100 Years of Identity Crisis

Chapter 8: Towards a New Personhood

From the standpoint of moral engineering the cultivation of a healthy personality required cultural change. Idealistic scientific democrats regarded science as an effective instrument for challenging and transforming culture. It seemed to them that science held out the promise of ‘thoroughgoing cultural change, rather than simply the augmentation of the nation’s knowledge base’.⁵⁸⁹ Although often unstated, the ambition to transform culture is an intrinsic feature of moral engineering. The pursuit of cultural change relied on the resources provided by psychology. The values and attitudes promoted through psychology gradually developed into a distinct ethos that some commentators characterise as therapeutic ...