Psychologies of Mind Also available from Continuum Carl Jung – Claire Dunne and Jean Houston Freud: A Guide for the Perplexed – Céline Suprenant Freud and Nietzsche – Paul-Laurent Assoun Melanie Klein – Meira Likierman Popper’s Theory of Science – Carlos Garcia Psychology and the Teacher, 8th Edition – Dennis Child Psychology of Teaching and Learning – Manuel Martinez-Pons Theory of Intelligence – David Turner Psychologies of Mind The Collected Papers of John Maze Edited by Rachael Henry Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London New York SE1 7NX NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Rachael Henry selection and editorial material 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission from the publishers. Rachael Henry has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and we apologise in advance for any unintentional omission. We would be pleased to insert the appropriate acknowledgement in any subsequent edition. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN:978–0–8264–3551–4 (hardcover) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Maze, J. R. Psychologies of mind : the collected papers of John Maze / edited by Rachael Henry. p. cm. ISBN978–0–8264–3551–4 (hbk.) 1. Psychology. 2. Motivation (Psychology) I. Henry, Rachael M. II. Title. BF121.M4189 2009 150–dc22 2008054028 Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by ????? Contents Introduction 1 Rachael Henry Part One: The concept of motivation Introduction by Rachael Henry 11 1 Instincts and impulses 25 J. R. Maze (1952) 2 On some corruptions of the doctrine of homeostasis 41 J. R. Maze (1953) 3 Do intervening variables intervene? 51 J. R. Maze (1954) 4 The concept of attitude 63 J. R. Maze (1973) 5 The composition of the ego in a determinist psychology 97 J. R. Maze (1987) 6 John Anderson: implications of his philosophic views for psychology 107 J. R. Maze (1987) Part Two: Epistemology and the nature of cognition Introduction by Rachael Henry 121 7 Representationism, realism and the redundancy of ‘mentalese’ 127 J. R. Maze (1991) 8 Psychoanalysis, epistemology and intersubjectivity: theories of Wilfred Bion 149 J. R. Maze and R. M. Henry (1996) vi Contents 9 Social constructionism, deconstructionism and some requirements of discourse 171 J. R. Maze (2001) Part Three: Psychoanalytic metapsychology Introduction by Rachael Henry 197 10 The complementarity of object-relations and instinct theory 201 J. R. Maze (1993) 11 Problems in the concept of repression and proposals for their resolution 219 J. R. Maze and R. M. Henry (1996) Part Four: Psychoanalytic readings of literature, history and art Introduction by Rachael Henry 239 12 Dostoevsky’s problems with the concept of conscience: Svidrigailov and Raskolnikov 247 J. R. Maze (1979) 13 Dostoyevsky: epilepsy, mysticism and homosexuality 263 J. R. Maze (1981) 14 Classical female oedipal themes inTo the Lighthouse 287 J. R. Maze (1981) 15 Virginia Woolf: ideas of marriage and death in The Voyage Out 315 J. R. Maze (1983) 16 Harold L. Ickes: a psychohistorical perspective 331 J. R. Maze and G. J. White (1981) 17 A grammar of painting? 355 J. R. Maze (1973) Subject Index 365 Introduction Rachael Henry In 1952, John Robert Maze published his first academic paper, ‘Instincts and impulses’. He was 29 years old and it was just five years since he entered the University of Sydney on an education scheme for returned soldiers of the Second World War. The paper’s opening two sentences go straight to the heart of a difficulty for much of contemporary psychological and psychoanalytic theory that was to be the subject of his intensive analysis throughout his career. The recognition of impulsiveness or striving is often taken to be of central importance for the understanding of organismic activity. Nevertheless, theories of motivation are frequently found to be futile because their authors, in a fervour of anti-reductionist excitement, refuse to consider such questions as whether a striving (or desire, or purpose) is the kind of thing that can be a constituent or character- istic of the organism, and if not, what are the constituents that determine the striving. (Maze, this volume, p. 25) Apart from its fresh, contemporary relevance, this first, relatively unknown article is striking in a number of ways. First, it is a testament to the powerful education Maze had received in critical philosophy from Professor John Anderson and to the revolution in thinking that Anderson’s philosophy student had achieved in such a short time. The long essay is a tour de force demonstration of the mature grasp and sense of autonomy with which Maze had seized his instrument and turned it on to theoretical psychology. The in- principle arguments proceed one after another, as each issue, anomaly and objection is systematically considered, creating a powerful impetus and dir- ection and intellectual resolution at the conclusion of the paper. It was a precocious demonstration of the distinctive expositionary style for which Maze quickly became well known. But perhaps most striking of all, is that in his first paper Maze had specified what was to be the focal subject of his interest, lectures and publications, throughout his long career at the University of Sydney spanning the second half of the twentieth century. 2 Psychologies of Mind: The Collected Papers of John Maze Maze stands as a giant among philosophers of psychology and his critical researches are a beacon for their work. His essays on the concept of motiv- ation, on epistemology and the nature of cognition and on psychoanalytic metapsychology demand the closest reading by all who are concerned with the disciplines of psychology and psychoanalysis. While not so much a book for novices, it does in fact provide a thoroughgoing education in critical philosophy that will stimulate interest and excitement in students and teachers trying to understand the history and theory of psychology and psychoanalysis and their future direction. Established clinicians and researchers concerned with the development of theory in their disciplines willfind it to be a defining point of reference. Not only a gifted thinker and teacher, Maze is, unusually on both counts, a psychologist trained in philosophy and a philosopher interested in psy- choanalytic theory. Always swimming against the tide, he challenged the relentless empiricism of psychology and turned away from the self-reflective emphasis on the technical and formalistic problems of philosophy. Since the early years of this [20th] century many psychologists have taken a positive pride in refusing to expose themselves to what they take to be the dangerous a priorism of philosophical argument, preferring to proceed with the empirical collection of what they fondly believe to be presuppositionless data. Of course there can be no such things and every psychologist makes presuppositions of a philosophical kind even in specifying what he is going to accept as data. Such unavoidable philosophizing is probably more native to psychology than to any of the other sciences, and even when psychologists function as amateur philosophers they tend to reinvent for themselves philosophical conceptions which have repeatedly been exposed in the history of thought as self-defeating, so that their self-insulation from philosophy proper has been thoroughly detrimental to the progress of their science. (Maze, this volume, p. 107) This monograph that brings together his published journal articles demon- strates the leadership that Maze has provided in this field. From the time when he first went to the university in 1948, the whole of his intellectual development and efforts were directed to understanding, developing and expounding the most fundamental concepts and the most pertinent philo- sophical issues relevant to theory in psychology regarding human motiv- ation. His tribute to John Anderson hints at the burden of the debt that Maze carried in the role he was to play in academic psychology as, over a period of 50 years, he continued to demonstrate the widespread lack of comprehension of the primacy of philosophical argument to psychological questions, research and theory. Introduction 3 Within the orthodoxy of the psychological establishment of the wide world, such radical criticism as Anderson’s does not find a ready wel- come, and there has been a profusion of misconceived experimenta- tion and speculation which might conceivably have been avoided if Anderson’s views on epistemology, on determinism and on ethics could have achieved a wider currency. (Maze, this volume, p. 107) The published papers of John Maze reveal that what is seemingly and pur- portedly new in psychology is so often not new at all, and frequently con- sists of ill-informed corruptions of earlier, discarded, misguided attempts. Their collection together is timely in the current, innovatory era of cross- disciplinary exploration and integration on the borderlands of psychology, where there is a visible danger that the welcome loosening of barriers to mutual communication also generates some ‘wild’ theorizing, familiar enough in the history of psychology itself. A corpus remarkable for its coherence, intellectual virtuosity and radicalism over 50 years, it speaks meaningfully to the wide range of psychological theory throughout its his- tory up to the present day. Written with elegance and eloquence, the essays entail a thoroughgoing critical analysis of the most detrimental philo- sophical blunders of academic psychology in the twentieth century, the relegation to history by the twentieth century academy of some of the con- ceptually most promising lines of research, the cost that has been borne by psychology, and the most promising future direction for our discipline. While recognizing the need for some accommodation of the phenomena which produce meanings and strivings, the question whether purpose or striving could in principle be inherent in the nature of the organism is the one at issue in the papers in Part One. Analysis of the concept of motivation is even more imperative today as the alleged purposes of the human organ- ism continue to be asserted as an inherent part of its nature. It is very striking that contemporary theorists, researchers and practitioners of developmental science and psychoanalysis invoke in a free manner a wide range of such needs as core concepts – the need for love and understand- ing, the desire for knowledge, the need to make meaning or for the satisfac- tion of intellectual curiosity, the need for security or for engagement with others, the need to avoid retaliation or to make genuine reparation – often without ever raising the essential question raised and addressed in Part One, that is, ‘whether a striving (or desire, or purpose) is the kind of thing that can be a constituent or characteristic of the organism’ (Maze, this volume, p. 25). In ‘Instincts and impulses’ Maze outlines the in-principle difficulties with the notion of congenital strivings for objectives as constituents of any- thing in purposive accounts of instinct. Beginning with ethological theories that embraced the concept of fixed action patterns, Maze goes on to