Was Raymond B. Cattell One of the Greatest Psychologists of the 20th Century?

In his review of William H. Tucker's The Cattell Controversy: Race, Science, and Ideology, Frank Dumont notes, "In 1997, the American Psychological Foundation (APF) awarded Raymond B. Cattell, a renowned figure in the field of multivariate analysis and personality psychology, its Award for Life Achievement in Psychological Science. Soon after, a small group of academics and publicists, deeply concerned by the ideological implications of his eugenicist writings, disseminated relevant extracts to the APF and other interested parties. They highlighted ideas in his eugenicist texts that they alleged contaminated his scientific achievements in other fields." However, Dumont also points out that "Cattell … was a charming, respectful, wise, and genial mentor to his students and a friend to his colleagues [and] … unlike Cattell’s signal contributions to trait psychology and multivariate analysis, his eugenicism seems to be fast receding into oblivion."

How will the 21^st century judge Cattell's contributions to psychology? Do his views on eugenics diminish the significance of his other contributions to the science of psychology?

Read the Review

Eugenicism, Bigotry, and Stirring the Embers of a Troubling Episode
By Frank Dumont
      PsycCRITIQUES, 2009 Vol 54(27)

Read the Response

Dearth of Evidence: Response to "Eugenicism, Bigotry, and Stirring the Embers
of a Troubling Episode" (A Review of The Cattell Controversy: Race, Science,
and Ideology)
      By William H. Tucker
      PsycCRITIQUES, 2009 Vol 54(35)

Comments

[E. Taylor, PhD]

As a historian and philosopher of psychology I subscribe to the theory of the late Sigmund Koch—that there is no unified science in psychology, there are only the psychological studies. Psychology is rather a concatanation of search cells, each persuing their own agenda, with their own methods, their own results, their own literature, and even their own heroes and separate and not often overlapping histories. Thus, to answer the question about R. B. Cattell is problematic, since these search cells also offer different conceptions of science.

At the 50th anniversary of Baylor University, where Sig Koch, as well as B.F. Skinner and Carl Rogers also spoke, Rogers made the point that at that time psychology divided itself into at least three different kinds of science. The behaviorists and trait theorists cleaved only to the reductionistic materialism of the laboratory, the paper and pencil test, and the .05 level of significance. The depth psychologists understood psychology as a clinical science, centered around the reality of the unconscious, while the Existential-Humanistic psychologists saw themselves as representing a person-centered science—that all psychology always involved persons, their personalities, and their umwelt, the content of their interiors as lived experience--so the approach of the Existential-Humanistic psychologists was phenomenological.

RB Cattell did not believe that depth psychology or the existential-humanistic tradition were even science at all, so why would they judge him among the greatest psychologists of the 20th century? If anything, he was a champion of all that was causing the crisis in the discipline that continues to this day. In the category of the experimentalists, themselves, Prof. Skinner was also always called the greatest psychologist of the 20th century (and believed so himself), which means the title is in dispute for who is highest in that food chain, but only among the experimentalists. Possibly only trait theorists would call Cattell one of the greatest psychologists, but trait theory historically is only an insignificant current trend, given the prior history of personality theory and also the humanistic implications of the neuroscience revolution underway that presage a major redefinition of what we today call psychological science. So the answer about R.B. Cattell would be a narrow yes, but also mainly a definite no.