Abstract
In the introduction to her book of biographies (Vies politiques [Men in Dark Times], 1974), Hannah Arendt points out that as we question certain men and women about the fashion in which each has lived their life and evolved on the world’s stage, we take the measure of a whole epoch and we illuminate what is common for everyone. The following narrative is directly in line with Arendt’s observation, since my life has unfolded and been closely connected with a significant period in the development of social psychology. Accordingly, my story may provide some insights into the socio-cultural and historical changes in the discipline during the period in which I have been both its witness and an active participant/contributor.
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- 1.
In the 1960s, the Berkowitz’s series “Advances in experimental social psychology” and Allport’s Handbook of social psychology were two of the major references defining the legitimate fields of the discipline.
- 2.
The historian Michelle Perrot (1987) is the only one who, in her autobiographical essay, comments on the fact that, during the war, she never thought of the deportees while she had often thought of the war prisoners.
- 3.
Even years later, the Laboratoire de Psychologie sociale still was the meeting place of “marginals”claims one of its members (Jean Pierre Deconchy, 19/04/2000 in Delouvée, 2000 p. 60) “and it has been the grand plaisir of these exalting years. The very grand plaisir.”
- 4.
Upon his return from US, Georges Gurvitch, in 1945, led the project of a sociological center which was to be the Centre d’Etudes Sociologiques (Mendras, 1995, p.19); he was in favor of an empirical sociology; as for Jean Stoetzel, who took over the chair of social psychology after Daniel Lagache, he was very influenced by Lazarsfeld writings but also created the public opinion poll institute, l’IFOP in 1937 (p. 30) and was convinced that sociology had to develop into a Comtian social physics (p. 32).
- 5.
Quoique les recherches soient variées au Laboratoire de Psychologie sociale, un trait dominant en serait sans doute la conjugaison de soucis de formalisation (conceptuelle et, autant que faire se peut, mathématique) et d’exploration clinique. Par ailleurs, le modèle mental de la vérification, même s’il n’est pas toujours appliqué (car on pratique aussi des enquêtes) est certainement l’expérimentation.” (Laboratoire de Psychologie Sociale, 1960; p.216; cité par Delouvée, p. 38).
- 6.
Since that time the Sorbonne no longer exists as an academic entity. There are now some 12 universities scattered around Paris. Today, one university has kept the label “Sorbonne” where no psychology is taught. Otherwise it is just a building, which hosts offices and classrooms of several different universities.
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I am most grateful to Leon Rappoport for his thoughtful and critical reading of the various versions of this manuscript, for his extensive editing of French tainted English and most of all for his constant priceless support and intellectual exchanges.
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Apfelbaum, E. (2009). Against the Tide: Making Waves and Breaking Silences. In: Mos, L. (eds) History of Psychology in Autobiography. Path in Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88499-8_1
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