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Mike D noted:
So in a way, I'm not sure that we're approaching this less as a problem of historiography, and more as a problem of scholarship. I want to know where and when this idea crept into common knowledge, if it did in fact come from Freud, and if it did not, if we can at least make a persuasive case for some other source, and then use it as an instructive case for those who endeavor to write textbooks. ---------------------------
Yes, and I think both perspectives are valuable, but find the social-historical process most interesting. The iceberg idea is a useful teaching device, and we do indeed want to learn the source of the quote, but how many current texts have this particular quote? Many more do use the iceberg idea and implicitly or explicitly attribute it to Freud. While the quote may be Fechner's, the idea is older, and the more interesting question is how writers in psych came to use it, and came to associate it so strongly with Freud that it was assumed to be original to him? This is a process of attribution and a practice having wider implications. Has anyone checked Intro and personality texts to see if indeed authors are commonly misattributing the iceberg idea? How many use the quote or any quote and attribute it to Freud? This is why I think looking at early psych textbooks might be interesting. I am not in my office, but I did find that Allport (1937) made appropriate reference to the idea (not the quote) without attributing it to Freud. I understand Allport had some early influence on the promotion of personality as an academic field in North American psychology. Relevance to TIPS?---How does the teaching of psychology via popular metaphors, come to shape the subject for which the metaphors and analogies are used? If we critique Freud's conception of the unconscious, we must be sure we are dealing with Freud's account and not textbook authors' depictions. Gary
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