Theories and research about women, homosexuality and prejudice towards minorities have often been excluded in traditional histories of psychology.The value we now hold cultural diversity makes this situation unacceptable. Yet the necessary process of inclusion is barely underway.

We all need to be self-aware of the way we use, and have used, psychological constructs to describe and categorize the other in our midst. Any group that is considered inferior, less than, foreign, or defective by the dominant culture can be defined as other. (Teo, Sugarman, Osbeck, Tissaw, & Smith, 2011).

This article represents an attempt at weaving figures not often referenced in traditional narratives into a new, more inclusive history of psychology. It also addresses how otherness itself has been constructed as a concept by the thinkers of different historical periods, and often marginalized in the process. Changing notions of empathy and prejudice, which can either narrow or widen the gulf between one’s sense self and others, are also addressed.

A broad overview that covers over five centuries of thought necessitates that the discussion of specific ideas and figures is necessarily selective and brief. Voices of the non-dominant other will be privileged in this narrative, in the hopes that they might be considered for inclusion in future histories.

Ibn Khaldun’s Theory of Cultural Differences

When Europeans first encountered the rest of the world, a discourse rapidly emerged about the seemingly strange and alien peoples they encountered. But for centuries, Middle Eastern cultures were interacting with Europe to the north, Sub-Saharan Africa to the south, and the rest of Asia to the east.  An Arab philosopher named Ibn Khaldun wrote about the other peoples in the 14^th century, right after the devastation of the plague killed his parents and teachers. After experiencing massive cultural disruption, it may not be surprising that he wrote the first treatise on how culture and personality evolve with shifting historical circumstance. In many ways, his work foreshadows modern social psychology.

In his classic work, the Muqadimmah, Ibn Khaldun introduced the notion of casabiyyah or social solidarity, the force that binds an in-group together (Ibn Khaldun, 2005). In Ibn Khaldun’s view, the pull for helping others that such solidarity evokes depends on a sense of kinship and proximity: “One feels shame when one’s relatives are treated unjustly or attacked, and one wishes to intervene between them and whatever peril or destruction threatens them … If, however, the relationship is somewhat distant, it is often forgotten in part.” (Ibn Khaldun, 2005, p. 98)

In Ibn Khaldun’s view, the more someone seems other or foreign, the less likely one is to assist them.

The Arab philosopher also wrote on the psychology of those in out-groups—servants, slaves, and Jews—and why he felt they often seemed to display negative characteristics. He discouraged severe treatment of servants who lied, arguing that the situational fear of punishment and not lack of character per se led them to avoid telling the truth. Similarly, even though Ibn Khaldun accepted the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as deceitful and untrustworthy, he argued this character was developed because of a history of mistreatment (Ibn Khadun, 2005).

Ibn Khaldun addressed at length the apparent differences in culture and ethnic character among various peoples around the world and why they existed. He attributed the darker skin of Sub-Saharan Africans as well as the lighter skin of Northern Europeans to climate. His subsequent suppositions unfortunately reflect the attitudes of his time. Ibn Khaldun argued that hot, temperate and cold climates could diffuse, stabilize or contract the animal spirit, respectively, which he saw as central to an individual’s mood. For example, due to living in a hot climate, black Africans purportedly displayed “levity, excitability, and great emotionalism”(p. 63). Ibn Khaldun believed individuals who lived in cultures with temperate climates generally had temperate characters, and he included Arabs, Israelites, Indians and Chinese in this group (Ibn Khaldun, 2005).

While many of his assertions seem ill-founded today, Ibn Khaldun (2005) was still ahead of his time in providing a comprehensive, almost social psychological explanation of culture, as opposed to suggesting that the differences existing between peoples were fundamental and essential in nature.

Theories of Race and Enlightenment Thinkers

European explorations of Africa and the newly discovered Americas forced Europeans to address their relative humanity. The existence of other races, as represented by the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Asia and Africa, became a popularly accepted construct during this period, though it was only spottily articulated. It remained for Carl Linnaeus, an 18^th century Swedish naturalist, to systematically categorize humanity into four “scientific” racial categories: Europeans, American Indians, Asians and Africans, each ascribed their own unique pattern of personality (Blum, 2002). Linnaeus saw these differences in character as intrinsic. Reflecting a clear Euro-centric perspective, Europeans were described as “very smart, inventive … ruled by laws.” East Asians, on the other hand, were described as suffering from “melancholy” and being “ruled by opinions” (Blum, 2002, p. 121). The other non-white races faired no better. Ideologies of race, favoring European character, were formulated at precisely the time that those same Europeans were beginning the colonization process.

It was commonly assumed that the indigenous peoples the Europeans encountered in their travels lacked the power of introspection. Yet even contemporary evidence suggested otherwise. For example, in describing different types of people, a Nahuatl document of pre-colonial Mexico defined an artist as one who “converses with his heart, finds things with his mind … does things calmly, with feeling … arranges things; adorns them; reconciles them” (Leon-Portilla, 1969, p. 174). This description articulates the existence of a nuanced inner life, as well as demonstrating indigenous ways of describing it, that European colonizers were unable or chose not to recognize.

While racial theories of character and human nature dominated the 18^th century and beyond, some Enlightenment philosophers challenged them. These moral philosophers, as they came to be called, were also social psychologists after a fashion, addressing the influence of moral values on how those who seemed foreign or other were to be treated. The English philosopher David Hume addressed this issue in Of national characters (1741), developing the still radical notion that other races and nationalities weren’t inherently different from Englishmen. While differences in the occurrence of certain qualities of character might exist between nations, they would be differences in frequency rather than in essence. Unlike Ibn Khaldun, Hume doubted the significant impact of climate on character (Jahoda, 2007).

Hume also developed the notion of sympathy as a key construct. Similar to Ibn Khaldun, Hume posited that the feeling of sympathy would vary in intensity based on physical and social closeness. Hume also addressed the opposing construct of animosity. He showed novel insight into the nuances of how various hostile attitudes might differ from one another: “When a man denominates another his enemy, his rival, his antagonist, his adversary, he is understood to speak the language of self-love, and to express sentiments peculiar to himself and arising from his particular circumstances and situation. But when he bestows on any man the epithets of vicious or odious or depraved, he then speaks another language, and expresses sentiments in which he expects all his audience are to concur with him. (Norman, 1998, pp. 61-62)

When moral approbation towards the other was involved, Hume believed cultural or at the very least group factors were at play.

Adam Smith, a Scottish professor best known for his concepts of economic self-interest, spoke directly to the issue of slavery and the widely perceived lesser humanity of the African. “There is not a negro from the coast of Africa,” Smith wrote, “who does not possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving” (Jahoda, 2007, p. 33).

John Millar, a Scottish philosopher of the same period, argued in a similar vein. While acknowledging that cultural factors were important, Millar wrote that “man is everywhere the same and we must necessarily conclude, that the untutored Indian and the civilized European have acted upon the same principle” (Jahoda, 2007, p. 38). Millar also suggested that as societies advanced in complexity and moral sensitivity, men would treat women and subordinates—the non-dominant others in their midst—with increasing respect.

Ben Franklin and Benjamin Banneker on the Psychology of the Enslaved

Psychologically-based arguments sympathetic to the African slave began to emerge in the United States as well. Benjamin Franklin, for example, used psychological language in 1789 to argue against slavery as an institution, suggesting it was a dehumanizing condition. Yet in doing so, he also tapped into familiar stereotypes of African character. “Accustomed to move like a mere machine, by the will of a master,” Franklin wrote, “reflection is suspended; he has not the power of choice; and reason and conscience have but little influence over his conduct, because he is chiefly governed by the passion of fear.” (Berry, 2006, p. 71)

With this premise as his intellectual framework, Franklin also argued that given such debasement, “freedom may often prove a misfortune to himself and prejudicial to society” (p. 71).

Benjamin Banneker, an African American author and contemporary of Franklin, felt no such ambivalence about the relative psychological merits of his people. Writing to Thomas Jefferson in 1791, in criticism of the leaders’ practices, Banneker pulled few punches: “The Father) hath given being to us all, and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also without partiality afforded us all with the Same Sensations, and endued us all with the same faculties … Sir how pitiable is it to reflect, that although you  were so fully convinced of the benevolence of the Father of Mankind, and of his equal and impartial distribution of these rights and privileges … that you should at the same time counteract his mercies, in detaining by fraud and violence so numerous a part of my brethren… (Cerami 2002, pp. 164, 166)
While a surveyor by trade, not a philosopher, Banneker nonetheless saw through the hypocrisy of Enlightenment declarations of all men’s equality if slavery—the ultimate manifestation of enforced alterity—was still tolerated.

Wollstonecraft on the Rights of Women

Against this backdrop of Enlightenment values, a number of conceptually similar social advocacy movements emerged. Authors in the late 18^th century and early 19^th century began writing publicly on behalf of a wide variety of non-dominant others, including women, slaves, and the mentally ill. In her A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), for example, English philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women exhibited negative traits due to learning false notions and not because of nature. She titled one of her chapters “Of the Pernicious Effects Which Arise from the Unnatural Distinctions Established in Society,” clearly laying blame for such traits at a cultural level (p. 145).

Wollstonecraft lamented the way men’s notions of proper womanhood stifled women’s self-actualization. “Everything that they see or hear serves to fix impressions,” Wollstonecraft wrote, “call forth emotions, and associate ideas, that give a sexual character to the mind. False notions of beauty and delicacy stop the growth of their limbs and produce a sickly soreness … how (then) can they attain the vigour necessary to enable them to throw off their factitious character?” (Wollstonecraft 1996, p. 119)

In essence, Wollstonecraft suggested that the cultural conditioning of women led to the creation of a false character that only appeared fundamentally different from that of men. Wollstonecraft and other early feminists devoted the largest portion of their arguments for the education of women, which they saw as the most potent remedy available.

A Century of Enlightened Advocacy

As support for women’s education slowly grew, other advocacy movements emerged as well, part of the overall zeitgeist of the Enlightenment. For example, the writings of Frederick Douglass, a 19^th century African American abolitionist, while not explicitly psychological, nonetheless argued that the necessity for African American and women’s rights sprang from the same moral wellspring (Berry, 2006).

Despite of the best efforts of such advocates, racist ideologies persisted and too often relied on an emerging fondness for medical jargon. For example, a respected Southern physician named Samuel Cartwright wrote “Diseases and peculiarities of the Negro race” in 1851. Cartwright identified drapetomia as a mental ailment of running away common in slaves and cats. He also defined dyathesia Aethipica as a rascality which only afflicted free Negroes (Cartwright, 1851). No reasoning or proof beyond the medical authority of such writers appeared necessary.

Advocacy on behalf of the mentally ill, in regards to their inhumane treatment in asylums, also began in this period, as reflected in the writings of Philippe Pinel. It is telling that the defense of the “insane” was more acceptable in this era than the defense of men who engaged in sex with other men. In 1785, philosopher Jeremy Bentham wrote a utilitarian argument for liberalizing laws against homosexual behavior, but he never let it see print for fear of public denunciation (Bentham, 1978).

It took more than half a century for a German homosexual rights pioneer named Karl Heinrick Ulrichs to actually publish a like-minded work in the 1860s, but with a limited print run that was only intended for sympathetic readers. Ulrichs coined the term urning, indicating a man who possessed a feminine psyche and for that reason desired men. Another term, contrary sexual feeling was first used in an 1869 article by Karl Westphal. While a sympathetic author, Westphal’s designation of these feelings as contrary clearly marked them as fundamentally other to the norm. Karoly Maria Benkert, a Hungarian physician writing under the pseudonym of K.M. Kertbeny, first utilized the term homosexual that same year, putting that identity on linguistic equal footing, at least (Kennedy, 1997). Advocacy for the sexual other had finally begun to enter, however slowly, into public discourse.

In future articles on Weaving the Other into the History of Psychology the impact of colonialism on theories of the psychology of indigenous peoples will be explored, as well as further developments in advocacy for a new psychology of women, sexuality and racial prejudice.  

Mark Carlson-Ghost, Ph.D.

Carlson-Ghost is an associate professor of psychology at the Minnesota School of Professional Psychology at Argosy University where he teaches the History of Psychology. A version of this paper was first presented at the Psychology of the Other conference in Boston.

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

References

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Berry, F., (Ed.) (2006). From bondage to liberation: Writings by and about Afro-Americans from 1700-1918. New York: Continuum International Publishing.

Blum, L. (2002). “I’m not a racist, but…”: The moral quandary of race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Cartwright, S.  (1851). Diseases and peculiarities of the Negro race. Retrieved from htttp://www.pbs.org/wgbh/ala/part4/4h3106t.html.

Cerami, C. (2002). Benjamin Banneker: Surveyor, astronomer, publisher, patriot. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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Kennedy, H. (1997). Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, first theorist of homosexuality. In V. A. Rosario (Ed.), Science and homosexualities (26-45). New York: Routledge.

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Norman, R. (1998). The moral philosophers: An introduction to ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Wollstonecraft, M. (1996). A vindication of the rights of woman. Minneola, NY: Dover Publications.