INVESTIGACIÓN SOBRE LA EDUCACIÓN SUPERIOR SUPERIOR

of detail: not only do we get a glimpse of how an elite group of psychologists viewed their own discipline at the time, but we also see how much attention psychological phenomena had attracted from outside the discipline (from e.g., biology and education).

To make this clearer, Hsueh’s (2004) narrative has been simplified in Table 1.

[For the table, see over…]

Table 1. A tabular simplification of Hsueh's (2004) narrative, highlighting the top nominees from each relevant selection group.

Psychology Education

†Previously awarded, and therefore ineligible

‡Harvard faculty, and therefore ineligible (Elliott, 1999, p. 164)

This presents something of a Who’s Who of early-1930s American Psychology.

Yet it is interesting to note that Jung received an award, and not Freud, for two reasons unrelated to merit: not only was Freud thought to be too old to travel (p. 22), but Harvard president James Bryant Conant (1893-1978) was also reluctant—for personal reasons—to support his nomination (p. 22 [citing Murray]). It is even more interesting to note,

however, that the nomination process as it affected Piaget went much the same way.

There are thus two additional factors, beyond merit, that need to be examined with particular attention when considering such celebrations: “health” (which is about the subject of celebration) and “internal politics” (which is about the decision makers and their process of determining who or what should be celebrated).

Taking this perspective, we then see that Piaget emerged as a candidate only after Ivan Pavlov’s (1849-1936) declining health prevented him from undertaking the long overseas journey from the Soviet Union to the U.S. east coast (p. 25). We see also that there was no mention of Piaget’s own health problems; nor were there any mentions of his interactions with Sabina Spielrein (1885-1942), who served for a time as his analyst (see Vidal, 1995/2001; also Vidal, 1994, pp. 162-181). We will therefore turn to the second factor, “internal politics,” which Hsueh (2004) discussed in detail.

5.3. Decision-making and internal politics. Pavlov was older than Freud, and his late withdrawal from the Harvard nominations process—in October of 1935 (less than half-a-year before his death in February of 1936)—did not come as a complete surprise.⁵²

52 The Tercentenary records show that Pavlov had indicated in February of 1935 that his

attendance was always uncertain: there was a possible conflict with an important meeting in Spain, and also he had concerns regarding the seasickness that would result from braving “the Atlantic autumnal storms”

(Pavlov, 1935). His nominator, Walter B. Cannon, was then encouraged to use his influence to convince

But it was incredibly inconvenient: the committee had held out hope, until the eleventh hour, that he would come. This was because they intended for Pavlov, a winner of the Nobel Prize, to provide leadership in anchoring the symposium on “Factors Determining Human Behavior” (p. 26).⁵³ With the Tercentenary looming, and the symposium

scheduled for September of 1936, they then had less than a year to fill the resulting void.

Hsueh (2004) reports that the committee felt pressured to find a similarly interdisciplinary scholar with comparable interests, especially those relevant to educational and social psychology. They quickly worked through an initial list of nominees, but disqualified them all. The committee then sought a second round of suggestions. And a third. Ultimately, they produced the last list themselves:

the names of Jean Piaget and Lewis Terman [1877-1956] were put forth together, not only as possible replacements of [sic] Pavlov to give a keynote speech to the symposium but also as most [sic] qualified candidates whose work had important implications in the fields of education, human learning, and intelligence, the same lines of inquiry that Pavlov inspired. (p. 26)

In short, Piaget and Terman were initially on equal footing. From the Table, however, it is clear that Terman should have been preferred: he had a much broader base of support.

(Of course, only correcting the misunderstanding of Lashley’s nomination being for

Pavlov to choose to attend anyway. (For more on Cannon and Pavlov, see Todes, 2014.) By August, however, this seemed very doubtful: “he has told his son that his recent trip to London was his last journey except, perhaps, the trip to Madrid” (Cannon, 1935a). By the time the third round of nominations was sought in October of 1935, however, a memorandum in the files indicates that Cannon thought the odds of Pavlov attending had improved (Memorandum on Pavlov, 1935). This perhaps explains the committee’s delay in seeking a replacement.

53 The papers presented in this session were ultimately published together in a volume of the same name (Harvard Tercentenary Publications, 1937; see also Elliott, 1999, pp. 163, 165-167).

Terman—rather than Tolman [p. 26]—made this obvious.)

We can suggest in retrospect that both men would have acquitted themselves admirably, although Terman certainly more intelligibly. And the committee knew this, as I discovered when I retraced Hsueh’s steps in the archive: “Piaget speaks English very poorly and could hardly have the general influence in the symposium and the round table which Terman might well have” (Wilson, 1935b). Indeed, that it was Piaget and not Terman who ultimately received the nomination is somewhat peculiar when examined without the exuberance of the Rediscovery. As Hsueh (2004) reports, “neither the psychology nor the education faculty seemed enthusiastic about him” (p. 28).

Hsueh’s archival work suggests that Piaget was in fact no one’s first choice.

Instead, he was known by committee members as a result simply of their connection to the Rockefeller-funded Hawthorne Experiments conducted out of the Harvard Business School (pp. 31-34; see Gillespie, 1991; Hsueh, 2001, 2002). This then provides a partial answer, related to internal politics, to the question of how he received the nomination.

But the Hawthorne Experiments were at best instances of industrial or organizational psychology, not educational or social psychology: the connection from Hawthorne to the committee, and its goals, therefore can’t be the whole story.

Fortunately, the committee’s decision became clearer when I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the archives, with the benefit both of hindsight and of being able to build on Hsueh’s work. In short: Terman seems not to have been rejected. Instead, we find the second part of our sought-after answer in the committee’s comments on his health: “Terman is fully worthy of the honorary degree and it would be very nice to give

him one because he has been handicapped by tuberculosis (as I am informed) and has had to lead a rather quiet life” (Wilson, 1935a).

Terman was dropped soon after. And I saw no other reason given. Thus, we might ask: after the trouble with Pavlov, could they risk it with another less-than-perfectly-healthy candidate? It seems not.

While it is the case that Piaget’s champion on the committee thought him more

“inspired and novel” (qtd. in Hsueh, 2004, p. 27), the man reflected in the nomination papers is clearly not a Great Man whose recognition was inevitable. Indeed, I discovered that the committee saw their choice of Piaget as a “gamble” (Wilson, 1935b). But it seems to have been the safer option. And, they noted, it also fit with President Conant’s goal of balancing established scholars with younger investigators whose contributions were not yet well-known (Hsueh, 2004, p. 30).

Still, Piaget seems like a lightweight when compared to the other candidates. The nomination papers make the differences clear: Pavlov was “the most eminent

physiologist Russia has produce[d],” “awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904,” and “a highly stimulating influence in physiology, psychology, and philosophy” (Cannon, 1935b).

Pierre Janet was “without a doubt the most distinguished French psychologist and psychopathologist,” “generally regarded as having founded psychopathology as a separate discipline,” “a well-loved public figure… brilliant lectures,” and “in good health” (Boring, 1934, p. 2). And Jung was “one of the important pioneers of the investigation of personality,” “A man of universal erudition and true wisdom,” “at the summit of his career,” and “one of the deepest and most provocative thinkers of the

contemporary world” (Boring, 1934, p. 3).

By comparison, Piaget’s biography was—to put it mildly—more subdued. His nomination does not shine as brightly:

His interests and training involve natural history, philosophy and sociology as well as psychology. He has the true imagination of a creator. His work is that of systematic research upon the conceptual content and mode of functioning, and mode of apprehension of the child mind. These things he has studied in their developmental characteristics. He sees the development of children’s concepts upon a background of sociology and has in his recent volume, for example, investigated such concepts as retributive and distributive justice, collective responsibility, etc., in their genetic phases and set up hypotheses which seem to correlate the data regarding the origins and successive transformations of these concepts during the developmental process. Other illustrations could be given to show that his work has important implications for the field of social learning although it is not a study of the learning process as such. (Wilson, 1935b;

referring to Piaget, 1932/1932)

So then: Piaget was imaginative and creative and systematic, but not a Great Man like Pavlov, Janet, or Jung. He was, however, the last man standing. And they needed a body to fill a space in the schedule. Thus, Piaget—just one month after celebrating his fortieth birthday—received the honorary doctorate originally intended for a Nobel Laureate more than twice his age.

While these discoveries are in keeping with the present “American”

historiographical preference for non-celebratory narratives, it is awkward for an

“American” reading of the new biography by Ratcliff and Borella (2013). This is because they seem to present the Harvard doctorate as an irony: the rationalization for framing Piaget’s tortured nomination to a full professorship at Geneva as being the story of a

“conquering hero” (pp. 16, 18). And this framing no longer seems justified (even if it had been acceptable). Yet following the heuristic extracted from the Harvard nomination process—again appealing to symmetry—their apparently celebratory essay can be examined in two ways that extend beyond the fundamental merit of their study: their study’s underlying “health” as history (which is about their evidence and its presentation [i.e., how they have done their work]), and the “internal politics” of the receiving

audience (which is about us).