Haiku for the history of psychology
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it is easier to write a long essay than it is to write a short one. To make a long essay short, you have to make decisions about what to leave out. This means sacrificing things you wanted to say: you have to “kill your darlings,” as we discuss in my master writing skills course.
At the same time, however, constraints can also serve as a catalyst for creativity. They can force you to do things you wouldn’t otherwise have done, but which in retrospect you are glad to have done. And the tightest constraints are afforded by formal structures; in this case, a particular kind of poem—haiku.
Haiku are known for their 5-7-5 syllabic style. The best ones also include a kireji: a juxtaposition, which in English usually comes via punctuation. The other rules, like the use of a seasonal reference (kigo), are less often seen in modern writing. But if they can be included, it’s nice to include them.
So that’s what I did during the Christmas break. (Seasonal reference!) For fun, I decided to write about the History of Psychology in this super-constrained way. It was a personal challenge, as well as something to distract me from the wait between parties. And it was a nice way to reflect on my field.
Because I tend to chafe against arbitrary rules, though, the length of each set of interconnected poems below was provided by Twitter: 280 characters. And rather than reflecting directly on the seasons, the subject of these haiku is our discipline’s history. (If the present is the Summer, then these are about the Spring.) In addition, I have tried to keep the juxtaposition of imagery. This, though, was mostly done across the haiku in each Twitter-length set rather than within individual poems.
The first set provides a gloss of one of my lectures from the first-year half-course that introduces history to all new bachelor students in psychology. I hope you will find it familiar:
Wundt was grandfather
of experimental psych—
among other things
that were forgotten,
like Völkerpsychologie,
but should not have been.
Titch’ner imported
a mistaken mirror, and
Watson responded.
Behaviorism
was born from American
misunderstanding.
Because these are examples of academic writing, each haiku in the set could also be supported by references. I actually included one implicitly in the third: “mistaken mirror” refers to Thomas Leahey’s (1981) classic essay by that title, published in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences.
I also wanted to refer to Watson’s (1913) Behaviorist manifesto, in the final haiku, but couldn’t get “manifested” to fit. (Too many syllables.) Instead, I had to go with “was born.” So I lost the reference, and the implicit was turned to allusion for those who know this material best.
Here’s another set that I hope those who took my version of the history course will recognize:
Binet and Simon
invented a test to keep
“slow” kids in French schools.
Bourneville wanted
them referred to asylums
because they were “sick.”
Collaborating
with teachers then won the day
for psychology.
After export, though,
their metric helped justify
discrimination.
This is effectively a poetic abstract of my 2013 article with Serge Nicolas that was published in Intelligence: “Sick? Or slow?” The subject then also provides a nice transition, through Michael Wertheimer’s brief note (again in JHBS) about whether Piaget had worked with Binet.
Piaget never
worked directly with Binet.
Because he was dead.
Still, he did work in
the Binet Lab. Just without
a supervisor.
This is how he could
ask the children why their wrong
answers were correct.
At issue was their
justification, not their
age or competence.
Because I was simultaneously revising a new essay about how Piaget’s early background informed his later interests, for a special issue of History of the Human Sciences (appearing in press presently), I then continued the theme:
This was his int’rest:
kids’ development as a
proxy for knowledge.
But his doctorate
was a catalogue of Swiss
snail species-groupings.
That was followed by
a second doctorate on
how humans value.
He never finished.
Instead, he became the “stage
theory” guy we know.
I wrote several others as well. These, though, suffice to make my larger point: constraining your writing is both limiting and freeing. You can say a lot with a little. Indeed, another “twitterstorian of psychology” joked that I seemed to be writing a textbook entirely in haiku. But why not? If you know something well, it’s much easier to choose which parts to highlight and which others to leave out.
Of course, the games we play on holiday don’t always have to be so serious. Still, it’s playing that makes the game easier; practice makes perfect, as they say. And as I continued to follow the constraints, I noticed that the world began to present itself more poetically. So I turned self-reflective:
During the writing
of my dissertation, I
also wrote haiku.
Now that I’ve started
again, just for fun, I find
that it’s hard to stop.
Is it a stroke? Or
an affectation? And will
it get me tenure?
I think not. Alas.
I’ll get back to my research.
(Publish or perish!)
Do you have ideas for your own haiku? Why not share them in the comments.
Featured image credit: Ayu Nabila, 2016, at Wikimedia Commons (CC4)
Dr Burman joined the tenure-track at the University of Groningen in 2016, after working for two years at the Archives Jean Piaget in the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He received his doctorate in Psychology from the History and Theory Graduate Programme at York University in Canada. In addition, he has a separate terminal MA in Interdisciplinary Studies (also from YorkU), and an Honours BSc in Psychology from the University of Toronto. Prior to his turn to academia, he worked in broadcasting and—before that—even made a go of it as an entrepreneur during the dot-com bubble. You can find him most easily on Twitter: @BurmanPhD
Select recent publications
Burman, J. T. (2022). Meaning-change through the mistaken mirror: On the indeterminacy of “Wundt” and “Piaget” in translation. Review of General Psychology, 26(1), 22-48. doi:10.1177/10892680211017521
Burman, J. T. (2021). The genetic epistemology of Jean Piaget. In W. Pickren (Ed.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of the History of Psychology. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190236557.013.521
Ratcliff, M. J., Tau, R., & Burman, J. T. (2020). Overcoming mind-brain dualism. Constructivism, interdisciplinarity, and psychophysiological parallelism in Piaget’s cognitive evolutionary synthesis. Mefisto: Journal of Medicine, Philosophy, and History, 4(2), 39-60.
Burman, J. T. (2020). On Kuhn’s case, and Piaget’s: A critical two-sited hauntology (or, on impact without reference). [In C. Millard & F. Callard, eds. of special issue dedicated to the memory of John Forrester.] History of the Human Sciences, 33(3-4). doi:10.1177/0952695120911576
Burman, J. T., & Collins, B. M. (2020). Commentary: Why study the History of Neuroscience? Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 14, 1-2. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00127
Burman, J. T. (2020). On the implications of object permanence: Microhistorical insights from Piaget’s new theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21-22. doi:10.1017/S0140525X19002954
Burman, J. T. (2019). Development. In R. J. Sternberg & W. Pickren (Eds.), Handbook of the Intellectual History of Psychology (pp. 287-317). Cambridge University Press.
Burman, J. T. (2018). Digital methods can help you… If you’re careful, critical, and not historiographically naïve. [Introduction to special issue on digital history of psychology.] History of Psychology, 21(4), 297-301. doi:10.1037/hop0000112
Burman, J. T. (2018). Through the looking-glass: PsycINFO as an historical archive of trends in psychology. History of Psychology, 21(4), 302-333. doi:10.1037/hop0000082
Burman, J. T. (2018). What is History of Psychology? Network analysis of Journal Citation Reports, 2009-2015. Sage Open. doi:10.1177/2158244018763005
Ratcliff, M. J., & Burman, J. T. (2017). The mobile frontiers of Piaget’s psychology: From academic tourism to interdisciplinary collaboration / Las fronteras móviles de la psicología de Piaget. Del turismo académico a la colaboración interdisciplinaria. [English original published alongside a Spanish translation by Julia Fernández Treviño.]. Estudios de Psicología: Studies in Psychology, 38(1), 1-33. doi:10.1080/02109395.2016.1268393
Burman, J. T. (2017). Philosophical histories can be contextual without being sociological: Comment on Araujo’s historiography. Theory & Psychology, 27(1), 117-125. doi:10.1177/0959354316682862
Burman, J. T. (2016). Piaget’s neo-Gödelian turn: Between biology and logic, origins of the New Theory. Theory & Psychology, 26(6), 751-772. doi:10.1177/0959354316672595
