnel the Catholic one.
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Pro-catholic positions oppose and even propose forbidding some costume and
beliefs of Islam because they are “extremist”. Pro-secular positions use the Islam to
show the similarities with the obsolete religious restrictions and rules of the
Catholicism. Some of these positions are as critical with Islam as the pro-Catholic
ones. But some of them are more strategic in the treatment of the Islamic otherness.
They don’t consider the ban as a good idea and advocate for the reeducation and
integration in the long run. The following intervention is a good example of this
opinion:
- Interv. 64.95: (…) It is clear that muslins men and muslin women who come here to live must adapt
her/himself to our laws, as I also clearly see that we are those who have to try to transmit them our
culture and customs (a very slowly process, unfortunately); and by restricting their symbols, we get
they separated from us, something that doesn’t lead to anything good. Similarly when our
grandmothers learnt to transmit the necessity and potential of being PERSONS to our mothers, and our
mothers transmitted it to us, they have a very long path to walk, but it is her path, and the conclusions
and decisions only concerns to them. (…) I hope you understand I share your point of view, (…) I only
vary in the method, what I propose is slower, but I think that it is stronger, yours is faster, but I think
that it implies more risk.
The last example denotes that the relativistic issue reappears under “Secular
vs. Catholicism vs. Islam” discussions, but it does so on two levels. One of them is
the regular “citizen” level that we have detected until now. This requires controlling
the multicultural space and struggles openly against an equitable consideration of all
kind of religious –and moral- values, including the relativistic perspective of
Psychological Science. The second level of the relativist use is more strategic and
reflective from an engineering point of view, much more so than the one linked to
neutrality to achieve the target of the “educational psychologists” topic –to build
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respectful attitudes towards a multicultural society. This new use is connected with
the re-educational pathway and its appellation to the comprehension and patience with
the Islamic customs and beliefs. The relativism is a way or a tool to achieve a better
understanding of the phenomenon -like the scientific one-, but, ultimately, it looks for
the same aim as the regular citizen perspective: a total cancellation of the otherness.
In fact, the main reason to appeal to relativism and reeducation is because they seem
to offer more guarantees and efficacy than forbiddance in order to achieve that
neutralization target.
“Psitizens” or the self-reflective cancellation of the otherness
The transformation of the relativism from an undesirable social value into a
powerful re-educational tool could be considered as something marginal in our forum.
Only two interventions are in this vein, but they reveal better than any other the core
of the semiosphere circumscribed by our forum; that is, the meanings that compose
the narrow and conflicting relation between the citizenship agenda of progressivism,
the modern construction of the self-reflexive subjectivity, and the uses of psychology
as social engineering.
When our students search for neutralizing the otherness –Islamic immigrants-,
they are cancelling the project of a respectful society with multiculturalism; that is,
they are contradicting the basic target they asked for in the educational psychology
forum. Actually, multiculturalism is not a goal but a starting point –the current
Spanish society- to achieve an idealistic civic, equalitarian, and democratic society.
The respect to the otherness mentioned in the case of the “educational psychologist”
topic is, like the strategic relativism, a patient state of mind where the citizen waits for
other members. This citizen is the self-reflective and self-governed subject who is
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able to take responsibility for their coexistence and to tolerate patiently any identity
difference. It is clear, in any case, that the “identity difference” will always be
deficient regarding the condition of “self-governed” Western citizen. In fact, this
central reference can also be glimpsed in the treatment of the “educational
psychologist” topic, particularly when our students list “autonomy” and “personal
developing” as two basic features –together with “respect”- to be searched through
the work of the educational psychologist.
Of course, out of the explicit psychological agenda handled by our students eclipsed by the omnipresent idea of “respect”-, there remains the idea of the citizen
ready for self-government –that is, understood as a subject empowered with respect,
autonomy, and personal maturity- is the same citizen who knows how everybody
should be governed, i.e. , the subject who knows how to manage properly not only
prohibitions but self-reflective tools as relativism or psychology in order to preserve
or achieve the ideal status of Western civilization. And, in this vein, what our students
don’t realize, after all the discussion, is that psychologists are self-reflective citizens
specialized in constructing self-reflective citizens. This is the semiosphere, the field of
discourse and practices, of the “psitizenship”.
Concluding remarks: modern psychologism and the genealogical eclipse of the
self-reflexivity
Perhaps, the first conclusion we can draw from our study is that our readingwriting artifact couldn’t reveal the complexity of the “psitizenship” field to the
students. Paradoxically, it failed at its reflective aim –reconnecting psychology and
citizen self-governmentality-, with very self-reflective subjects speaking about
reflexivity. There are several reasons to understand this fiasco.
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First of all, the formalistic reason. From a general point of view, the social
activity framed by our forum wasn’t very different from that of any other current
virtual artifacts (social networks such as facebook, blogs, chats, etc.). It is a hybrid
artifact, which mixes oral and reading-writing features and catalyzes an accelerated
and ephemeral interaction –sometimes devoted to mere expressivity or primary
orality, as in Twitter-. It is evident that our forum promoted debates and contrasts of
positions among the students. Actually, it was explicitly recognized by some of them
as a “good place to think”, and it is beyond doubt that they were actively committed
to the discussions. But the interaction itself doesn’t guarantee the reflexivity and it
could be said that our forum had a very pseudo-reflective nature. Apart from
participations about the topic “educational psychologist” –which were merely
expositional-, many of the rest were very aggressive. In these, it is evident a very
careless and trivial perusal of the interventions of others participants, and the use of a
hyper-regulatory rhetoric oriented to lock an only one and possible meaning of the
own utterances. In any case, contradictions and incongruities in the interventions of a
participant, and misunderstandings or deviations of the main topic in the interactions
were very usual in all topics. All these conditions produced a very self-referential
style but not self-reflective, more oriented to a positional shielding than to the
restructuration, refinement or enrichment of the identity acts deployed. It is logical
that some interactions became encapsulated dialogues between only two participants,
as in the topic devoted to “neutrality and ideology in professionalism”.
With these meditational conditions, it isn’t easy to bridge the gap between the
citizen and the professional identity of students of Psychology. In any case, it is not
only a problem due to the communicative tool. In the same way, it is difficult to
suppose that all can be explained by the students’ inexperience and ignorance about
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the real functions of the professional psychologist. By contrast, we can suspect that
the gap between professionalism and citizenship will be greater at the end of their
studies in psychology. They are in an intensive professional socialization supported
by the more reproductive and alienating ways of the new educational technologies,
but, above all, by the re-empowerment of the technical functions and professional
neutrality demanded by the system of productivity in the current global context –and
well institutionalized by very broad redesigns of education, as the so called Bolonia
Plan.
It is accurate to speak about re-empowerment because, as we noted in the
introduction, that tech-professionalization of the global context only extend and
radicalize the socio-historical agenda of Modernity. We have underlined how, based
on the positivist motto of “Order and Progress”, all Western socio-cultural projects
(from totalitarianism to communitarianism, through the liberal democracies) are
claimed by social engineering to construct its citizenship models. Thanks to their
status of technical and neutral Science, Psychology could collaborate with all those
projects in order to govern the public issue. But these conditions also implied to leave
aside of its practical and theoretical agenda any chance of reflection upon the
political-ideological legitimacy or consequences of the social project supported. This
is exactly the character that Psychology conserves till nowadays, as our forum
demonstrates, although the modern horizon of the construction of the “national
citizen” is being substituted, in the post-modern context, by the “multicultural
citizen”.
However, in all socio-cultural Western projects it was necessary to promote
some degree of self-government and, hence, self-reflectivity for the citizenship.
Indeed, the social engineering produced some citizenship versions –the most coherent
33
with democratic progressivism- that were conscious, responsible and critical with its
political agency and citizen condition. From a genealogical point of view, this
condition is connected to many positions of our forum, particularly with all of them
that show a secular perspective.
In our analysis, we noted how this perspective was rooted in a specific
mytheme of the Spanish Culture and dialogically faced the other great mytheme
represented by the Catholicism. During the last two centuries, the sign of Spain as a
state-nation has been constructed through a controversial dialogicity between both
mythemes. Because of this, it is not surprising that the socio-cultural ascendancy of
both mythemes reappears in the discussion of our students, although the original
instructions of the forum didn’t mention the word “Christianity” nor any of its
symbols. During the interaction, the students overtook his/her scientific asepsis as
future professionals to try to establish the limits of the Multicultural as reflective
citizens. Neutrality completely disappeared, and the technical and relativist aspects
only appeared as a strategy to fold the multiculturalism into the logic of the
characteristic self-reflexivity and self-government of the democratic progressivism
and, of course, of our own students. Professional and Citizenship are, thus,
independent and encapsulated domains.
Evidently, the kind of self-reflexivity of our students didn’t reveal his/her own
cancellation of the multicultural project, nor the necessary political-ideological
implication of the psychology, as social engineering, with any social project and
design of the subjectivity. And it is coherent: the logics of Modernity implies to
control the self-reflexivity degrees, because on this it depends not only the stability of
the democratic-liberal project, but the efficacy of the social engineering –including
psychology- which supports it. Modern self-reflexivity –or, at, least, one of its more
34
progressive versions- fluctuates, thus, between the menacing of the cultural
“relativism” system and the need for a “relativistic” objectivity.
In times of social crisis –as the end of the 19th century and the beginning of
20th - the close historiogenetical relation between self-government and Psychology is
reactivated and it becomes a good opportunity to make evident its semiotic gears and
socio-cultural effects. Spain has been especially affected by very important social
changes during the last twenty years, due to globalization and multiculturalism and, in
recent times, to the economical depression. Social engineering is working again to
recompose and guarantee some kind of subjectivity; and, from our point of view, it is
essential that future psychologists could reflect and choose, as citizens, what kind of
social project they want, or which one are they going to collaborate with.
35