Kurt Danziger - Biography

Biography

He was born in Germany in 1926 and emigrated to South Africa at the age of 11. After receiving degrees in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Cape Town, he continued his studies at the newly established Institute of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford in England. His work there involved standard 1940s psychology experiments using laboratory rats (e.g. Danziger, 1953). On completing his doctorate, he joined the University of Melbourne in Australia where he did research in developmental psychology, studying children’s understanding of social relationships (e.g. Danziger, 1957).

In 1954, Danziger moved back to South Africa where social psychology soon became his main area of research. Following a two-year stay as Visiting Professor at Gadjah Mada University in Jogjakarta, Indonesia, Danziger returned to South Africa as Head of Psychology at the University of Cape Town. There he conducted some groundbreaking studies inspired by the sociology of knowledge (e.g. Danziger, 1963). This research is still cited and was continued by others for many years (e.g. Du Preez & Collins, 1985; Nelson, 1992; Finchilescu & Dawes, 1999). Danziger’s time in Cape Town, and his eventual departure from South Africa, were marked by his opposition to the apartheid policies which were being enforced with increasing violence and brutality. This active opposition, both inside and outside the academy, eventually led to threats and reprisals on the part of what was becoming a repressive police state. He left South Africa for Canada in 1965 and was prohibited from returning until the collapse of the old system after 1990.

Danziger took up an appointment as Professor of Psychology at York University, Toronto, where he continued to work in social psychology. His publications from this time include a textbook, Socialization (Danziger, 1971) and a monograph, Interpersonal Communication (Danziger, 1976), both of which were translated into several languages.

Danziger had a longstanding interest in the history of psychology and began intensive study of primary sources in the early 1970s. He became particularly interested in Wilhelm Wundt's work. Around the time of psychology’s "centennial", marking the establishment of Wundt’s laboratory in 1879, Danziger published a number of chapters and articles related to this topic (e.g. Danziger, 1979a). However, during the 1980s, he became increasingly interested in the history of psychological research methods (e.g. Danziger, 1985). This interest culminated in what is probably Danziger’s best-known book,Constructing the Subject: Historical Origins of Psychological Research (Danziger, 1990). Danziger was also interested in the history of psychological concepts and categories, and in a later book, Naming the Mind: How Psychology Found Its Language (Danziger, 1997), he traced the historical origins of modern psychological concepts like "behavior", "intelligence", "attitude", "personality" and "motivation". He continued this line of work in his book, Marking the Mind: A History of Memory (Danziger, 2008). The book is a wide-ranging history of the concept from Ancient Greece to the present. Much of the book consists of what Danziger calls 'historical psychology'. This field is to be distinguished from history of psychology in that it is concerned not so much with the theories and practices of psychologists but with the subject-matter of psychology and this sometimes has a longer history than the discipline itself (Danziger, 2003).

Danziger was invited to contribute an autobiographical chapter to an edited collection titled, A History of Psychology in Autobiography, which was published in 2009 (Mos, 2009). The contributors to the volume are eminent but unorthodox psychologists. Danziger's chapter is titled, "Confessions of a Marginal Psychologist” (Danziger, 2009).

He produced a web book titled, Problematic Encounter: Talks on Psychology and History in 2010 (Danziger, 2010). The book consists of 12 talks which, for the most part, were previously unpublished or published in outlets with a limited readership, such as newsletters and conference proceedings. Danziger revised some of these talks, grouped them together according to common themes and wrote a new introduction to them. A free copy of the book can be downloaded here.

Danziger has returned to the theme of historical psychology in his most recent publication, a book chapter titled, "Historical Psychology of Persons: Categories and Practice" (Danziger, 2012).