When I entered the York programme in History and Theory in 1981 as a part-time student, my main requirement was to write a dissertation, which I had hoped would be a theoretical discussion of the need for a shift to a participatory model of psychological inquiry. This was my original research topic while I completed all but the dissertation at the University of Saskatchewan from 1974 to 1976. After some difficulties with other faculty affiliated with the York programme, I began to work with Kurt as my dissertation supervisor in 1982, and our productive association continued until my completion in 1986. During this period I was employed full-time in the psychology department at the Child and Family Centre of Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital, raising my children as a single-parent and performing in local theatrical productions. So, I had limited involvement with Kurt and almost none with other H & T faculty or other graduate students.

As a closet community psychologist, I already had my own orientation when I entered the York programme. Influenced by Allan Buss, I was enamoured of dialectical psychology. In addition, inspired by the writings of Jürgen Habermas and Paolo Freire, I began to explore an emancipatory psychology through action-oriented research, and I developed a commitment to the union of critical history and community action as exemplified by Nevitt Sanford. Then in 1986, I took an academic position as a community psychologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, where I also teach the history of psychology and a course in drama and human development.

In terms of what I learned from my association with Kurt, I feel confident in saying that I absorbed from him the discipline of incisive and thorough thinking and the need for rigorous historiography. These capacities have been invaluable for me. Furthermore, Kurt continues to have an important influence on me in my roles as teacher and scholar. For example, his 1990 book, Constructing the Subject, helped me to conceive, carry out, and reflect on my work on "the research relationship."

Since 1972 when I took a graduate course in the social psychology of the experiment at Manitoba with John Adair, I have been interested in the relationship between investigators, their assistants, and research participants, with a keen eye on how to democratize this relationship. In fact, my first publication in 1976 was entitled "Researcher-Participant Collaboration...." Thanks to my association with Kurt at York, I have been able to sustain a programme of research in critical history:

[1] My dissertation on the social history of the research relationship in community psychology in its first decade used analyses of research reports and interviews of prominent community psychologists in Canada and the U.S. to promote change in the editorial policies and practices of the subdiscipline's journals.

[2] Subsequently, I explored the history of the research relationship in feminist psychology (Psychology of Women Quarterly, 1989), in gay and lesbian research (Journal of Homosexuality, 1992), and in the first decade of the Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health (1993). Then with the assistance of a SSHRC grant I investigated the research relationship in areas of modern interpersonal psychology from 1939 to 1989 (Theory & Psychology, 1995).

Theoretically, I understand the traditional research relationship as an institutionalized practice of scientific authority relations used to rationalize the pursuit of knowledge about human behaviour, rooted in both particular cultural traditions and patriarchal power, and expressed in specific, paternalistic forms of investigative conduct and report-writing conventions. My current project is tentatively entitled, Reconstructing/Democratizing the Research Relationship along Social Ethical Dimensions, of which my 1995 CPA critique of the publication manual is a part.

In reflecting on Kurt's provocative question, Does the history of psychology have a future?, my answer is it does, but critical history requires a foundation in social ethics to move beyond deconstruction. An intellectual commitment to critical history for psychology needs to be balanced by an explicit moral imperative, which for me are the core values of relationality: growth through connection with others, compassionate caring, respect for diversity, democratic participation, self-determination, and distributive justice. (For an earlier statement see Prilleltensky & Walsh-Bowers, 1993, Psychology and the moral imperative. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 13, 90-102.)

The key expressions of these social-ethical dimensions in practising critical history are Freire's intertwined principles of denunciation and annunciation. Annunciation necessitates praxisthe unity of reflection and action. So, I persistently ask myself the question, how are my interests in doing critical history and my personal, scholarly, and community work related? If I am not engaged in interventions to raise awareness and promote change in the social sciences and the helping professions, then my work is ultimately vacuous. As Marx put it, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it."

For example, engaging in attempts to actually change journal practices and pedagogical norms for investigative conduct and for report-writing, doing democratically constructed research in various community projects, teaching the history of psychology to mainstream students, and teachingintroductory psychology to native students at the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, where the cultural traditions are participatory and communal in nature, all enliven my thinking about the meaning of "the research relationship" in everyday practice. Thus, for me, scholarship in the critical history of psychology emanates from a social ethical foundation, grounded in the social practice of research and teaching and oriented to engagement in constructing alternatives.

Concretely, as a critical historian I need to challenge power and privilege in my own practice and in my own programme, as well as in the discipline and the professional practices of psychologists. A key aspect of my critical vocation is the importance of identifying various sources of resistance to change as fundamental features of the workaday bureaucratic world, such as the discrepancies between espoused vs. practised values in graduate training programmes. However, implementing this imperative places me at the margins in my own discipline, which is an uncomfortable place for me to be. Yet I speak now from my privileged perspective as a tenured white man. How much greater are the discomforts and demands on critical historians from other social locations, such as women graduate students!

Fuente:
History and Philosophy of Psychology Bulletin. Vol. 7, No. 2, 1995. Special Issue Tribute to Kurt Danziger