GLENDON COLLEGE
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
GL/SOCI/SOSC 3645.06: SOCIALIZATION AND
PERSONALITY
(updated February 27th, 2012)
Second term test: Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Second term essay due: Monday, April 2nd, 2012, C213 before 5 p.m.
Final List of Concepts for Spring, 2012
Course Director: Dr. D. Carveth
Office: C 133 (by appointment)
Telephone: 416-487-6741
Web: http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth
Email: dcarveth@yorku.ca
Course Description
The processes of socialization
and personality development are examined from the standpoints of the
sociological and psychoanalytic perspectives. The
"dialectical" or "emergent" (as distinct from the "continuous") evolutionary
perspective grounded in the thought of Hegel, Marx, Vernadsky, Teilhard de
Chardin and Julian Huxley and shared by G.H. Mead's "symbolic interactionism,"
Peter Berger’s "reality constructionism," and a range of existentialist
philosophies will be
reviewed. Then the Freudian and Kleinian
psychoanalytic theories of socialization, personality development and
psychopathology are reviewed, criticized, revised and expanded from the feminist perspectives of
Eli Sagan and Dorothy Dinnerstein. Students will be in
a position to compare and contrast sociological and psychoanalytic views of
personality and the socialization process.
See: The Animals. The PBS Nova series has a very good three-part program called Becoming Human that documents the latest research findings in this field.
See also the story of Nim Chimpsky and the recent film: Documentary Tells the Tale of Nim Chimpsky, the Chimp Raised as a Human
The sequence in which we will take up the readings (for the first part of the course) is, after Huxley: Becker, Burke, Lindesmith et al., then Berger. Berger’s Invitation should be purchased (Glendon Bookstore), but the chapter from The Sacred Canopy is available on reserve at Frost Library. You should purchase Caper, Dinnerstein and Sagan, though you may want to hold off doing so for several weeks until you’re sure you want to stay in the course. If Sagan proves unavailable in print, I will supply copies or put the material online.
Readings
Becker, E. (2010). The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man. Second Edition. New York: Simon & Schuster. Chapters
1-3 are here: Becker Part of this material is covered in Becker, E. (1970). “From Animal to Human Reactivity.” In: Stone G. P. & H. A. Farberman (Eds.)
(1970). Social Psychology Through Symbolic Interaction. Walkham, Mass.: Ginn-Blaudell, pp. 95-99; copy on reserve in Frost Library. Here is an online
summary that while not the book itself seems fairly accurate. Ernest Becker's The Birth and Death of Meaning
Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. Purchase.
-----. (1965) The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. Chapters 1-2. Copy on reserve in Frost.
Burke, K. (1966). “Definition of Man.” In Language As
Symbolic Action. Berkeley:
University of California Press, pp. 2-24.
Carveth, D. (2009). "What Does Psychoanalysis Have to Learn from Existentialism?" Unpublished paper presented to the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society, February 11th, 2009. Existentialism
Carveth, D. (2010). "Superego, Conscience and the Nature and Types of Guilt." Modern Psychoanalysis 35, 1 (2010): 106-130. Conscience vs. Superego
Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. Rev. ed. New York: International Universities Press, 1966. An online summary is here: Online excerpts and summary
Freud, S. (1923). The Ego and the Id. Standard Edition, Vol. 19. London: Hogarth Press, 1961.
Freud, S. (1933). "Dissection of the Psychical Personality." New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Lecture 31. Standard Edition, Vol. 22. London: Hogarth Press, 1964.
Huxley, J. (1947). "The Uniqueness of Man." Man In the Modern World, chapter 1. New York: Mentor, pp. 1-23.
-----. (1959). "Introduction" to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's (1950), The Phenomenon of Man. London: Collins.
Klein, M. (1959). “
Lindesmith, A.R., Straus, A.L. & N. K., Denzin (1977). Social Psychology. 5th Ed. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Ch. 2, “The Evolutionary Setting of Human Behavior”; Ch. 7, "Humans Without Symbols: Restricted Communication."
Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Chicago: Chicago University Press. See especially chapter 18, "The Self and the Organism."
Morgan, C. Lloyd. (1923). Emergent Evolution. The Gifford Lectures, 1922. London: Williams and Norgate. Full text online here:
Sartre, J.-P. (1946). Existentialism is a Humanism. Trans. P. Mairet. New York: World Publishing Co., 1956.
Whyte, L.A. (1949). "The Symbol: The Origin and Basis of Human Behavior." The Science of Culture. New York: Grove Press, chapter 2, pp. 22-39. Whyte
Wrong, D.H. (1961). "The Oversocialized Concept of Man in Modern Sociology." Amer. Sociol. Rev., 26:183-93. Reprinted together with a Postscript in Skeptical Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1976. Chapter 1.
Course Requirements:
Format: Two-hour lecture plus a
seminar.
Assignments: Two essays
(40% each)
and two tests (10% each).
First term test: Tuesday, November 29th, 2011.
First term essay due: Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
Second term test: Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Second term essay due: Monday, April 2nd, 2012
LIST OF FIRST AND SECOND TERM CONCEPTS (will be expanded in the second term): 3645conceptsFall2010.pdf
Although originally prepared for another course these KLEIN CONCEPTS serve as a useful study guide for the Klein portion of this course.
ESSAY TOPICS
NOTE: You are STRONGLY advised to spend a good deal of time carefully going over the information regarding writing essays placed online here http://www.yorku.ca/dcarveth/essay. Although originally prepared for another course, the essay tips and style guide (scroll down to these relevant sections) are equally valuable for SOCI/SOSC 3645 6.0
The following are additional essay instructions (beyond the detailed information placed online at the foregoing web address).
Instructions:
1. It is essential that
you discuss you essay thoroughly in seminar before beginning to write so that
you are quite clear about what is expected.
2. Students are invited to propose alternative topics, provided these are clearly related to the content of this course and are thoroughly discussed with and approved by the instructor in advance of writing.
3. Lectures are designed
as a guide to your own research.
Essays which merely regurgitate lecture notes will be returned
ungraded. Do not quote or refer
to lectures in your essays; work instead with relevant texts.
4. Form, style, syntax
grammar, spelling, punctuation, neatness, etc., are as important as the content
of your essay.
5. The "in text" reference
system is to be used. See any of the papers by
Carveth at
www.yorku.ca/dcarveth.
6. Length: approximately
2500 words or 10 typed and double-spaced pages.
7. Keep the use of online resources for essays to an absolute minimum (no more than one reference, if any). Read books and journal articles. Do not quote or make reference to Wikepedia as it is not a valid academic resource, though it may refer you to valid academic sources which may be referenced.
8. YORK POLICY ON ACADEMIC HONESTY
9. Late penalties apply after due date at the rate of 5% of the grade earned per day (e.g., one day late would drop you from 80% to 75%, two days to 70%, three days to 65%, etc). Deliver to C213 (slot in door). Be sure to keep a copy as "lost" essays will receive a grade of zero. Hard copies must be submitted. Essays emailed to the instructors will not be accepted.
10. Consumption of food in class is a distraction and an annoyance to both other students and the instructor, as is the ringing of cell phones and other devices. It is also highly disruptive when people enter or leave the classroom in the midst of a lecture. If you arrive late, remain outside and enter at the break; do not leave the classroom in the midst of the lecture unless you are ill or otherwise indisposed.
11. Use of computers in class is not allowed except for students with documented learning disabilities who require this.
First Term
1. Describe the "dialectical" or "emergent" evolutionary model, contrasting it with the "continuous" evolutionary model, drawing on the thought of Hegel, Vernadsky, G.H. Mead, Teilhard de Chardin, Julian Huxley, Kenneth Burke, Leslie Whyte, Peter Berger, Lindesmith, Strauss & Denzin, and Jean Paul Sartre.
2. Describe the uniqueness of human existence on the level of the nöosphere utilizing the thought of Huxley, Burke, Whyte, Becker, G.H. Mead, Berger and Sartre.
Second Term
1. In light of Huxley's idea of man's freedom from instinctual control and, hence, the inevitability of psychic conflict on the level of the nöosphere, first review the Freudian theory of conflict, anxiety and defence (this review of Freudian theory should constitute between one third and one half of the length of your paper); then explain and illustrate the operation of a minimum of ten defence mechanisms. Note: You may take your illustrations from your observations of yourself, other people, literature, film, or you may just make them up. The point is not where they come from, but whether they accurately and vividly illuminate the particular defence mechanism you are discussing. See: A. Freud (1936); Brenner, C. (1974).
2. Outline the Freudian and Kleinian theories of the superego. Do these theories do justice to the problem of conscience as Sagan (1988) describes it?
3. Review Sagan's (1988) and Dinnerstein's (1975) critique of Freud's theory of female development.
4. Is Berger's (1963; 1967) "reality constructionism" guilty of presenting what Wrong (1961; 1976) considers an oversocialized concept of human personality?
Recommended Readings
Brenner, C. (1974). An Elementary Textbook of Psychoanalysis. Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Anchor.(1974)
Berger, P. & T. Luckmann
(1967). The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
Carveth, D. (1984a). "Psychoanalysis and Social Theory: The Hobbesian Problem Revisited." Psychoanalysis & Contemporary
Thought 7, 1:43-98.
-----. (1984b). "The Analyst's Metaphors: A Deconstructionist Perspective." Psychoanalysis & Contemporary Thought 7, 4:156-2. Metaphors
-----. (1996). "Psychoanalytic Conceptions of the Passions". In Freud and the Passions, ed. J. O'Neill. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996, ch. 2., pp. 25-51. Passions
-----. (2004a). "The Melancholic Existentialism of Ernest Becker." Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis (in press). Becker
-----. (2004b). "Freud's Centaur Model of Human Nature." Centaur
-----. (2006). Self-Punishment as Guilt Evasion: Theoretical Issues." Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis/Revue Canadienne de Psychanalyse 14, 2 (Fall 2006): 172-96. Guilt Evasion
Caper, R. (2000). Immaterial Facts: Freud's Discovery of Psychic Reality and Klein's Development of His Work. London & New York: Routledge.
Dinnerstein, D. (1976). The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual Arrangements and Human Malaise. With a new Introduction by Vivian Gornick and Ann Snitow;
Afterword by Adrienne Harris. New York: Other Press, 1999. This online version by Google Books is incomplete but there is enough here to give you a good
sense of what Dinnerstein is about.
Freud, S. (1908-1939). Civilization, Society and Religion: Group Psychology, Civilization and its Discontents and Other Works. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Pelican,
1985.
-----. (1916-17
[1915-1917]).
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Pelican, 1913.
-----. (1933). New Introductory Lectures on
Psychoanalysis. Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Pelican, 1973.
Freud, A. (1936). The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense. New York: International Universities Press.
Klein, M. &
J. Riviere (1937). Love, Hate and
Reparation.
New York: Norton, 1964.
Mitchell, J. (Ed.) (1986). The Selected Melanie Klein. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.
Sagan, E. (1988). Freud, Women, and Morality: The Psychology of Good and Evil. New York: Basic Books. Purchase. Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7. Online here: Sagan1-2 Sagan5-6 Sagan7-8
Trotsky, L. (1939). The ABC of Materialist Dialectics
DIALECTICAL METHOD
Hegel, 1770-1831
Hegel taught us to understand the history of ideas in terms of a dialectical development in which men react against the views held by their predecessors and correct any one-sidedness in these views by going to the opposite extreme that, alas, is equally one-sided. --W. Kaufmann
None of the major
thinkers of the past two centuries, including Freud, can be understood without
some understanding of
Hegel.
Aufheben -- Sublimation
Although the conception of the dialectic as a three-step movement from thesis to antithesis and finally synthesis is Fichte's rather than Hegel's, this model legitimately articulates the Hegelian dialectic provided one understands that both thesis (the immediate) and its negation (which is not necessarily its contrary) are cancelled and yet preserved and elevated in the synthesis (mediation) that represents their sublation (sublimation). The idea is not as complicated as it sounds. Berger's conception of the social construction of (social) reality as composed of the three "moments" of externalization, objectivation and internalization is derived from Hegel. Here the thesis "Man makes society" gives rise to the antithesis "Society makes man." This looks like a contradiction but Berger offers us a dialectical synthesis in which we can understand that both are true on a higher level. Similarly, in Being and Nothingness (1943) Sartre argues man is radically free. But in the Critique of Dialectical Reason (1960) he depicts man as determined by a wide range of social, economic, historical, familial and psychological conditions. Has Sartre changed his mind? Is he in contradiction? No, for a proper understanding of Sartre's philosophy is a dialectical one in which by interrogating the categories "free" and "determined" we can come to understand that on a higher level human beings are both. Freud’s concept of "sublimation” offers another illustration. The wish to be dirty (thesis) is opposed by the wish to be clean (antithesis) and, out of this conflict, may emerge a synthesis in which both wishes are transcended and yet preserved, being elevated to a higher level as in the case of the sculptor who might be said to have found a way to be dirty and clean at the same time in the form of his artistic productions. Whereas sublimation negates, preserves and elevates, in the neurotic compromise-formation involving “reaction-formation” the immediate (thesis, the wish to be dirty) is overcome by an intensified wish to be clean (antithesis) that negates it through repression. Although in a sense the negated wish to be dirty is preserved in a state of repression that gives rise to a return of the repressed in disguised forms, there is no negation of the negation leading to art as mediation or sublimation, leaving only the exaggerated need to be clean that often results in obsessive-compulsive rituals and symptoms.
Leon Trotsky: The ABC of Materialist Dialectics
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