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A review of:
Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Understanding Human Life. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. 212pp. ISBN 0-275-95412-9 (hbk).
Fred Newman and Lois Holzman, The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning. London: Routledge, 1997. 185pp. 0-415-13598-2 (hbk).
ABSTRACT. Newman and Holzman's reformulation of Vygotskyan psychology, centering around the notions of 'tool and result', 'the practice of method', and 'completion', are, like their later attempts to criticize and find practice-based alternatives to scientific psychology, and even to epistemology in general, thought-provoking and relevant. It may be, however, that the author's reference to 'practice', in particular with the postmodern turn to 'performance', below its revolutionary surface represents a rather traditional way of dismissing the significance of societal conditions and promoting therapeutic expertise.
Key Words: epistemology, learning, postmodernism, practice, Vygotsky
Not all philosophers are satisfied with interpreting the world differently – what matters to them is changing it. It is well known that Marx was such a philosopher. Fred Newman is another. Not all psychologists are satisfied with empirical work or confronting professional work practices; what matters to them are philosophically founded and principled understandings of radical practices. It is well known that Vygotsky was one of them. Lois Holzman is another. Such undertakings are always challenging, inspiring, and call for respect and debate. We respond to such a challenge here.
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During the last few years Newman and Holzman have written three books about the principles behind their pedagogical and therapeutic work in the East Side Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy in New York. The books develop a standpoint in the ongoing debate on the foundations of psychology and at the same time function as the theoretical foundation of the work at the institute. The understandings unfolded and discussed in the books are immediately related and are here dealt with in one review. In Lev Vygotsky: Revolutionary Scientist (LV) from 1993, the authors concentrate on completing the concepts Vygotsky developed in his studies of thinking and speaking. In Unscientific Psychology: A Cultural-Performatory Approach to Social Life (USP) from 1996, the authors expose the roots of modern psychology modeled according to principles from natural science. In The End of Knowing: A New Developmental Way of Learning (EOK) from 1997, a sweeping review of postmodernism is concluded by founding an alternative to epistemology on the notion of performed activity.
In LV, Newman and Holzman start off with Vygotsky's theoretical achievements from the first 16 years of the Soviet Union. They elaborate and complete his work in New York 60 years later. They read him with new eyes, see things not seen before. They continue to create their Vygotsky: 'For there is no reason for anyone or anything to stop developing – even after what society calls death' (LV, pp. 3-4). This creative completion takes new meanings as Newman and Holzman, in their latest works integrate Wittgenstein and understand their position in the general framework of a postmodern 'unscientific' psychology, in the process of which the last traces of a Marxist realism are purged. Like Vygotsky, they understand language to be activity: but unlike him, they infer that one cannot translate activity into words. Perhaps this is why our attempts at clarification of Newman and Holzman's theory only succeed up to a certain point. From that point onward, we are forced to consider how the concepts function as buzzwords in community practices – even if we have only the authors' words for what those are: for we have chosen not to travel to New York to become part of them. Let us see how far we come this way, beginning with the core concepts presented first in LV, passing through USP, and closing in on EOK's both most immediate and most abstract themes.
The authors' discussion of the practice of method in LV takes as its starting point the concept of meaning in pragmatics. Pragmatics find meanings in action: ultimately the meanings of theories are to be found in their capacity to solve problems. A theory is a tool that works; it is a method which as a result of previous work is used in action. The concept of tool is used in a wide sense: natural, physical objects; artifacts; language; and concepts are tools. Further, the concept of tool becomes deterministic; it is used in action as it is, and as cause and effect its meaning determines in a unidirectional and unmodifiable way what goes on. It is a tool-for-result. Newman and Holzman state that in order to overcome determinism in this pragmatic conception of tool, Vygotsky stood the pragmatics on their head. He developed the notion of method as a tool-and-result. What Marx specified as a socio-methodological principle, Vygotsky specified as a psycho-methodological one. Marx argued that revolution solves only tasks which have been raised by history; revolution transforms what it is. Vygotsky specifies this as a psycho-methodological principle: human action is a self and species transformation through the use of tools, and he took this to imply that the tool is modified in its use. The practice of method is transforming the given; method is tool-and-result.
Since tool use is a central aspect of self and species transformation, it becomes important to identify how self and species are transformed. This makes it necessary to deliberate the relation between what is normally conceived as biological development and psychological learning, also termed instruction. Vygotsky argued that development and instruction could not be separated; they are aspects of the same process. Neither do they consist of sequential steps according to a pre-given logic, nor do they possess a pre-given direction, except for what is inherent in the social development of human nature. Vygotsky is said to have adopted a term from city planning in order to identify this many-sided process: the zone of proximal development. A city may develop in many directions, depending upon the activities in and around it. To Vygotsky, then, instruction elicits development in some or direction or other, when instruction is just that much ahead of development, so that it becomes a challenge to ongoing activities and their problems. Newman and Holzman assert that the zone of proximal development was the uniquely human psychological unit of study, which is actually a social-historical unit, the unity of learning and development. The authors find a tendency in developmental research to use the concept as an excuse for making microgenetic studies, in order to find out how children should be instructed to read better. In such cases the authors find that the notion turns into a pragmatic concept, a tool-for-result. Therefore, to make instruction a challenge to ongoing activities is not a matter of precise didactics, but a matter of modifying the child's activity by giving it a new social context.
Further, Newman and Holzman try to conceive how method as a tool-and-result fares in alienated capitalistic society. They give reality to the pragmatic notion of method as tool-for-result. Acting, method as tool-for-result, is identified as acting under conditions which cannot be altered. Acting is robot-like, alienated behaviour of a coerced conformity (LV, p. 118). The authors talk about acting under total social domination, which may well mean the end of history (LV, p. 137). Newman and Holzman contrast the Parsonian doll-like behaviour of acting with performing, method as tool-and-result, which is activity changing its conditions during its course. They claim that in a totally alienated society such as ours, the point is not a matter of changing history, it is a matter of making it (LV, p. 145). We must create the environment for making a better life and for making theoretical discoveries. Vygotsky did this in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. Newman and Holzman, on their side, use Vygotsky as a tool-and-result under quite different conditions. This use they call completion – like the adult completing the child's actions to form a zone of proximal development, so Newman and Holzman complete Vygotsky in New York, by staying grounded in the dialectics of history, even though society thoroughly dominates history and represses revolutionary activity. Human beings are forced to adapt to conditions which increasingly and more and more obviously are antipathetical to the human species as a whole. Violence, homelessness, unemployment, drugs, and so on, are seen as the outcome of attempts at adaptation; they are clearly non-developmental and anti-progress (LV, p. 164). Under such conditions Newman and Holzman must complete Vygotsky as an everyday practical guide to transforming the world progressively, to making history. In their own words they have created a new psychology (a revolutionary psychology) by simultaneously creating the environment which makes the building of that psychology possible. They have built an anti-institution. It is community-supported and funded. The collective appeals directly to the public for dollars, thus staying independent of those institutions whose function is to maintain the status quo (LV, pp. 168f.).
We shall return to this very important issue below. But first, we must complete our investigation of the three books. USP appeared next. In this book the developmental conception in psychology presented above is confronted with notions of science imported from physics, chemistry, and so on. The title, as provocative as it might be, reflects the position taken by Newman and Holzman, being very skeptical towards any attempts at constituting a psychological science. Through a philosophical tour de force we are taken from ancient Greece to modern science and scientific psychology. 'Disguising itself as science, psychology insinuated itself into modern society as the voice of reason' (p. 3).
Newman and Holzman discuss 'The hoax/myth of psychology', spelling out 'three of its more destructive pieces of pseudo science' (p.3): 'The myth of the individual, … of mental illness … and of development'. (Additionally, in another publication, Newman [1991] exposes the concept of addiction as a myth in an interesting and insightful analysis.) Newman and Holzman provide a substantial and quite convincing critique of modern psychology, subjecting a variety of it conceptions to serious investigation. The great expansion of psychology in American society is documented. The increase in the number of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychiatric social workers from 9,000 in 1945 to more than 200,000 in 1992 and the growth of the percentage of American citizens in some kind of treatment for mental illness from 14 per cent in 1957 to an estimated 33 per cent in 1994 is mentioned (p.106). Also mentioned is the 103rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in New York, 1995, where more than 8,000 speakers and 15,000-20,000 attendees showed up. According to Newman and Holzman, this was the first time a large number of (postmodern) theorists challenged psychology's claim to be a science and called its continued existence as such into question (pp. 57-60; see also Newman & Gergen, 1995).
Newman and Holzman go on from here – arguing for the end of psychology as a science and its replacement with a 'construction of a non-philosophical, unsystematic, unscientific practice of method, … creating a noninterpretive, nonclassificatory, nonexplanatory approach' (p. 110). A programme constituted simply by negations of procedures from ordinary psychological science is in need of positive qualification. The developmental categories of the previous book must be understood as the positive underpinning of this critique.
Newman and Holzman's critique is overwhelming, but not altogether new. They argue (p. 61) that the problems originated with the human sciences' wholesale importation of the natural science paradigm, and that psychology in particular has been efficient in manufacturing concepts, groupings and classifications of people, as if they were the truth: 'Armed with the tools required for generating data relative to abstract attributes of equally abstract populations of people, psychology packaged these data as findings and sold them as knowledge claims about individuals. That is the hoax' (p.77).
In reviewing the history of modern psychology, Newman and Holzman stress the importance of the study of individual differences from the 1890s when psychologists with an applied interest began working as consultants for directors of schools, business managers, and so on, by using intelligence tests and making vocational selections (pp. 80-83). From here industrial and educational psychology expanded and became the two main applied areas of psychology. After World War II, what became – in the words of Newman and Holzman – 'the bestseller of psychology: mental illness and mental health' broke through under the call of 'normalizing the abnormal'.
In the final part of USP we are given a presentation of the community which Newman and Holzman are referring to as embodying their alternative revolutionary practice of method. In one stroke this must convince us of the philosophical strength of their arguments and give us an impression of a practice opening up developmental possibilities for participants. We are told that 'it is a community for itself, which at once supports development and has as its noninstrumental, nonpragmatic (tool-and-result) activity, the development it supports' (p. 151), and that: 'Our purpose is not to change the world (for we have no purpose, hidden or otherwise), our commitment is to be the world: Not to take it over, but to be taken over' (p. 152).
Such statements are striking: 'committed to be the world' and 'to be taken over by the world' are interesting ways of arguing for the importance of 'being in the world', and take it from there, with all the surprises one must expect with being part of something bigger than oneself. But in order to really engage the implications of method as tool-and-result, the zone of proximal development, performance, and all the other good stuff, those statements must presuppose self-reflection, modesty, and self-critique. If such modes of relating are not present, we are into yet another variety of the modern hubris of knowing what the world is – period. And we suspect that this could be the case, since the community has problems in conceiving its ways of belonging to the practice of society: 'It is not that there are no causes or causal talk in our developmental community. Rather our community is not a causally connected on. It is not connected with or by any conceptual cement. It is not connected at all' (p. 153). Newman and Holzman explain that the development community is concerned neither with the objective study of subjectivity nor with the subjective study of objectivity, but merely interested in discovering – in practice – a logic of development. The operative question is not who or what is true or right, but how we (collectively) can further develop (pp. 154-156). To stress the importance of a logic of development discovered in practice is a deep consequence of the philosophical project of method-and-result: the world appears in practice, it is mediated by the logic of practice, and everything we are able to do stems from this logic. But if unconnected, one wonders whether this turns 'the logic of practice' into the ultimate arbiter – we can do whatever we like, as long as it seems to fit the self-consciousness of the members of the collectivity, which, by the way, is not connected to the greater society. Self-reference appears as the absolute measure with which to judge the activity of the collective.
This problem becomes still more evident in the third and most recent book, EOK. There, we are persuaded that the tool-and-result idea proves the authors' long-standing anti-epistemological concerns, which first arose long before postmodernism became as fashionable as it is now. Insofar as the language games that postmodern philosophers and social constructionist psychologists (with or without reference to Wittgenstein) elevate to prominence instead of scientific knowledge are construed as performance, that is, as the practice of method, it seems plausible that Newman and Holzman hold a key to a consistent radicalization of postmodernism. Even if postmodernism is not their home pond, they swim us through the murky waters of (among many others) Baudrillard, Lyotard, Gergen and Shotter in a way that convinces us how those writers can be criticized from within. The critique is in our view often to the point and worth considering. Basically, it runs like this: epistemology should not only be criticized in its various expressions as modern science, but also formally, that is, in its fundamental assumptions about relations, objects, and so on. At the heart of the matter is the very idea of sameness. The notion that something is something inevitably means installing an epistemological dualism, a duplication of matters into the world and its representation. To do away with this basic epistemological bias, one cannot stop at interpretations, making and remaking sense, instrumental or responsive rhetorics, constructing and deconstructing ever new discourses. In short, language, even as linguistic action, does not in and of itself fulfill the task of overcoming epistemology. It must be completed in tool-and-result performance.
Newman and Holzman are among the few who have seen the far-reaching implications of Marx's theses on Feuerbach, not just the famous sixth, which states that we should not seek an abstract sense of humanity in the individual, but also the first, second, and the eleventh, in which practice, as a sensuous subjective revolutionary activity, is proposed as the foundation of a new kind of theoretical thinking. So far, the arguments of Newman and Holzman seem consistent, even if they build up considerable expectations to be fulfilled. The problem, it seems, lies in the argument that one needs to engage in revolutionary practice to understand. We would tend to agree, if revolution means change of relevant conditions; but we would also point out that the argument begs some answer to the question of how we know (or, if one prefers, how we understand) which practice in revolutionary and when.
In the context of what they call a 'non-chronological, non-systematic telling' which is nevertheless also 'a multi-level description' (EOK, p. 77) they state:
Perhaps what we are saying is nothing more than: 'We say and write what we do because of what and how we do.' Banal as this may sound, we think it needs to be said, for the importance of activity and institutional location…is so often overlooked. (EOK, p. 80)
This argument is very important. We picture a group of people gathered at the Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy, alias the Developmental Development Community, nodding their heads: 'Yes indeed, we see why Newman and Holzman wrote this!' Insofar as the books are more than a tool-and-result in some process in the community, however, we, the readers, need to be told in words what Newman and Holzman do and how they do it, and under which conditions, if we are to learn something from them. And in fact we are told precious little, perhaps because, in Newman and Holzman's view, telling us with words would mean an epistemological reduction to representation. At least for an overseas reader, this is something of a problem, especially compared to Newman and Holzman's reproach of almost all other theorists for not reflecting self-critically (in words) about their own practical-scientific environments.
It is not that Newman and Holzman do not describe or present what they do. Perhaps conscious of the need for a release of tension, the end EOK, much like USP, with a descriptive section on their practice. In USP, this is called 'a continuously developmental (through thoroughly pointless) relational activity' (p. 194). In EOK, we are invited into their 'community of conversations' to take part in therapy, philosophizing, teaching, and theatre, in a 'study of the performance of conversation indistinguishable from the performance of conversation itself' (p. 109).
In these descriptions, we're right back in the great American tradition of (verbatim or narrative representations of) therapy sessions that show how things are done. And with it, all of its hidden assumptions: that the material context of activity is unimportant; that conversation is life; and even how productive change flows from using the correct method. This strikes us as tremendously intriguing, not only because of the obvious contradictions with all that was written in the previous sections of the books, but also because it is somehow quite inspiring to witness glimpses of what may occur when one focuses on completion and performance rather than analysis or intervention.
Inspiring glimpses, like so many Great Therapists' narratives. For what remains unclear are the concrete conditions and possibilities of a 'Developing Development Community' in the middle of the 'structural antagonisms' of America's 'highly regulated capitalism'. The 'deliberately unsystematic thoughts' (EOK, ch. 4) on the overall societal context do not really help us understand what kind of a life the participants in (and outside of) the community are living, what problems they are struggling with, and how the social therapy performances deal with them. In particular, nowhere do we find self-critical discussions that invite us to see how the social therapy tool develops in the process.
Comparing the authors' way of describing their practice with earlier writings, one can see the postmodern turn as a retreat from a more demanding notion of revolutionary practice. In History is the Cure: A Social Therapy Reader (Holzman & Polk, 1988), the cure of engaging in History is described as an empowerment that is intimately connected to engaging in the political activities of the community (and its 'New Alliance Party'). Even here, recruitment into the community actually succeeds in accomplishing change. But now, the revolution lies in the 'performance' itself, that is, the talk:
The social therapy group typically begins (week after week) with group members' placing before us the varied forms of alienation (themselves) that is our emotional life in capitalist culture….Our performance grows, develops, and our disease(s) eventually vanishes. We have collectively drawn our attention to something else. We are performing the revolutionary activity. Next week we will do it again. (USP, p. 195)
How, then, can the transcribed or described performances perform the necessary function of a final argument to support Newman and Holzman's version of a psychology beyond knowing? Perhaps, though, it is not the momentary interactions in themselves we should take as evidence. At one point, we imagined that Newman and Holzman would follow us out of the immediacy of therapeutic space to question institutional power. But the whole issue remains a catchphrase. The much repeated statement that the Institute for Short Term Psychotherapy reproduces itself through direct community support does not convince us that their theorists are free from any material interests that may give rise to ideological distortions. On the contrary, the vagueness of the buzzwords that seem to organize the raison d'etre of the community leaves a suspicion that it somehow relies on what its utopian qualities perform for its participants. That does not altogether disqualify it as useless or reactionary, and we see no point in speculating about 'brain-wash' or 'cult'-like features of the community (Friedman, 1994). (For a counter-view that 'exposes' how the 'Newmanite Sect' abuses therapy to recruit and exploit political activists, visit http://www.publiceye.org/pra/newman/napmain.html.) However, the suspicion does point to the question of how the community, and Newman and Holzman's theory, deals with the problem of ideology – not as a question of absolute Truth, but as an ongoing discussion of what it is we do: the point of difference, perhaps between a revolutionary performance and the revolutionary practice of changing the world which Marx referred to, until he was 'completed' by 'Wittgenstein', who, in turn, appears to be reinvented as a 1997 New York social therapist.
In other words, making history appears to mean creating an environment in spite of an independent of the dominant broader conditions. The immediate conditions are torn off from societal ones. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is transformed into an abstract zone of proximal conditions, re-created in talk by human performers. To us, this is an all too abstract procedure for a developmental perspective.
Friedman, D. (1994). Why do Americans believe in the existence of cults? Practice: The Magazine of Psychology and Political Economy. 10(1). 1-19.
Holzman, L. & Polk H. (Eds.). (1988). History is the cure: A social therapy reader. New York: Practice Press.
Newman, F. (1991). The politics and psychology of addiction. Practice: The Magazine of Psychology and Political Economy, 8(1), 9-18.
Newman, F., & Gergen, K. (1995). Diagnosis: The human cost of the rage to order. Paper, American Psychological Association, New York. Read from the Castillo Cultural Center's website. By February 1999, it's http://www.castillo.org/Eastside-apa.html
MORTEN NISSEN is associate professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. He works with practice, subjectivity and action contexts, in general theory as well as in action research on social work development projects in the fields of drug abuse and marginalized youth. ADDRESS: Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 88, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark [email mnissen@axp.psl.ku.dk]
ERIK AXEL is associate professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Roskilde (DK). He works with practice, subjectivity and action contexts, in general theory as well is in action research projects in high-tech workplaces and social work. ADDRESS: Department of Psychology, Roskilde Universitetcenter, Postboks 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark. [email: eaxel@ruc.dk]
TORBEN BECHMANN JENSEN is external lecturer at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen. He works free-lance with theories of youth, counseling and intervention programs in contextual settings. ADDRESS: 'Gartnerhuset', Aastrupvej 61, 4340 Toelloese, Denmark. [email: bechmann.koch@get2net.dk]
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