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Intersections of Psychological Research and Psychotherapeutic Practices

Datum
27. März – 29. März 2025 

Call for Papers for the 10th Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop on His­tor­i­cal Epis­te­mol­o­gy, Uni­ver­sit­ry of Lübeck


Call for Papers for the 10th Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop on His­tor­i­cal Epis­te­mol­o­gy: „Inter­sec­tions of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Research and Psy­chother­a­peu­tic Practices”
27–29 March 2025
IMGWF, Uni­ver­sität zu Lübeck

Orga­nized by:
EpistHist Research Net­work on the His­to­ry and the Meth­ods of His­tor­i­cal Epistemology
https://episthist.hypotheses.org/

Open­ing lecture:
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger

Ten years ago, the Research Net­work on the His­to­ry and Meth­ods of His­tor­i­cal Epis­te­mol­o­gy, EpistHist, began in Paris with its inau­gur­al work­shop on épisté­molo­gie his­torique. These work­shops have turned into an annu­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss key issues in the his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy of sci­ences and engage in con­tem­po­rary method­olog­i­cal debates. By mobi­liz­ing his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy as a broad approach, the work­shops medi­ate between 20th-cen­tu­ry French epis­te­mol­o­gy and its recent renew­al in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. The abstracts and pro­grams of past edi­tions are avail­able on the research network’s web­site: https://episthist.hypotheses.org/.

After edi­tions in Paris, Dijon, and Venice, EpistHist is now cross­ing the Rhine and the Elbe rivers to cel­e­brate its first decade at the Insti­tute for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine and Sci­ence Stud­ies, Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck, where Hans-Jörg Rhein­berg­er once con­ceived tools for inter­lac­ing the his­to­ry of sci­ence with phi­los­o­phy through his­tor­i­cal epistemology.

This anniver­sary work­shop will focus on the top­ic of Inter­sec­tions of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Research and Psy­chother­a­peu­tic Prac­tices. Here, we aim to explore which approach­es with­in his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy are most suit­able for inves­ti­gat­ing the pro­duc­tion of knowl­edge and prac­tices relat­ed to the psyche.

Since Gas­ton Bachelard (1984) placed research instru­ments and tech­niques at the core of his epis­te­mo­log­i­cal his­to­ry with the con­cept of phe­nom­e­notech­nique, the role of prac­tices has become cen­tral to under­stand­ing the pro­duc­tion and trans­mis­sion of sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge. Com­pared to micro­scopes or par­ti­cle accel­er­a­tors, psy­chol­o­gy and the psy-sci­ences might seem to lack equiv­a­lent phe­nom­e­notech­niques. How­ev­er, at a clos­er look, the psy-sci­ences make wide­spread use of ques­tion­naires, inter­views, pro­to­cols, and oth­er “paper tools” essen­tial for their knowl­edge prac­tices. Mitchell Ash and Thomas Sturm (2007), fol­low­ing Ian Hack­ing (1992) and Hans-Jörg Rhein­berg­er (2017), have espe­cial­ly point­ed to the role of instru­ments of exper­i­men­ta­tion as orga­niz­ers of psy­cho­log­i­cal research practices.

On a cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal lev­el, fol­low­ing Michel Foucault’s (2008) analy­sis of psy-prac­tices as dis­ci­pli­nary prac­tices, schol­ars like Ian Hack­ing (1995, 1998, 2002), Arnold I. David­son (2002), and oth­ers explored the nor­ma­tive effects of psy-sci­ences and psy-prac­tices on sub­jects, sub­jec­tiv­i­ty, and con­cep­tions of self­hood, show­ing how con­cepts and cat­e­gories shape expe­ri­ences, result­ing in new ways of “mak­ing up people.”

Nonethe­less, with the notable excep­tion of some recent works (Marks, 2017; Ros­ner, 2018), inquiries into the his­to­ry of psy-sci­ences have pri­mar­i­ly focused on the pro­duc­tion of psy-knowl­edge, often over­look­ing psy­chother­a­peu­tic prac­tices under the assump­tion that these are mere­ly appli­ca­tions of that knowl­edge. Our work­shop intends to chal­lenge this by explic­it­ly address­ing psy­chother­a­peu­tic prac­tices as equal­ly rel­e­vant for a his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy of psy-sci­ences. We fol­low Georges Canguilhem’s (1974) insight that med­i­cine is not the mere appli­ca­tion of knowl­edge gen­er­at­ed in the life sci­ences but a set of diag­nos­tic and ther­a­peu­tic tech­niques sit­u­at­ed at the cross­roads of dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines and sci­ences. Bor­row­ing from Can­guil­hem, the aim of our work­shop is pre­cise­ly to explore such inter­sec­tions and cross­roads, from exper­i­men­tal psy­chol­o­gy to spir­i­tu­al exer­cis­es, and from psy­chi­atric clas­si­fi­ca­tion sys­tems to psy­chother­a­peu­tic approaches.

We wel­come pro­pos­als explor­ing the rela­tion­ship between sci­en­tif­ic inquiries pro­duc­ing knowl­edge and the tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment of psy­chother­a­peu­tic prac­tices. Key ques­tions to be addressed include, but are not lim­it­ed to:

– What approach with­in his­tor­i­cal epis­te­mol­o­gy helps to bet­ter under­stand the social, polit­i­cal, and nor­ma­tive effects of psy-practices?
– What instru­ments in the psy-field can be con­cep­tu­al­ized as “paper tools” or even phenomenotechniques?
– To what extent and how do cat­e­gories and con­cepts from psy­chother­a­py help cre­ate new “kinds of people”?
– How has the rela­tion­ship between psy­cho­log­i­cal research and psy­chother­a­peu­tic approach­es changed over time?
– How have spe­cif­ic sci­en­tif­ic inquiries shaped dif­fer­ent psy­chother­a­peu­tic practices?
– Did the sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge pro­duced by the psy-sci­ences migrate into psy­chother­a­py, and, if so, how was it trans­lat­ed, trans­formed, and adapt­ed in the process?
– In what ways have psy­chother­a­peu­tic tech­niques con­tributed to psy­cho­log­i­cal research?
– How have dif­fer­ent sci­en­tif­ic find­ings been used to legit­imize psy­chother­a­peu­tic practices?
– What roles have cul­tur­al, insti­tu­tion­al, and polit­i­cal con­texts played in shap­ing psy-sci­ences, psy­chother­a­peu­tic prac­tices, and their interrelations?

Pro­pos­als (500 words, along with a brief bio of the can­di­date) must be sub­mit­ted by Novem­ber 30, 2024, in .doc for­mat to epistemologiehistorique@gmail.com. Noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance or rejec­tion will be sent by ear­ly Jan­u­ary 2025. The work­shop will be con­duct­ed in English.

Orga­niz­ing committee:

Car­o­line Angler­aux (iBrain U1253, INSERM de Tours)
Lucie Fab­ry (LIR3S, Uni­ver­sité de Bourgogne)
Lisa Malich (IMGWF, Uni­ver­sität zu Lübeck)
Iván Moya-Diez (IMGWF, Uni­ver­sität zu Lübeck)
Perce­val Pil­lon (IHPST, Uni­ver­sité Paris 1 Pan­théon-Sor­bon­ne/C­NRS)
Mat­teo Vag­el­li (CFS, Uni­ver­sità di Pisa)

This work­shop is fund­ed by:

Deutsche Forschungs­ge­mein­schaft (DFG, Ger­man Research Foun­da­tion) – Project Num­ber 516932573: “The cog­ni­tive rev­o­lu­tion in ther­a­peu­tic prac­tice: adapt­ing sci­en­tif­ic ideals and form­ing sub­jects in Aaron Beck’s cog­ni­tive ther­a­py, 1950–1990.”

With the sup­port of:
IMGWF, Uni­ver­sität zu Lübeck.
IHPST (UMR 8590), Uni­ver­sité Paris 1 Pan­théon-Sor­bon­ne/C­NRS.
LIR3S (UMR7366), Uni­ver­sité de Bourgogne/CNRS.