Drawing Lines: From Social Relations, to PSR, to Psychology

Ford Professor of Social Science emeritus David Riesman '31 calls academic departments: "Efforts to draw lines which are unrealistic, and only in the mind." But the professor is quick to point out that those imaginary lines are also the very real parameters which shape intellectual disciplines.

Here at Harvard the lines defining the relationship of the social sciences have often changed, sometimes reacting to national currents and sometimes shaping them. Energetic personalities conflicting with rigid political alliances have brought down academic departments, and have made the development of the study of psychology a telling case study of human behavior.

Professor Clyde Kluckhohn came to Harvard in the 1930s. Bringing with him a lively interest in applying Freudian psychoanalysis to the study of societies, the professor began looking for discussion partners outside of Harvard's conservative, archeology-oriented Anthropology Department.

Psychology Professor Harry Murray was one of those men. A clinician, Murray treated disorders like those which often make good movie subjects. In the early 1940s, however, the Harvard establishment didn't think those disorders were a good subject for psychology. Murray's colleagues were suspicious of developments beyond their laboratory. In his memoirs Professor Edwin G. Boring, who chaired the department during those years, calls "rescuing psychology from these philosophers," his "mission."

A1940 edition of The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology describes the professional animosity which developed in the empassioned climate: "The psychoanalysists are inclined to consider the academic psychologists curious fellows in no way concerned with the real problems... The psychologists, on the other hand are inclined to look on the psychoanalysts as `mystics' or `cultists."'

In this tense atmosphere Kluckhohn and Murray found a compatriot with whom they launched a daring endeavor. In 1936, Talcott Parsons had moved into Harvard's Sociology Department after a stint in the Economics Department. Trained as a philosopher and intrigued by several fields within the social sciences, Parsons found his broad interest in the study of man in society stifled in the Economics Department. He wasn't much happier in Sociology. Together with Kluckhohn, Murray and several other scholars, Parsons began considering the benefits of creating a formal alliance of dissatisfied scholars.

The men decided a formal relationship might advance their common objectives. In 1941, they proposed the formation of a new department to President James B. Conant '14. Absorbed with his work for government agencies involved in the war effort, Conant didn't approve that plan, or any other of the several proposals which followed. The men, however, continued pushing.

World War II had brought together scholars interested in many elements of human behavior. Their contributions to mobilizing the country's young men and maintaining the nation's enthusiasm for its effort were appreciated by those involved and academics were impressed by the potential benefits of interdisciplinary study. In 1946, the country, or at least Harvard, had caught up to Parson's insurgents. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences gave the go-ahead for a new department calling it Social Relations.

Members of the Anthropology Department--those Riesman, a one-time member of Social Relations, calls the "Non-stone and bone men"--and social psychologists merged with the Sociology Department to form "Soc Rel." The intellectual disciplines which had clashed with the egos, political allegiances and perceived interests of Harvard's well-established departments then had free play.

Professor Robert F. Bales, who retired from teaching this semester, was a member of Soc Rel and says the new department was a "great success," luring the best minds in human behavior to Cambridge. Riesman, who also served in Soc Rel, agrees it was a "national magnet." "It brought a great faculty, superb graduate students and it was very attractive to undergraduates," he says. According to Bales, Soc Rel's undergraduate concentrators had interests similar to those who currently pursue degrees in Social Studies.

But according to psychologists some of the same forces now affecting psychology began undermining the department from its first, successful days, contributing to what Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences A. Michael Spence calls, "a tendency to focus on what is considered important by a dominant group," in "any field that's broad." Bales agrees: "Every discipline has a tendency to narrow down its interests and emphases," adding, "That can be reflected in its hiring practices."

According to observers, that's exactly what happened in Soc Rel. The department grew "wings," divisions of scholars with similar interests. "Social Relations served a very good purpose, but I felt it fractured in the latter years," says Edward L. Pattullo, director of the Center for Behavioral Sciences. According to Pattullo, Social Relations came to function as four separate departments under a larger framework. Others say that by the 1950s the department was already tenuring scholars for achievement in particular fields, having little regard for a candidate's contributions to "social relations" broadly understood.

In 1972, the University acknowledged the new reality, formally combining the by-then-gutted Social Relations Department with the small, experimental Psychology Department. "Psychology and Social Relations" boasted the vestiges of an interdisciplinary outlook, according to some of those around during its early days, but the pressures of academia wore that commitment down. The demise of psychology's social focus "was not malicious, it was not a conspiracy," stresses George W. Goethals '43, a clinical and social psychologist who has spent most of the last four decades at Harvard. According to Goethals, departments simply take their form from the people who make them up, doing its work and recommending its tenure appointments.

The name change, expected to come later this month, suggests that the concentration on specific areas within psychology has increased.