Modernizing the Mind: Psychological Knowledge and the Remaking of Society

Traces the history of psychology and its proliferation as a field of knowledge into all aspects of modern society. When did fidgety children begin to suffer from attention deficit disorder? How did frightened people come to be called paranoid ? Why are we considered to have emotional intelligence and not simply caring personalities? While psychological knowledge began in the relative isolation of laboratories and universities, it has now permeated various professions, institutions, and, indeed, everyday life. As a result, society, and our conceptions of self, have fundamentally changed as psychology has modernized the mind. Ward provides a careful social and cultural history of the spread of psychological knowledge and an assessment of the way this proliferation has reconfigured the meaning of society and the way people look at themselves and others. Using ideas borrowed from science and technology studies, the sociology of culture, and the sociology of organizations, Modernizing the Mind examines how, over the course of the 20th century, American psychology managed to establish itself as the central purveyor of truth about the mind and self. The author maintains that the current proliferation of psychological knowledge and practices throughout society is a result of the alliances those in the field established with groups such as educators, parents, government bureaucrats, and industrialists, which evolved into an elaborate and expansive network for the flow of psychological concepts and practices. Eventually, psychology would become, in essence, common knowledge, available to just about anyone. This innovative account of the success of psychology offers a novel theory of knowledge that can be used to understand the growth and influence of a number of different knowledge forms.