Graduate Student, Department of History and Ethnology
Thesis Title: Psychology and Power in Hungarian Communism after 1956
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Anssi Halmesvirta
Heino Nyyssönen Katalin Miklóssy |
About
Psychology and Power in Hungarian Communism after 1956
My PhD work in progress studies the production and use of psychological knowledge during Hungarian Communism. The period under scrutiny is approximately from 1945/1956 to 1980s. My purpose is to use two different cases – one from the local level and one from the Communist Academia – to elaborate the various discursive uses of psychological expert knowledge within the Communist regime. The cases represent different periods within the “Socialist project”. Therefore, they reflect important changes not only within the limits of science but also in respect to the wider social and political tendencies and changes of the system.
First case studies the use of psychological knowledge in Child Guidance Centers (Nevelési tanácsadó). It was (and still is) a social welfare institution with its Hungarian roots at the turn of the 20th century applied psychology. During the socialist era these centers were established to guide families, especially mothers, to be more psychologically cultured in their roles as adults and care-givers.
Family counseling was conducted in a peculiar post-1956 political culture. In Hungarian Party politics, peoples’ needs both as welfare subjects and as consumers were more actively acknowledged. At the same time, deviant behavior of certain groups of youth was subjected to an eye of a psychologist. Hypothesis is that after 1956 psychology was practiced both with a serious intention to integrate, help and “heal” the people, and, as a part of the Kádárist ‘compromise’ between the Party and the intellectuals, for raising proper citizens and workers.
After post-1956 problems of adaptation, the study proceeds to the second case: the use of psychology as a critical welfare discourse in a multi-disciplinary, ministry level research project called “The Problems of Social Adaptation in Hungary” (TBZ ). The project was initially launched by psychologists and socially sensitive psychiatrists in the late 1970s. As a consequence of going through four year evaluation and planning in different Party levels the project affiliated to various other research projects, such as the sociological study on “Socialist way of life”.
The case of TBZ elaborates the use of socialist psychology as a critical (and self-critical) welfare discourse in the context of late-socialism. The central concept was the word ‘deviant’ or ‘deviancy’. It was used as a general term for describing social problems such as juvenile delinquency and suicide, but it was also used when presumably negative tendencies in people’s way of life, such as “competitive consumerism” and its consequences were reflected.
Hypothesis is that after 1956 psychology was practiced both with a serious intention to integrate, help and “heal” the people, and, as a part of the Kádárist ‘compromise’ between the Party and the intellectuals, for raising proper citizens and workers. In the late-socialist reform-socialist context psychology had also self-critical and critical uses.
