George Herbert Mead

George Herbert Mead

George Herbert Mead (born February 27, 1863 in South Hadley , Massachusetts , USA ; † April 26, 1931 in Chicago , USA) was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist. He studied in Leipzig and Berlin, among others, and was professor of philosophy and social psychology at the University of Chicago from 1894 until his death .

Life

Mead entered Oberlin College in 1879 as a student, directed by his father, Hiram Mead . His mother was born Elizabeth Storrs (Billings). During his studies, Mead dealt with Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, among other things . His main concern was a possible justification of a socially committed Christianity in view of the new and revolutionary developments in the natural sciences. In 1882 Mead was elected editor of the Oberlin Review along with his friend Henry Castle ; Both advocated scientifically enlightened Christianity in this position.

Upon graduation in 1883, Mead accepted a position as a teacher. However, he was fired after four months due to disciplinary difficulties with the students. He then worked for three years as a surveyor for the Wisconsin Central Railroad Company and was involved in the construction of the 1,100 mile railway from Minneapolis to Moose Jaw .

In 1887 Mead began a second degree at Harvard University . He studied philosophy with Josiah Royce , George H. Palmer and Francis Bowen. At the same time, he took a position as tutor to William James to help finance his studies. Mead specialized in physiological psychology and received a scholarship to attend the University of Leipzig in the winter semester of 1888/89 . There he studied with Wilhelm Wundt before he moved to Berlin in 1889 and became a student of Wilhelm Dilthey , Hermann Ebbinghaus , Gustav Schmoller and Friedrich Paulsen and was directed to Ferdinand Tönnies via Wundt and Paulsen .

Without a doctorate, Mead was appointed to the University of Michigan as a lecturer in psychology, philosophy, and evolutionary theory in 1891 . In terms of content, he dealt with the psychological consequences of epistemology and the relationships between organisms and the environment; special topics were the problem of attention and the perception of pressure and temperature as well as the concept of love as used by William James in his theory of emotions. There he met Charles H. Cooley and John Dewey . The latter became a lifelong friend for Mead. When Dewey moved to the University of Chicago , which had recently been founded, in 1894 , Mead followed him and received a position as assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and Psychology.

In addition to his research and teaching activities, Mead was heavily involved in social reform projects in Chicago. For example, he temporarily worked as treasurer for the Hull House , a project involving social work on site, which was intended to break the usual distance of the social worker, who normally did not live in the problem area of ​​those he cared for. Intellectual debates were also organized at Hull House. Mead was also committed to women's rights and advocated an educational reform of juvenile criminal law. He was a member of various strike mediation commissions and several local reform commissions. He was a member and temporarily president of the City Club, a reform-oriented association of entrepreneurs and intellectuals who campaigned for the democratization of local government, in the health sector, in the integration of immigrants and in vocational training. He paid particular attention to the latter subject, for example as a temporary editor of the Elementary School Teacher magazine , as an employee of the educational experimental school at the University of Chicago, and as president of the experimental school for children with behavioral disorders. He also campaigned publicly for the controversial reform orientation of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Hans Joas describes all of these activities as important factors influencing Mead's socio-psychological work.

Chicago School - Effect on Symbolic Interactionism

Mead is one of the American pragmatists . He was mainly influenced by John Dewey, to a lesser extent by William James. The work of Charles S. Peirce, however, had no direct influence on Mead. Mead is repeatedly referred to in the literature as a representative of the Chicago School of Sociology . However, Mead did not see himself as a sociologist and he was never a member of the Sociology Institute (influencing members of the Chicago School).

In contrast to German idealism ( Johann Gottlieb Fichte , Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ), which Mead accused of " solipsistic ghost", Mead understands - inspired by Darwin's theory of evolution - human consciousness as an evolutionary product of the organism's struggle with his environment. In this regard, he follows the view of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , who attach fundamental evolutionary importance to work in the anthropological sense. Mead does not see human consciousness as a gift that was put into the human cradle and could be described in a prioris of knowledge. According to Mead, one already assumes what has to be explained.

The development of symbolic interactionism by his student Herbert Blumer goes back to Mead's work on the theory of symbol-mediated communication, which Mead elaborated in the lecture on social psychology that he gave in Chicago from 1900 to 1930. Mead consciously spoke of the "social act" in the sense of a social practice, not of "interaction". “Interaction”, “intersubjectivity” and corresponding expressions presuppose (similar to “intercity”) that the actions, subjects, cities are given and can only be linked with one another afterwards. Mead's theory, on the other hand, emphasizes that actions, subjects, etc. do not exist beforehand without the overarching practice (“social act”). They are born into practice and emerge from it as spiritually independent structures.

Mead's major work: Spirit, Identity and Society

Mead himself never systematically laid down his theory. Mead's main work is generally considered to be the volume “ Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist ”. However, this is not about Mead's writing, but rather a posthumous reconstruction of a lecture that Mead had for many years at the University of Chicago under the posthumous 1934 by his student Charles W. Morris (1903-1979) based on student transcripts Title held Social Psychology . The writing is very problematic editorially for various reasons, which is why in every discussion with Mead one should refer to his original contributions.

In this lecture Mead dealt with the question of how human identity comes about and what influence society, but also the thinking and spirit of the individual human being, have on it. He first describes “The emergence of identity”, then “The identity and the subjective” and then explains “The I [“ I ”] and the I [“ me ”]; in later translations more appropriately referred to as “me” ”.

The emergence of identity

According to Mead, identity is created through three media: through language, play and competition. The interaction of these factors creates an individual personality. The three media are weighted differently, but are all relevant and irreplaceable.

The importance of language in personal development

According to Mead, the foundation stone for the development of language lies in the ability of humans, through their physical endowment with a central nervous system, to be able to carry out actions and reactions with a delay. This intelligence enables him to weigh up the possible consequences of his own behavior and to point out possible combinations. However, people can only become aware of the consequences and possible combinations if they know symbols. These in turn require the presence of a certain society. Thus, a society of interacting individuals is necessary to create these symbols and thus to generate a certain mutual dependence. To illustrate this, Mead gives the example of the bear track in his work, Spirit, Identity and Society . The individual recognizes the track as such and passes this knowledge on to the group. From then on, each of these individuals knows that a paw print of this shape indicates a bear and can act accordingly. Mead calls this process “symbolization”. This makes it clear what function language has in this process: Consisting of sounds, it enables communication and the self-perception of the individual on the one hand, but on the other hand it is a string of many symbols, the meaning of which there must be a consensus in society. The sound, the symbol, must trigger the same reaction in the other individuals as it does in itself. If this is the case, Mead speaks of a “significant symbol”. The individuals can use it to assess the reactions of their acting partners and consequently a common, social action results. At this point, what Mead calls “role taking” also happens: the reciprocal agent can use the significant symbols to make his behavior an object for himself. He sees himself from the point of view of the other and can reflect which reaction his behavior will trigger in his counterpart. He can perceive himself, see himself as an object.

The importance of society becomes clear at this point. Only through society, which, according to Mead, consists of interactions between individuals, can humans learn language as a significant symbol from original sounds. The thought process (the inward transmission of gestures) that precedes the communication process basically takes place with symbols (we connect words with objects). These symbols must evoke the same reaction in the thinker and in the other in order for communication to be successful. This means that our symbols are general terms. It should be noted that there are situations in which one does not trigger the same reaction in one's own identity as in the other (see actors). A decisive basis for the development and perception of one's own personality is laid by the agreement on common significant symbols and the associated opportunity to see oneself from the perspective of the other. Furthermore, social values ​​and norms can be conveyed in this way. The external social situation can thus be passed on to the individual and internalized. The basis for socialization is laid in this way.

Mead elaborates and clarifies the concept of role assumption in the course of his theory. The anticipation of the behavior of others plays a major role, particularly when considering the personality structure of I and me and the development phases of play and game.

The development phases play and game

With the two development phases of play and game, childish play and organized play or competition, Mead depicts the process of becoming an object and thus of personality development: “The awareness of oneself arises very gradually in behavior when an individual sees himself as a social object experiences for others. ”He bases this process on both the language and the structures I and me and sees the process in language through speaking and hearing one's own sound and the possibility of observing one's own behavior through significant symbols reflect and assess, given. When the child takes on roles, the child gradually experiences himself as a social object. In the play phase, the first traits of perception can be recognized as such an object. Ultimately, however, the individual only becomes a social object in the phase of the game, namely exclusively through interaction with others.

Starting with the phase of the game, the play, the child first practices taking on roles. The child puts himself in several roles, but can only play one role at a time. An example of this would be playing with the grocery store. The child is first a customer, then a seller, and then a customer again. It imitates many different roles and thus exercises the behavioral anticipation that is necessary for the formation of identity. At this stage of development, the child only relates to the behavior of a certain other person. In order to be able to act in a social or social group, however, it must know and be able to classify the roles of all other individuals involved. This stage is called Mead game. In this competitive situation, the child must have internalized the behavior of everyone else and know how to act. It has to be based on the so-called “generalized other”. Mead makes this phase clear using the example of the baseball game. A player can only act if he knows the rules, tasks and actions of all players and thus his own role. At the same time, all other players must be able to do this with their behavior so that the baseball game is possible at all. The “generalized other” or “generalized other” represents not only the system of rules within a competition, but by and large the entire society with its values ​​and norms. Orientation towards this other person leads to a social structuring of the self.

It becomes clear that the individual receives his identity exclusively through the interaction with other individuals. The individual is only able to perceive himself as such by orienting himself towards the other members of a social group. In this way, conclusions can be drawn from the identity of the individual about social behavioral patterns as well as about the identity of all other group members.

The identity and the subjective

Mead distinguishes identity from consciousness. Consciousness in the sense of thinking or reflective intelligence is only accessible to the individual himself, it has a subjective character and describes the way an organism acts. In contrast, he explains identity as a structure that develops from social behavior and not from the subjective experience of the organism. The identity meant here develops when the transmission of gestures is incorporated into the behavior of the individual. Both - identity and consciousness - are at times only accessible to the individual, but can be published. One example is the setting up of a theory that is initially only accessible internally and generally accessible after publication.

Mead's thoughts on community are as follows: A community develops when there is a mutual influence between the individuals, when the reaction of the community to the individual is institutionalized, i.e. when the whole community acts in the same way towards the individual. Everyone accepts the attitude of the community towards themselves, but can also respond to the community and insist on improving the norms of the community. So everyone is in a dialogue with the community. An example of this dialogue would be when someone speaks to the audience in court and justifies their act. If someone does not agree with the attitudes of the community, he can stand in the way of the whole environment by listening to reason and including the past and the future in his thinking.

Furthermore, Mead differentiates consciousness from self-consciousness (identity consciousness). Consciousness is experience, a cognitive phenomenon, self-consciousness the knowledge of an identity as an object, an emotional phenomenon.

By feeling the attitude of the other towards oneself, a self-confidence arises, with which the individual organism enters its environment. This self-confidence triggers actions in the individual that it triggers in others as well, and it thus develops an identity insofar as it can adopt the attitude of others and act towards itself as towards others. To be self-conscious, to be identity-conscious, basically means to become an object for one's own identity thanks to social relationships with others.

The self and its structural components - I, me, self and mind

Language forms an essential basis for the creation of identity and at the same time for a functioning society. This identity, the self, is therefore not present from the beginning of human life, but must first be formed and conveyed through experience and development processes. Before going into the development processes of play and game, however, it is necessary to first examine the components of the self.

George Herbert Mead divides the self into two parts. He speaks of "I" and "me". “That [I] is the organism's reaction to the attitudes of others; the [me] is the organized group of attitudes of others that one adopts. The attitudes of others form the organized [me], and one reacts to it as an [I] ”(Mead 1968: 218). In this quotation the structure of personality as imagined by Mead becomes clear. Not only do the individuals interact with one another, but also the components of the identity of the individual. By I, Mead essentially understands creativity and spontaneity in humans as well as the biologically inclined urges. It can also be said that the I is completely subjective and includes the reaction to the me. This reaction of the I to the me forms the part of the action that takes place inside the individual. It reacts to the attitudes of the others, which I synthesize as me, reflects and sorts them and ultimately acts accordingly. The I is at the same time the individual in man, the subjective. So the instance of the I also serves to assert these peculiarities. The me contains all values ​​and norms of society, but the synthesis of these rules is up to the I itself. So the I is not only rebuked by the me, but can also change society based on its individual reaction to the restrictions.

In the me, the attitudes of others and the image that others have of the individual are included. The expectations that others have of the person are also recorded here. Me is shaped by society and thus gives I its shape; it is the objective part of the self. So it can happen that many mes arise. Through different social circles, the individual comes to diverse caregivers who each have different expectations and thus create a different image of the individual. All these mes must then be synthesized by the I so that they result in a unified self-image of the individual. As a result, many different roles have to be assumed, behavior must be anticipated and agreed with one another.

If this connection of the different elements of the me with the I has succeeded in a unity, then according to Mead one can speak of a "self". The self represents the interaction between I and me. It should be noted, however, that the creation of the self represents a process that is only possible through the experience of other members of society. The self continues to develop through interaction with other members of society and can therefore not be seen as a fixed construct, but rather as an everlasting differentiation of the attitudes of others, of social norms and guidelines with the I.

Mead's theories - dissenting voices

All of these theories shaped Mead's work, but in formulating his anthropological theory on the genesis of consciousness he was able to tie in particularly with Dewey - who was a good friend of Mead - and has repeatedly distinguished himself very explicitly from John B. Watson . Like Dewey, he understands consciousness as a product of the cooperation of individuals, which (molecular or classical) behaviorism , which breaks down all actions into unconnected stimulus-reaction phases , cannot grasp at all. Behaviorism understands action in the terms stimulus, reaction and conditioned conditioning (later expanded by Skinner to include operant conditioning ). The Sozialbehaviorismus Meads other hand, sees the development of consciousness associated with the development of significant symbols (language).

Symbols - optimization

Symbols arise from the optimization of the cooperation of subjects: humans perceive that their behavior is the stimulus for the behavior of others. By controlling his behavior, he can control that of others so that cooperation processes can be optimized. This optimization is only possible through language, because we can only perceive the vocal gesture as well as our counterpart. Therefore we can connect the reaction of the other person with our gesture, the meaning of our gesture lies in the reaction of the other - our gesture is thus a significant gesture, i.e. i.e. a (significant) symbol. We can use symbols to control our behavior. This also creates the possibility of self-confidence: by being able to control your behavior from the perspective of others, you are released from the status of the only acting subject. One can become an object of oneself from the perspective of the other by means of language, one can put oneself in the position of the others in order to judge one's behavior. This is necessary for self-confidence, because humans cannot experience themselves as the subject of their actions: one does not experience one's own actions from the perspective of what is being experienced.

Phases

Mead calls this phase of reflection the ME. In the ME you see yourself from the perspective of the (generalized) other. The action is shaped by one's own reaction to the ME, by the internalized expectations of others. This phase of action, the reaction of the subject to accepting the attitudes of the (generalized) other, is what Mead I. calls I and ME create the SELF ( self , identity).

The identity is formed in individual biographies by the child going through two game phases: PLAY and GAME. In these, the child learns to adopt the attitude of others, to adjust his behavior according to their expectations. First in free and naive play with oneself (PLAY), then in organized competition with many others (GAME). The child exercises self-control over himself and is thus subject to the social control of the communities to which he belongs and according to which the social structure of identity (ME) has developed. One of the tasks of identity is to coordinate the different demands of different groups, that is, to synthesize different internalized group attitudes, i.e. to establish the unity of the difference between MEs. From the resulting moral conflicts, Mead developed his theory of ethics and social change , which, however, received far less attention than his theory of symbolic communication and the emergence of identity and consciousness.

Fonts

Only after his death did four of his books appear. They contain lecture manuscripts, essays and other works from the estate:

• Mind, Self, and Society . Edited by Charles W. Morris. Chicago 1934. (German translation: Spirit, identity and society from the perspective of social behaviorism. Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1968, ISBN 0-226-51668-7 .)
• The Philosophy of the Act . Edited by Charles W. Morris et al. Chicago 1938
• The Philosophy of the Present . Edited by Arthur E. Murphy. La Salle (Illinois) 1932 (new edition 2002: Prometheus Books, Amherst, New York)
• Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century . Edited by Meritt H. Moore. Chicago 1936

Some anthologies contain excerpts from these books in German:

• Anselm Strauss (Ed.): GH Mead on Social Psychology . Chicago 1964. (German translation: Anselm Strauss (Hrsg.): Sozialpsychologie, Luchterhand-Verlag, Neuwied 1969). (Excerpts from all four books as well as two additional articles)
• Hansfried Kellner (Ed.): GH Mead. Philosophy of sociality . Essays on the anthropology of knowledge. Frankfurt am Main 1969. (Excerpts from Philosophy of the Act and Philosophy of the Present as well as some other articles)
• Collected essays . 2 volumes, edited by Hans Joas. Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1980–1983.

A largely complete bibliography can be found in the new edition (2000, Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp) of Hans Joa's book: Practical Intersubjectivity. Joas also states which essays have appeared in which anthologies. A bibliography of the same quality can be reached via the web link "The Mead-Project" given below, most of Mead's texts are also available online there.

literature

• Heinz Abels , interaction, identity, presentation. Small introduction to interpretative theories of sociology , VS Verlag, Wiesbaden ³2004, ISBN 3-531-43183-8 .
• Filipe Carreira Da Silva, GH Mead. A Critical Introduction , Polity, Cambridge 2007, ISBN 978-0-7456-3457-9
• Hans Joas : Practical Intersubjectivity. The development of the work of George Herbert Mead , Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1989. ISBN 3-518-28365-0 (²2000: preface to the new edition, as well as supplemented bibliography)
• Benjamin Jörissen , Jörg Zirfas (Hrsg.): Key Works of Identity Research , VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010. ISBN 3-531-15806-6
• Dieter Krallmann, Andreas Ziemann: George Herbert Mead's social-behavioristic communication theory . In: Basic Course in Communication Science . Fink, Munich 2001. ISBN 3-8252-2249-7
• Nungesser, Frithjof; Ofner, Franz (ed.): Potentials of a pragmatic social theory. Contributions on the occasion of the 150th birthday of George Herbert Mead. Special issue of the Austrian Journal for Sociology (ÖZS) . Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013.
• Rainer Schützeichel: Cooley, Mead and the symbolic interaction . In: Sociological Communication Theories . Constance 2004. ISBN 3-8252-2623-9
• Hans-Josef Wagner: Structures of the Subject. A study following George Herbert Mead . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1993. ISBN 3-531-12525-7
• Harald Wenzel : George Herbert Mead for an introduction . Junius-Verlag, Hamburg 1990. ISBN 3-88506-855-9 (Note: The title of the book implies that this is an introduction, but it requires extensive prior knowledge on this subject in order to understand it)
• George Herbert Mead: Philosophy of Education, edited by Daniel Tröhler and Gert Biesta. Bad Heilbrunn 2008: Klinkhardt. ISBN 978-3-7815-1579-6

Web links

• Literature by and about George Herbert Mead in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Mead Project on Brock University's website : offers almost all of Mead's articles and books available as free full-text online, as well as a number of other resources
• Mead page of the Philosophy of Practice Initiative
• Mitchell Aboulafia:  Entry in Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• George Cronk:  Entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Werner Bergmann: Time, Action and Sociality at GH Mead , Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 10 (Oct.) 1981, 351 - 363

Remarks

1. ↑ Tönnies had temporarily wanted to do his habilitation at Wundt with a preliminary form of " Community and Society ", and Paulsen, as Tönnies' friend, knew the study, which was published in 1887, very well. Cf. the merging of Tönnies' and Mead's theorems (recognizable e.g. in both preliminary drafts for role theory ) in Werner J. Cahnman in: Tönnies and the theory of social change. A reconstruction , in: L. Clausen / FU Pappi (Ed.): Arrival at Tönnies , Mühlau, Kiel 1981.
2. ↑ The relationship between Mead and Cooley is interpreted very differently in the literature. Mead and Cooley do not seem to have had an intensive exchange. Cf. Frithjof Nungesser, Patrick Wöhrle: The social-theoretical relevance of pragmatism - Dewey, Cooley, Mead. In: Frithjof Nungesser, Franz Ofner (Hrsg.): Potentials of a pragmatic social theory. Contributions on the occasion of the 150th birthday of George Herbert Mead. Special issue of the Austrian Journal for Sociology (ÖZS). Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2013, pp. 53, 66.
3. ↑ Hans Joas: Practical Intersubjectivity. The development of the work of GH Mead, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1989, paperback edition with a renewed foreword 2000, 29
4. ↑ Nungesser, Frithjof; Ofner, Franz (2013): "Introduction", in: Nungesser, Frithjof; Ofner, Franz (ed.): Potentials of a pragmatic social theory. Contributions on the occasion of the 150th birthday of George Herbert Mead. Special issue of the Austrian Journal for Sociology (ÖZS) . Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2013, p. 4 f.
5. ↑ See Marx / Engels-Werke, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1962, Vol. 20, Dialektik der Natur , p. 444; or Karl Marx: Das Kapital , Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1972, vol. 1, p. 192
6. ^ Daniel R. Huebner: The Construction of Mind, Self, and Society: The Social Process behind GH Mead's Social Psychology. In: Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences , 48 (2), 2012, pp. 134-153.