2 Research in progress

Within the framework of the Department, Járó, Keleti, Köcski and Veres have mainly been engaged in empirieal case investigations. They have made it possible to scrutinize systematically, and trace back to actual psychological phenomena, the abstract statements of the produetion-centered psychology of personality by making use, on the one hand, of the new features and conceptual tools of the theory (such as social categorization, the paradigm of property relations, self-qualifying paradoxes) and, on the other, by applying the methodological results and the experience gained in earlier empirical research, mostly in schools (Járó and Veres, 1976a). As a matter of fact, the goal set for empirical research had been, even previously, more comprehensive than simply planning and elaborating suitable technical-methodological devices. In order that the theory conce

1. 1. Empirical and case studies

ntrating on the laws of development could ultimately apply to any person and under the circumstances of any social formation, empirical research set as a goal to delineate the area of validity and to specify the need for supplementary conceptualization with respect to the phenomena outside that area.

The investigations made by this group are connected by a set of hypotheses concerning the concrete social and ìndividual criteria of the development of personality. Each of them focuses on different aspects and periods of development and reflects upon the generally formulated question: What are the conditions and events that permit us to state that a person develops?

The members of the group made a creative attempt to answer the question by a joint application of the principles of production-centered psychology so that they could refer to concrete individuals chosen as subjects. The starting point for their analysis was that according to the hypothesis of the specifically human fundamental need, the motivation for development the need for setting a goal is held to be valid for every individual under certain social conditions, this motivation being a supraindividual and extrapsychic factor. It was also postulated that the conditions of the force of the motivation can be described with the help of the property relations paradigm. Within the various social formations, one of these objective conditions is the position from which the goal of the common activity can be determined, and the other is the nature of the historical period, which determines whether the goal is set from the dominant position (stabilization) or whether there is a chance to determine the goals for the forces of the new order, formerly in a position of dependence (revolution).

The theoretical conclusion reached at this point by the empirical research group was that personality development is not a general human process, one of anthropological validity but is attained exclusively by those holding the positions which, at the time of the investigation, bear the historically mature tendencies of development. From this it follows that the objective factors making the development of the personality possible can be shown by analyzing the historical movement of the social formation providing the framework of development, and the positions held within it.

The social categorization hypothesis is concerned with the subjective conditions of the development of personality. This hypothesis is not only an attempt to answer the philosophical question of how it is possible for man to experience as his own subjective free will what in fact is objectively, i.e. economically, necessary. At the same time it offers a theoretical possibility to investigate psychologically how a person in his concrete historicalsocial situation makes his decision concerning the alternatives of development emerging before him.

The hypothesis also provides the basis for a description of the semiotic devices and processes through which the person carries out his decision with reference to himself and to his environment. Decisions with respect to categorization may either stabilize the social system or provoke a crisis within it according to the concrete historical situation and the position occupied in the system of relationships.

The above ideas have been developed by Járó, thus summarizing the principles of a production-centered psychology in a unified model of development (Járó, 1975a). The central concept of the model is the episode of self-definition, which can either take in the historical moment in which the alternative of development appears or the structure of the social system of relationships (the dominant, mediating, dependent; and marginal positions). The episode of self definition is a historically and postionally structured situation of ehoice which will serve as a frame of reference for interpreting decisions about categorization (Járó and Veres, 1976a).

The production-centered model of ontogenesis necessarily had to face the criteria and range also of phenomena of "nondevelopment" while describing the periods of development and systems of relationships in the social forms serving as frames for ontogenesis dependence relations in stable periods and of the inner mechanism of personality (rationalization) (Járó, 1975a; Járó and Veres, 1976b).

The various empirical case studies under way in the Department permit analysis of different aspects of social categorization among the social formations actually canalizing development, thus bringing different stages of ontogenesis under investigation. The following themes are addressed:

1) Emergence of categorial signalization in the early phase of ontogenesis, in the course of the differentiation of "I" and "others" (Köcski, 1976, 1977; Garai and Köcski, 1976, I978; Köcski and Garai,1978).

2) Positional differences in the categorization of high-school pupils occupying various positions in the system of relationships within the class (Járó and Veres, 1975; Veres, Járó and Erós, 1975a; Járó and Veres,1976a,1976b; Veres,1976a).

3) Categorizational mediation of the change of social stratum in young workers coming to town from the country. Possibilities for intluencing the categorization by cultural means (Veres, 1975, 1976,1977a,1977b).

4) Deficient social and generational categorization as a cause of suicide in the period of growing up (Keleti,1976a,1976b).

Work on these themes has, of course, attained different levels of conceptualization and of exploration of facts. Currently, all the investigations conducted by members of this group are case studies or structurally oriented field research since earlier attempts at experiments failed and were abandoned.

Empirical work within the production-centered-psychological approach, whether carried out by recording observations in life situations as in a diary, or by interviews, questionnaires or unfinished stories, is always so designed as to isolate the episodes of self-definition from the natural flow of complex events, and to allow positional and semiotic analyses by comparing the signs used by the persons with the objective structure of the situation.

Recent field studies have used a production-centered psychological approach, not only as a device of cognition but of social praxis as well: our studies in a high sehool and in a workers" hostel introduced the method of social psychological and personality-psychological "catalysis" aiming at establishing the groups" self-reflection.

2. Theoretical-rnethodological research

Part of the work in the Department is done by independent methods of theory construction and methodological critique of theories, which is a type of tool that has also appeared in other sciences (physics, biology) at a given stage of their development.

The aim of this work is to develop a personality psychology independent of general psychology· (cf. Garai, 1968; 1969b, pp. 142-164; 1970). The task falls into two phases: (1) integrating the individual psychological (from psychoanalysis, developmental psychology, personality dynamics) with the social psychological stock of facts and inter­pretive materials that refer to personality; (2)establishing a synthesis of this independent personality psychology and general psychology. In both phases Lewin's principle of homogenization (see above) is instrumental. Work in the first of these phases is more advanced. The validity of some social psychological theories was tested and a synthesis of the theory of cognitive dissonance and that of social categorization has been arrived at (Garai, 1977a: 1977c; 1977d; Erös and Garai, 1978). As a result of the examination of the social psychological theory of conflicts and of the ideological critique directed against it (see the Deutsch/Plon debate in the European Journal of Social Psychology (1974), the conclusion was that one of the two parties opposed in a conflict will determine the structural frames within which the conflict can be "acted out", but the other party may depending on the historical state of the macro- or the micro-social formation extend the conflict from the level connected with its object (object-level) to the level of the structural framework that determines it (meta-level), positing his owvn principles of organization in opposition to the principle of organization fixed in the existing structure. Through the extension of the conflict to two levels, the formation enters a crisis for which only a radical solution is possible (Garai and Erœs,1976; Garai, 1977).

In a paper belonging to the second phase of this work, Garai (1978) showed that all attempts to understand the whole of mental activity in terms of brain functioning alone lead by necessity to leaving aside those phenomena which have their origin in social or personality factors (such as, for example, the meaning of environmental „stimuli”). At the same time, he pointed out that taking these phenomena into consideration leads to a sort of dualism. As a solution for this dilemma Garai suggested that the territorial mechanisms of supraindividual organization, rather than brain functioning, be regarded as the prime meehanism of these phenomena.

These theoretical activities were supported by a methodological critique of various social psychological and individual psychological theories. It primarily consisted in criticizing the conceptions of society and of personality implied by the different theories, within the framework of the history of ideas and of the critique of ideologies. The first systematic attempt in this direction was made by Erðs in his previously mentioned paper presented at the Visegrád conference (Erős, 1974). In his later studies (1975, 1976a, 1976b, 1977a, 1977b; see also Garai and Erös, 1976; Erós and Garai, 1978) he further developed this type of analysis, also making use of the complex historical material that he had collected during his stay in the United States (1976).

One crucial theme of the historical and ideological-critical studies was the rise of American social psychology and the process in its development by which it ceased to be a „social prophesy” committed to reforms, and became a sort of "social technology" a technique of mass manipulation (see Erós,1977b; Erós and Garai, 1978).

Another central question was related to critical social theory, born in the Europe of the thirties and oriented towards an empirical social psychology, as seen especially in the case of the Freudo-Marxists (Reich, Fromm) and the theorists of the Frankfurt Sehool (Adorno, Horkheimer). Two aspects of critical theory are to be noted here. First, because they are good examples of the consistent critique of the ideological preconceptions of psyehology as well as of the social sciences in general (see Adorno et al, I976, especially Adorno's writings), and second, because they demonstrate that the ideas of critical theory are themselves not free from certain lapses into ideological functions. This double aspect is best revealed in Adorno's and his associates" work, The Authoriturianpersonality, which is in some respects critical theorists" greatest achievement in social psychology. Nonetheless, the implicit contradictions of this work have furnished possibilities for its "positivist reinterpretation" and in this way for its adaptation to the main trends of American social psychology. (On the set of coñtradictions in this work and the process of reinterpretation, see Erœs,1977b).

Some preliminary results of research in progress in the Department of Personality Psychology were presented in 1977 at the session commemorating the 75th anniversary of the creation of the Institute of Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (see Erős,1978; Garai and Köcski,1978; Járó and Veres,1978).

Notes

1. The term, the humanities is traditionally used in Hungary (as well as in other Central European countries) to denote the historical and social sciences as opposed to the exact sciences.

2. Of the members of the Department, Garai took part in the work of the International Organizing Committee of the Conference, and Erős participated in the preparatory work.