Rabbi Jon's Website and Blog

College: Piaget, the Soviets, and the Last of Theory-Driven Psych for the Term

I'm much more interested now than I was back freshman year in the philosophy of language and communication. Not that I am that well-versed now, beyond the literary theory I got into for a time both for teaching literature and thinking about Tanakh (Bible). In that light, I'm noticing in my notes about Piaget where he pulled up short of his project of using cognitive development as a window into what "knowing" is. Some critics have said that he didn't account for language, and I think this means two things. One is that he didn't apply his own very rich and texture stage and substage concepts to the experience of language itself. Language was just one part of the evidence of how a person thinks, not a (semi-?)unique realm of experience in itself. Also he didn't take a stand on whether language drives cognitive development or vice versa, whether language shapes cognition. The notes say that Piaget remained committed to the idea that thought is a motivation for behavior. People think in order to restore themselves to equilibrium, and in that sense development is furthered by a human need for one's cognitions about the self and the world to make sense. On the other hand, at least one critic pointed to adolescence as a period when thought is itself enlisted in service of being more self-centered and in that sense less "formal" than Piaget, or Kohlberg after him, would posit.

Still, what delights me about Piaget is what he did observe, the texture he did provide about one aspect of development. That's much more to me than what he didn't explain or couldn't coherently encompass within his theory.

I read over a couple lectures about the Soviet developmental psychologists, and the project is interesting even if the psychology itself less so. I think this was my first encounter with the notion that there is no real objective standpoing from which to do science. So the Soviets made that a virtue, and adopted Marxist goals -- the new socialist man, a whole and inner-driven ciitzen -- and Marxian analysis -- ideas like the dialectic, meaning sudden change within the individual on the analogy of Marxian class revolution, when the current psychological equilibrium could not hold for a person. There seems to be some belief in social engineering, the ability of a socialist society to help a person grow toward a normative goal, rather than a universal human maturation pattern. I think in some cases, the Soviet psychologists were more humanistic or at least more humane than the Soviet intellectual system as a whole.

With this the course is going to turn away from organizing theories, to stages of life. I really loved at the time how Professor Demick structured the class -- giving us the best of theory and the best of empirical work.

College: Piaget

Yes, I literally just wrote about the prior notes and theory minutes ago!

I've always loved Piaget, even after all the critiques of the narrowness of his focus and of his research base. I rely on him all the time. Looking at the notes, I see immediately two things. One that I forgot, which is that part of what motivated Piaget was a desire to put epistemology on a scientific basis. He thought that exploring how we develop thinking would help clarify what thought actually is. The other thing I love is just how much careful observation there is. Even the sensory-motor stage, which seems like completely pre-cognitive, has so much going on and wiring up, so many building blocks being put actively into place by a baby. I loved reading the specifics of the phases within the phase. This is the first theory I learned that had really a disciplined cluster of observations at its center. I remember going for Thanksgiving break that year to visit Uncle Morris' and Aunt Bert's family and seeing a baby after learning this, and all of a sudden I could see not just a randomly moving blob but all of these specific things! Piaget considered them to be active efforts, not just predetermined maturations, even though we almost all do them.

Certainly it's been helpful to my own epistemology to be able to see the difference between concrete and abstract thinking in teens and preteens (and adults, truthfully), and not to confuse them just because it's all communicated eventually in words. I guess it's also distressing and hard for me that not everyone gets to that "formal operations" stage, which even Piaget values as the desired "good" end point.

I thought it was interesting that Piaget thought that despite the child-driven-ness of how development works, society's intentions or teaching make only a marginal impact on individuals' pace of development. At most opportunities for disequilibrium can be provided and if the child is capable of responding or needs to, they will. This showed up later as an issue in my senior thesis, about the role of teaching in child-centered educational theories.

 

College: Organismic-Developmental Theory

I guess I'll say it was inevitable I'd fall behind but I am determined to catch up well before the "semester" ends. Fortunately, when I was in college reading period was after winter break...

Heinz Werner's organismic-developmental theory seems like something I used to understand and now can't quite piece together. I'm pretty sure it was the school of thought in which Professor Demick was situated, and I seem to remember it holding together in a certain way that I've lost but made a lot of sense at the time.

Two things that interested me in the notes -- First, the idea that we experience reality in three ways. We have an experience of ourselves, an experience of the environment, and an experience of self-within-environment. That's interested as a description of awareness, if that's what they actually meant. I don't remember how that plays out. It's different from saying that a person can be understood from the outside in three ways. The second thing I was struck by was the idea of development as always starting with something new that is diffuse and disorganized, which seems in some sense to be "regression" but is actually the stage anything goes through as it comes into being and then adapts. I think the notes say we are constantly going through this with regard to new things all the time, but overall for most people there is a trend toward organization. This is parr of what's meant by an organismic theory -- people are organisms, and we encounter new things outside and also our capacities pop into play at different stages, and there is a process of accommodating and adapting and then functioning. Those weren't the terms in these notes.

Why I say I used to get it more -- I think what I'm seeing in my notes is a bunch of parts. The idea of the human as an organism -- a whole, whose levels and parts are distinct but all relevant to who the person is; as a part of an environment, and not an isolated entity -- that I got at the time and still get. How this translates into understanding psychological phenomena in a distinct way, either I don't see it or it's obvious and everywhere. The latter might have been the point. You can't just pick one thing about human development and call that the main thing, or even understand the one thing on its own, whether that's social development or cognitive development. Okay, maybe I do still get it?

Gratitude for Being Together in This Country

These are my words from this past Tuesday's Thanksgiving service with the Nashua Area Interfaith Council. Thank you to Pilgrim Congregational Church for hosting us this year!

Let me start my reflection on gratitude for being together in this country with a story about Wolf Landsman, Clarence Stetson, and Eva Castillo. It’s possible I have told this story in an interfaith council setting before, and if so then I am telling it again!

Thanks to my sister Ellen, the family genealogist, I know that in 1893 just a few days after July 4^th, my great-grandfather Wolf Landsman came to the city court in Utica, New York, or as it is known in my family, the Garden of Eden. Grandpa Landsman as my dad calls him was 21, and he had been in this country for only three years. At the courthouse he declared his intent to become a citizen of the United States and renounced all allegiance to his previous sovereign, the czar of Russa. That could not have been a hard thing to do; to be a Jew in the czar’s empire was terrible, and over a few decades about forty percent sought refuge and new possibilities in the United States. The hard thing for Wolf Landsman to do would have been to do write his intentions on a form in English.

So the document Ellen found is completed in the beautiful handwriting of Clarence Stetson, a court clerk. Plus my great-grandfather’s X for a signature. What I know about Mr. Stetson is that he and his family were for at least 80 years and may still be part of the legal, governmental, and civic leadership of Utica. I want to picture him with a fancy hat, but I have no evidence he is related to those Stetsons.

Some Stetson in a recent generation was leader of an architectural design firm working in the city; travel through downtown Utica and its classic buildings will remind you a lot of our own Nashua.

My favorite part of the document is the one place where I am pretty sure there was no way to quite bridge the communication gap between Grandpa Landsman and Mr. Stetson. In the otherwise meticulous penmanship of Mr. Stetson there is the name of the Russian town where my great-grandfather was born. I think all Mr. Stetson could hear was something like Grvkimustck, so it looks like he fudged it. It looks like letters on the form, but I think it’s just a clever piece of art that looks like letters. I’d ask my sister the researcher to make out the city name, but I like my version of the story better.

Two years ago, 129 years later to the month from the date of this document, I talked about this part of my family’s origins in America at an immigration-related gathering of storytelling and affirmation here in Nashua. When I arrived, with my tightly crafted three-minute intro, I learned that everything during the evening would be interpreted into Spanish and from Spanish to English, in real time, so we should speak accordingly with pauses etc. Thank you to the amazing Eva Castillo.

The upshot of which is that the story of my traditional Jewish great-grandfather was told not just in English by a rabbi -- but in a New England, Unitarian Universalist Church, in Spanish.

That is why I am grateful to be together in this country.

In Hebrew the root-word for gratitude is unlike most words in that it has really only a single letter, rather than three. The letter is dalet ד, which makes the sound D as in Judaic and means a door. I have been thinking about why gratitude is a door, whether it’s about opening and going in or opening and going out. Perhaps this is about emerging from one’s own space into the vastness of America, the chaos that could drown out one’s presence and voice, and yet still being found and heard. Perhaps this is about going inside, to a place not only one’s own but a welcoming home that could be any of ours, and sitting around a table for conversation about ultimate issues among many voices, reaching for a highest common denominator, in a conversation made possible in a space like this that is just right.

As the great rabbi Forrest Gump said: I think maybe it’s both... happening at the same time.

Even, or especially, when we strain to make sense of the words between us, to find a handwriting to represent the histories we are passing back and forth. As we translate our thoughts into one another’s languages. Or even when we can’t quite bridge the communication gap, and all we can do together is write the simplest mark, to indicate that one tried to speak and one tried to hear and we got this far so far.

And that is why this, inside this door, this dalet, is America. This is America. We shall repeat that and repeat that, enact it and enact it, because it is true and it will be true. For that -- for you -- I am thankful.

Jewish -- Thanksgiving is Actually in Our Name

These are words I shared in 2022 at the Nashua Area Interfaith Council service right before Thanksgiving.

The first words a Jew is supposed to say upon waking are: Modah Ani or Modeh Ani, which mean “Thankful am I”. Even before we bring ourselves into focus, we are we are taught to center gratitude, and to make being thankful the frame for our existence in the day that is just starting.

That short morning wake-up prayer goes like this in full:

Thankful am I before You
Power alive and enduring
For returning my soul/my breath into me with love
Great is Your faith

Rabbi Rachel Barenblatt, also known as the Velveteen Rabbi, says this last line isn’t just acknowledging the Divine faithfulness to us through giving us life. Rather, it’s actually a separate statement about Divine faith in us. God bets on me for the day to come, that I will pay off that faith even though all I have done so far is become aware that I am here. So in the first seconds of the day a Jew is to say: Thank you, here I am, I see that I’m breathing, great is Your faith in me. And then it’s off into the day.

Though Jews talk a lot about the significance of our name Israel, which means wrestler-with-the-Divine, we don’t talk nearly as much about our more common name Jews --  Yehudim, people of Judah. Judah was the fourth son of Leah and Jacob. Leah was the unloved wife, and when the first three sons were born, Leah gave them each names out of her yearning for more love from her husband, and those names did not come true. When the fourth was born she said instead, “This time I thank the Divine.” From the word for “I thank”, odeh, came the name Yehudah or Judah. (Along the way in the rendering of yehudi from Hebrew to Greek to the Europeans languages, the d sound fell away and the y hardened a bit, hence the word “Jew”.)

This thankfulness is more grounded in experience than the first-thing-in-the-morning “Thankful am I.” Leah’s naming-gratitude is gratitude despite, in the face of. But I wouldn’t say it’s only grudging, or through gritted teeth. In Hebrew words are generally built out of roots with three consonants, and often you can hear all three sounds regardless of the form of the word as a noun or verb. But all the many forms of the word for gratitude in Hebrew share only one sound, D -- the middle letter called dalet, which means: a door.

Thankfulness is a door. More specifically, it’s the decision to open a door from this place you are sitting, a place of perhaps not enough love toward you or from you, or not enough peace or not enough justice – open it and then look toward next-door where there is more of those waiting for you, where there are partners and friends and allies. Or open it and look toward an outside expanse of possibility.

Thankfulness is acknowledging that sometimes that door feels closed, or we don’t have faith enough or energy enough to open it – but then we realize we can, and hopefully we do.

Instant gratitude first thing every day, and gratitude in-spite-of as in our very name -- these are two very different ways in which gratitude is meant to be our essence as Jews. May this Thanksgiving help us become more thankful people each and every day.