Kenneth J. Gergen

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Kenneth J. Gergen (born 1935) is an American social psychologist and emeritus professor at Swarthmore College. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University (1957) and his PhD from Duke University (1962).

Biography

The son of John Jay Gergen, the chair of the Mathematics Department at Duke University, and Aubigne Munger (née Lermond), Gergen grew up in Durham, North Carolina. He had three brothers, one of whom is David Gergen, the prominent political analyst. After completing public schooling, he attended Yale University. Graduating in 1957, he subsequently became an officer in the U.S. Navy. He then returned to graduate school at Duke University, where he received his PhD in psychology in 1963. His dissertation advisor was Edward E. Jones. Gergen went on to become an assistant professor in the Department of Social Relations at Harvard University, where he also became the chairman of the board of tutors and advisors for the department and representative to the university's Council on Educational Policy.

In 1967, Gergen took a position as chair of the Department of Psychology at

Adolfo Ibanez University
. At Swarthmore, he spearheaded the development of the academic concentration in interpretation theory. In an attempt to link his academic work to societal practices, he collaborated with colleagues to create the Taos Institute in 1993. He now serves as the president of the institute.

Gergen is married to

Penn State University, and a major contributor to feminist psychology and performance inquiry. She is the author of over 50 articles and is the co-author (with Ken Gergen) of books on social construction, and performative social science. They publish the Positive Aging Newsletter with a readership of around 20,000[1]

Contributions

Gergen's earliest studies challenged the presumption of a unified or coherent self.[clarification needed] He then raised questions about the value of altruism, by exploring the ways in which helping others leads to the recipient's resentment and alienation.

A major point in Gergen's career was his 1973 article "Social Psychology as History". In the article, he argues that while empirical research attempts to establish general laws or principles, the empirical support is always derived from historically situated observations. Yet, because patterns of human action undergo continuous change, support for any principle may wax or wane over time. Further, the scientific knowledge the laws and principles of social interaction are variable over time, and that the scientific knowledge generated by social psychologists actually influences the phenomena it is meant to passively describe. For example, studying obedience to authority may reduce the likelihood of obedience. He argued therefore that social psychology was not fundamentally a cumulative science, but was effectively engaged in the recording and transformation of cultural life. The article proved widely controversial, and was ultimately listed as a "citation classic" in the  Social Science Citation Index. Also contributing to what was called "the crisis in social psychology"[3] was Gergen's subsequent publication on generative theory. Here he proposed that, because theoretical suppositions were not so much recordings of social life as creators, theories should not be judged so much by their integration of "what is" as their potential to open new spaces of action.

Combining these ideas with developments in literary and critical theory, along with the history of science, Gergen went on to develop a radical view of

conception of knowledge
. From Gergen's perspective, all human intelligibility (including claims to knowledge) is generated within relationships. It is from relationships that humans derive their conceptions of what is real, rational, and good. From this perspective, scientific theories, like all other reality posits, should not be assessed in terms of truth, but in terms of pragmatic outcomes. Such assessments are inevitably wedded to values, and thus all science is morally and politically weighted in implication. As he saw it, this same form of assessment also applies to social constructionist theory. The question is not its accuracy, but its potentials for humankind.

This latter conclusion informed most of Gergen's subsequent work, in areas including therapy and counseling, education, organizational change, technology, conflict reduction, civil society, and qualitative inquiry. In one form or another, this work is concerned with transforming social life. For the most part, his preferred direction of change is toward more collaborative and participatory relationships. Additionally, he has been concerned with fostering a "

I think, therefore I am".[3] Most of these developments are summarized in Relational Being, Beyond the Individual and Community, which attempts to demonstrate that what are considered mental processes are not so much "in the head" as in relationships. It also attempts to answer charges of moral relativism
with a non-foundational morality of collaborative practice, and to outline a way to bring science together with concerns for the sacred.

The development of social constructionist, relational theory, and their professional applications is associated with relations between, ethics in a pluralistic world, qualitative inquiry in the social sciences, explanations of human action, and reconstructing the conception of ageing. He also served as a co-founder of the journals, Theory and Psychology, and Qualitative Inquiry in Psychology.

Notable concepts

Concepts that Gergen has written about include:

Awards

Gergen has received research grants from the

University of Athens
.

Bibliography

Books (selected)
Articles (selected)

Notes

  1. ^ "Kenneth J. Gergen, PhD". The Taos Institute. The Taos Institute. Retrieved 27 April 2018.
  2. OCLC 463309819
    .
  3. ^ Relational Being. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 400.

References

  • Gergen, K. (1993). Refiguring Self and Psychology: Kenneth J. Gergen, Hampshire: Dartmouth Publishing.
  • Stroebe, W. and Kruglanski, A.W. (1989). Social psychology at epistemological cross-roads: On Gergen's choice. European Journal of Social Psychology, 19, 485–489.
  • Wallach, L. and Wallach, M.A. (1994). Gergen versus the mainstream: Are hypotheses in social psychology subject to empirical test? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67, 233–242.

External links

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