The emergence of social psychology in Vienna: An exercise in long‐term memory*

Abstract

For the reconstruction of the past eyewitnesses are as important as they are suspect. What happened, what one thought and felt more than half a century ago, is, in part, irrevocably lost; what remains alive in memory are kaleidoscopic, discontinuous and egocentric images. What really happened appeared differently to different participants even then; all the more so now. Going beyond the images to a coherent presentation requires a contemporary reconstruction, inevitably influenced by intervening events, by the well‐known vicissitudes of long‐term memory (selectivity, importation, distortion and repression), and by the purpose of a presentation. My aim here is to describe the atmosphere of those long‐ago years as faithfully as I can. Two other accounts of the emergence of an empirically based social science in Vienna had somewhat different intentions. Paul Lazarsfeld (1968), the dominant mind in this development, and Hans Zeisel (1968) have recalled these early beginnings in relation to their own subsequent work and achievements. The following remarks are complementary to theirs. Since they take off from memory images, they will inevitably be less systematic and more personal than theirs, though there are, of course, considerable overlaps as well as some differences in interpretation.