Article ID: CBB319450623

“The Damned Behaviorist” Versus French Phenomenologists: Pierre Naville and the French Indigenization of Watson’s Behaviorism (2020)

unapi

What do we know about the history of John Broadus Watson’s behaviorism outside of its American context of production? In this article, using the French example, we propose a study of some of the actors and debates that structured this history. Strangely enough, it was not a “classic” experimental psychologist, but Pierre Naville (1904–1993), a former surrealist, Marxist philosopher, and sociologist, who can be identified as the initial promoter of Watson’s ideas in France. However, despite Naville’s unwavering commitment to behaviorism, his weak position in the French intellectual community, combined with his idiosyncratic view of Watson’s work, led him to embody, as he once described himself, the figure of “the damned behaviorist.” Indeed, when Naville was unsuccessfully trying to introduce behaviorism into France, alternative theories defended by philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty explicitly condemned Watson’s theory and met with rapid and major success. Both existentialism and phenomenology were more in line than behaviorism with what could be called the “French national narrative” of the immediate postwar. After the humiliation of the occupation by the Nazis, the French audience was especially critical of any deterministic view of behavior that could be seen as a justification for collaboration. By contrast, Sartre’s ideas about absolute freedom and Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to preserve subjectivity were far more acceptable at the time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB319450623/

Similar Citations

Article Maria Antonia Rancadore; (2017)
Jean-Paul Sartre tra fenomenologia e psicologia (/isis/citation/CBB510472534/)

Book Elisabetta Basso; Bernard E. Harcourt; (2022)
Young Foucault: The Lille Manuscripts on Psychopathology, Phenomenology, and Anthropology, 1952–1955 (/isis/citation/CBB360044451/)

Book Burston, Daniel; Frie, Roger; (2006)
Psychotherapy as a Human Science (/isis/citation/CBB000930432/)

Book Pierre-Philippe Fraiture; (2021)
Past Imperfect: Time and African Decolonization, 1945-1960 (/isis/citation/CBB801245499/)

Article Miller, Gavin; (2009)
R. D. Laing and Theology: The Influence of Christian Existentialism on The Divided Self (/isis/citation/CBB000953759/)

Book Rutherford, Alexandra; (2009)
Beyond the Box: B. F. Skinner's Technology of Behavior from Laboratory to Life, 1950s-1970s (/isis/citation/CBB000951943/)

Article Katariina Parhi; Petteri Pietikainen; (2017)
Socialising the Anti-Social: Psychopathy, Psychiatry and Social Engineering in Finland, 1945–1968 (/isis/citation/CBB604058154/)

Article Cohen-Cole, Jamie; (2015)
The Politics of Psycholinguistics (/isis/citation/CBB001552040/)

Article Schönfeld, Martin; (2006)
Animal Consciousness: Paradigm Change in the Life Sciences (/isis/citation/CBB000720088/)

Article Rutherford, Alexandra; (2003)
B. F. Skinner's Technology of Behavior in American Life: From Consumer Culture to Counterculture (/isis/citation/CBB000300877/)

Thesis Panofsky, Aaron Leon; (2006)
Fielding Controversy: The Genesis and Structure of Behavior Genetics (/isis/citation/CBB001560772/)

Thesis Tschaepe, Mark Dietrich; (2008)
Mechanistic Explanations at Work: Accounting for Pragmatic Considerations in Science and Philosophy (/isis/citation/CBB001560820/)

Article Christina Vagt; (2020)
Design as Aesthetic Education: On the Politics and Aesthetics of Learning Environments (/isis/citation/CBB718866459/)

Article Eduardo Zachary Albrecht; (2016)
Embodying Progress: Aesthetic Surgery and Socioeconomic Change in South Korea (/isis/citation/CBB083446198/)

Book Leijenhorst, Cees; Steenbakkers, Piet; (2004)
Karl Schuhmann: Selected Papers on Phenomenology (/isis/citation/CBB000550803/)

Authors & Contributors
Rutherford, Alexandra
Eduardo Zachary Albrecht
Maria Antonia Rancadore
Parhi, Katariina
Carr, Danielle Judith Zola
Fraiture, Pierre-Philippe
Concepts
Behaviorism
Psychology
Phenomenology
Existentialism
Philosophy
Behavioral sciences
Time Periods
20th century, late
20th century
21st century
19th century
Places
United States
France
South Korea
Finland
Europe
Africa
Institutions
United States. Army
UNESCO
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment