![]() In Kessen’s analysis, the first cultural-historical change that led to the invention of the modern-day child was the gradual division between the domains of work and family. He did, therefore, delete the adjective ‘American’ (from the title ‘The American Child and Other Cultural Inventions’) in his revisited version in 1983 hence: ‘The Child and Other Cultural Inventions’ (Kessen, 1983). And while Kessen consequently spoke about American child and developmental psychology, his critique applies to Western culture as a whole, if only because of the dominant influence of North American developmental psychology in the twentieth and even twenty-first century. Against the background of the industrial revolution, he discussed three cultural-historical changes that have shaped the fundamental principles of developmental psychology through to the present. (Kessen, l.c.)Grounding his position in historical analysis, Kessen suggested that, in the mid-nineteenth century, the United States of America was being prepared, socio-culturally, for the birth of what came to be known as child psychology. Section four concludes with several critical notes as a bridge to brief descriptions of the papers that comprise this special issue.įor not only are American children shaped and marked by the larger cultural forces of political maneuverings, practical economics, and implicit ideological commitments (a new enough recognition) child psychology is itself a peculiar invention that moves with the tidal sweeps of the larger culture in ways that we understand at best dimly and often ignore. Conversely, section three elaborates on the view that scientific thinking not only depends on empirical-analytical research, but also requires self-reflection, in particular, critical thinking about a discipline’s foundations and history. In other words, while recognizing - as Kessen did later in his career - that scientific knowledge is always contingent on time and place, scholarly concepts and claims must remain open to empirical inquiry. In particular, we will assert that it is possible to be an anti-positivist while simultaneously believing that theoretical conceptions must be approached systematically and assessed empirically-analytically as rigorously as possible. The second section takes a closer look at the meaning of ‘positivism’, a concept and movement Kessen often considered. The first section of this introduction focuses on Kessen’s ideas. And that is what this special issue seeks to demonstrate. Inter alia, this implies that developmental psychology cannot function fruitfully without historical analysis. The often-cited developmental psychologist William Kessen (1925–1999) considered the American child a ‘cultural invention’ (Kessen, 1979). The final section provides a brief overview of the papers that comprise this special issue on historical developmental psychology. Section 4 concludes with several critical notes regarding, e.g., the predominantly Western orientation of historical studies of child development and the need to recognize the unavoidable normative, moral dimension in the study of human development. In particular, twenty-first century developmental psychology requires critical thinking about the discipline’s foundations and history, along with deep analyses of how childhood and child development, and the field itself, are historically and culturally embedded (as Kessen asserted). One corollary – Although contemporary developmental psychology is dominated by empirical-quantitative approaches, a wider range of philosophical and methodological approaches are called for if the failings of lingering positivism are to avoided. Despite those and related fundamental critiques, anti-positivism (such as Kessen’s) does not imply anti-empiricism. The core critique of positivism is based on Poppers falsificationism and the so-called Positivismusstreit within the Frankfurter Schule. In the second section the pretensions of positivism (classical nineteenth century positivism as well as twentieth century neo-positivism) are analyzed. The first section of this paper summarizes Kessen’s central ideas. Emphasizing the importance of understanding children and child development as ‘cultural inventions’, William Kessen urged developmental psychologists to forego ‘positivistic dreaming’. ![]()
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