ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Making of Psychotherapeutic Knowledge: Research Practices, Epistemic Cultures, and Disciplinary Negotiations 2

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This double symposium examines how psychotherapeutic knowledge has been produced, circulated, negotiated, transformed, and contested across different disciplinary, institutional, and cultural contexts. Psychotherapy has long been a relatively neglected area of research in the history of the “psy” sciences, despite greater attention in recent years (e.g. Marks, 2017, 2018; Rosner, 2018; Shamdasani, 2018; and Amouroux, Berger, Jaccard & Aronov, 2023). Papers in this symposium contribute to this growing strand of scholarship by analyzing, on the one hand, how material practices in and of psychotherapy articulate with epistemic functions in psychotherapy research. Through papers focusing on the work of Carl Rogers and Aaron Beck, in particular, we aim to elucidate the ways in which different instruments, technologies, and paper and textual tools have organized and shaped the production of therapeutic knowledge. On the other hand, therapeutic practices also mobilize distinctive epistemic practices which require a pluralist perspective for their comprehension. Hence, our papers also explore how therapeutic knowledge has been circulated, translated and negotiated through different disciplinary contexts, including psychoanalysis, neurology, psychological research, medicine, psychiatry and clinical psychology, while attending to the particularities of different national and institutional contexts, particularly in Germany and the USA. Throughout, the symposium attends to the ways different epistemic and disciplinary practices have not only validated particular forms of therapeutic knowledge while marginalizing others, but also shaped the social norms and forms of subjectivity that psychological interventions bring into being.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Iván Moya Diez, IMGWF, University of Luebeck

Individual Presentations

• How to get away with Murder: The Rise of Behavioral Therapy within the Psy-Sciences in West-Germany, 1960s–1970s - Lisa Malich, University of Luebeck

• Juncture moments in the development of the psy-sciences. A comparative analysis of the shift to neuroscience in the 1990s Decade of the Brain - Wessel De Cock, Humboldt University Berlin

• Pluralism in Psychosomatics in Germany - Cornelius Borck, Inistitute for History of Medicine and Sciences Studies, University of Luebeck

Session Organizers

• Iván Moya Diez, IMGWF, University of Luebeck

• Kim Hajek, Technical University of Munich

• Catriel Fierro, History of Science Institute - Autonomous University of Barcelona