Talcott parsons biography samples

New York: McGraw-Hill. The social system. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Timothy W. Kneeland and Carol A. Westport, CT: Praeger, These and many other views are, of course, faithfully represented in the words of their best-known and lesser-known proponents. This is undoubtedly the first social history of ECT. The slimness of the volume belies the scope, depth, and accuracy of the coverage and the reliance on an enormously varied repertoire of primary and secondary sources but no footnotes or endnotes.

The authors chose to explore the relationship between electricity and psychiatry against the background of ancient and modern electrotherapeutics. The introduction situates the story of EST both in the golden age of American electrical inventions s to the sand in ancient debates over the nature of the body, health, and illness. The establishment of the modern economic marketplace is seen as the milieu for the development of electrical machinery, the assembly line, and electrotherapeutics.

Chapter 1 illustrates the interplay of science with entertainment during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the association of electrical medicine with gimmickry and quackery. Chapter 2 explores the American fascination with electricity during the great age of the asylum. Both public and private psychiatry and electrother.

He also made significant scholarly and practical contributions in his writings on the academic profession and on racial and intercultural relations. He was elected president of the American Sociological Association in and served as secretary from to Parsons died of a stroke on May 8,while giving a series of lectures in Munich, Germany. The obituary in the New York Times the next day described Parsons as "A towering figure in the social sciences," who was responsible for "the education of three generations of sociologists.

Parsons' work is examined in M. Black, ed.

Talcott parsons biography samples: Talcott Parsons (December 13, –

Turner, ed. Parsons, Talcott gale. International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Learn more about citation styles Citation styles Encyclopedia. Parsons, Talcott oxford. Parsons, Talcott —79 For some twenty to thirty years after the Second World WarTalcott Parsons was the major theoretical figure in English-speaking sociology, if not in world sociology.

An American who worked all his life in the United Statesapart from a brief period of postgraduate study in Europehis sociological theory most often labelled structural-functionalism or normative functionalism was commonly seen as a product of modern, affluent American society, where structural social conflicts had been largely eliminated or were of a transient nature, and where there appeared to be a general social cohesion and shared adherence to democratic values.

Parsonsian theory came under increasing criticism as the post-war consensus itself showed signs of dissolving, particularly under the impact of the Vietnam War. From the beginning, Parsons set out to provide an integrated, totalizing theory for sociology, bringing together into a unified whole the diverse insights of the major founders of sociology.

In particular this involved an attempt to integrate Weber's individualism and Durkheim's holism. His focus was on ideas, valuesnormsand the integration of individual actions oriented to norms and values into overarching social systems. For Parsons, the prime task was to develop a set of abstract, generalizing concepts describing the social system.

The main criteria by which we can judge such a set of concepts is their rational coherence, and they can then be used to derive propositions about the world. In his first book, The Structure of Social Actionhe argued that the classical sociological theorists could be seen as moving towards a voluntaristic theory of action, conceiving of human beings as making choices between means and ends, in a physical and social environment that limited choices.

A central aspect of the social environment is the norms and values by which we make our choices. Within this context, actors aim at maximum gratification, and behaviour and relationships that achieve this goal become institutionalized into a system of status roles. This is the social system and it presupposes three other systems: a personality system the actor himself or herself ; a cultural system or wider values giving coherence to the norms attached to status roles ; and a physical environment to which the society must adjust.

Parsons then builds up an elaborate model of systems and subsystems. In order to survive, each system must meet four functional prerequisites, or four requirements that must be fulfilled. These are adaptation to the physical environment ; goal attainment a means of organizing its resources to achieve its goals and obtain gratification ; integration forms of internal co-ordination and ways of dealing with differences ; and latency or pattern-maintenance means of achieving comparative stability.

Each system, therefore, develops four specialist subsystems in the process of meeting these requirements. This was then developed into an evolutionary view of history as moving from the simple to the complex, societies developing rather as amoeba, through a process of splitting and then reintegration. Systems and subsystems are organized into a cybernetic hierarchy, those systems which have a high level of information such as the cultural system, including norms and valuescontrolling systems which have a high level of energy such as the human biological system.

The four systems mentioned above—cultural, social, personality and biological— form what Parsons calls the general system of action. Each system corresponds to a functional prerequisite. Similarly, the social system itself has four subsystems, these being in hierarchical order the socialization system pattern maintenance ; the societal community or institutions of social control integration ; the political system goal attainment ; and the economic system adaptation.

Each of these can, itself, be seen in terms of further, more specialized, subsystems. We can also analyse actions, social relationships, and whole systems according to what Parsons calls pattern variables—or choices between pairs of alternatives. For example, in any relationship we may treat its object as unique, or as an example of a general class this is the dilemma between particularism and universalism ; may draw on or ignore emotional commitments affectivity versus affective neutrality ; may value something or someone for their own sake or for what can be done with it or them quality versus performance ; and may relate to all aspects of an object or to one only diffuseness versus specificity.

Institutions tend to cluster round opposing poles: in the family, for example, relationships are particularistic, affective, quality-oriented, and diffuse; in a factory they are typically universalistic, affectively neutral, performance-oriented, and specific. His structural-functionalism is perhaps best understood as a vast classificatory scheme, enabling us to categorize any level of social life, at any level of analysis.

It is not surprising that C. Wright Mills's labelling of the approach as grand theory has stuck. The explanations that it offers are of a functionalist nature and many of the criticisms directed at Parsons's work have been criticisms of functionalist explanations as such. It has also been criticized for its abstraction and lack of connection with empirical research; for its social determinism although it is a theory of social action it seems that, ultimately, systems prescribe the activities of each actor ; for its implicit conservatism; and its inability to take account of action oriented to material rather than normative interests.

Parsonsian theory seemed to disappear in the s, with rising interest in a wide range of other theories, but in recent years there has been a renewal of interest see, for example, J. Collins ed. Giddens and and J. Turner eds. However, American and German neo-functionalism are markedly less systematic, and far more open than the original. He was a professor at Harvard University and served for a long time.

Talcott Parson says that if one has to have stability, order, and uniformity in society there must be a mutual understanding among people by having certain values that should be acceptable by everyone in society and viewed as good for all. He says that stratification takes place from these common values and through these values a person is judged and positioned in society at certain ranks.

So one who performs well and follows all the common values of society will be ranked at the top and one which performs badly will be placed at the bottom. Parson believes that stratification is unavoidable it is found in all societies irrespective of any human society. If value consensus is an essential component of all societies, then it follows that some form of stratification will result from the ranking of individuals in terms of common values.

Parsons somewhere view that the stratification is not a bad thing as it is said to have arrived from the common values shared by society and that is why he says it is not wrong. Parsons looks at social stratification as both unavoidable and functional for the society. It is functional because it serves to integrate various groups in society. Finally, inequalities of power and prestige benefit all members of society since they serve to further collective goals which are based on shared values.

Parsons has been strongly criticized on all these points. Another sociologist has seen stratification as a divisive rather than an integrated force. They have questioned the view that stratifications systems drive ultimately from shared values. Preparing the child for future adult role school is an essential institution. It serves as a connecting point for society and family.

TawneyL. Hobhouseand Harold Laski. Also, he made a close personal friendship with Arthur and Eveline M. The couple had three children: Anne, Charlesand Susan and eventually four grandchildren. Walker's father was born in Canada but had moved to the Boston area and later become an American citizen. In June, Parsons went on to the University of Heidelbergwhere he received his PhD in sociology and economics in Parsons wrote his Dr.

It was clear from his discussion that he rejected Sombart's quasi-idealistic views and supported Weber's attempt to strike a balance between historicismidealism and neo-Kantianism. The most crucial encounter for Parsons at Heidelberg was with the work of Max Weber about whom he had never heard before. Weber became tremendously important for Parsons because his upbringing with a liberal but strongly-religious father had made the question of the role of culture and religion in the basic processes of world history a persistent puzzle in his mind.

Weber was the first scholar who truly provided Parsons with a compelling theoretical "answer" to the question, so Parsons became totally absorbed in reading Weber. Parsons decided to translate Weber's work into English and approached Marianne WeberWeber's widow. Parsons would eventually translate several of Weber's works into English.

One scholar that Parsons met at Heidelberg who shared his enthusiasm for Weber was Alexander von Schelting. Parsons later wrote a review article on von Schelting's book on Weber. One scholar who became especially important for Parsons was Ernst D. Troeltsch — Parsons also read widely on Calvinism. Inafter a year of teaching at Amherst —Parsons entered Harvard, as an instructor in the Economics Department, [ 32 ] where he followed F.

Taussig's lectures on economist Alfred Marshall and became friends with the economist historian Edwin Gaythe founder of Harvard Business School. Parsons also became a close associate of Joseph Schumpeter and followed his course General Economics. Parsons was at odds with some of the trends in Harvard's department which then went in a highly-technical and a mathematical direction.

He looked for other options at Harvard and gave courses in "Social Ethics" and in the "Sociology of Religion". Although he entered Harvard through the Economics Department, his activities and his basic intellectual interest propelled him toward sociology. However, no Sociology Department existed during his first years at Harvard. The chance for a shift to sociology came inwhen Harvard's Sociology Department was created [ 33 ] under Russian scholar Pitirim Sorokin.

Sorokin, who had fled the Russian Revolution from Russia inwas given the opportunity to establish the department. Parsons became one of the new department's two instructors, along with Carle Zimmerman. Parsons became part of L. Henderson's famous Pareto study group, in which some of the most important [ citation needed ] intellectuals at Harvard participated, including Crane BrintonGeorge C.

Homansand Charles P. Parsons wrote an article on Pareto's theory [ 35 ] and later explained that he had adopted the concept of "social system" from reading Pareto. Parsons also made strong connections with two other influential intellectuals with whom he corresponded for years: economist Frank H. Knight and Chester Barnardone of the most dynamic businessmen of the US.

The relationship between Parsons and Sorokin turned sour. A pattern of personal tensions was aggravated by Sorokin's deep dislike for American civilization, which he regarded as a sensate culture that was in decline. Sorokin's writings became increasingly anti-scientistic in his later years, widening the gulf between his work and Parsons' and turning the increasingly positivistic American sociology community against him.

Sorokin also tended to belittle all sociology tendencies that differed from his own writings, and by was quite unpopular at Harvard. Some of Parsons' students in the department of sociology were people such as Robin Williams Jr. Parsons established, at the students' request, a little, informal study group which met year after year in Adams' house.

Toward the end of Parsons' career, German systems theorist Niklas Luhmann also attended his lectures. InParsons bought a farmhouse near the small town of Acworthbut Parsons often, in his writing, referred to it as "the farmhouse in Alstead ". The farmhouse was not big and impressive; indeed, it was a very humble structure with almost no modern utilities.

Still, it became central to Parsons' life, and many of his most important works were written in its peace and quiet. In the spring ofSusan Kingsbury, a pioneer of women's rights in America, offered Parsons a position at Bryn Mawr College ; however, Parsons declined the offer because, as he wrote to Kingsbury, "neither salary nor rank is really definitely above what I enjoy here".

In the academic year of — Parsons and Schumpeter conducted an informal faculty seminar at Harvard, which discussed the concept of rationality. Among the participants were D. Schumpeter contributed the essay "Rationality in Economics", and Parsons submitted the paper "The Role of Rationality in Social Action" for a general discussion. In the discussion between neoclassical economics and the institutionalistswhich was one of the conflicts that prevailed within the field of economics in the s and early s, Parsons attempted to walk a very fine line.

He was very critical about neoclassical theory, an attitude he maintained throughout his life and that is reflected in his critique of Milton Friedman and Gary Becker. He was opposed to the utilitarian bias within the neoclassical approach and could not embrace them fully. However, he agreed partly on their theoretical and methodological style of approach, which should be distinguished from its substance.

He was thus unable to accept the institutionalist solution. In a interview, Parsons recalled a conversation with Schumpeter on the institutionalist methodological position: "An economist like Schumpeter, by contrast, would absolutely have none of that. I remember talking to him about the problem and. I think Schumpeter was right. If economics had gone that way [like the institutionalists] it would have had to become a primarily empirical discipline, largely descriptive, and without theoretical focus.

That's the way the 'institutionalists' went, and of course Mitchell was affiliated with that movement. Parsons returned to Germany in the summer of and became an eyewitness to the feverish atmosphere in Weimar Germany during which the Nazi Party rose to power. Parsons received constant reports about the rise of Nazism through his friend, Edward Y.

Hartshornewho was traveling there. Parsons began, in the late s, to warn the American public about the Nazi threat, but he had little success, as a poll showed that 91 percent of the country opposed the Second World War. Most of the US thought also that the country should have stayed out of the First World War and that the Nazis "talcott parson biography samples," regardless of what they did in Germany or even Europe, no threat to the US.

Many Americans even sympathized with Germany, as many had ancestry from there, and the latter both was strongly anticommunist and had gotten itself out of the Great Depression while the US was still suffering from it. He was one of the key initiators of the Harvard Defense Committee, aimed at rallying the American public against the Nazis.

Parsons' voice sounded again and again over Boston 's local radio stations, and he also spoke against Nazism during a dramatic meeting at Harvard, which was disturbed by antiwar activists. Together with graduate student Charles O. PorterParsons rallied graduate students at Harvard for the war effort. During the war, Parsons conducted a special study group at Harvard, which analyzed what its members considered the causes of Nazism, and leading experts on that topic participated.

In the spring ofa discussion group on Japan began to meet at Harvard. The group's five core members were Parsons, John K. FairbankEdwin O. ReischauerWilliam M. McGovern, and Marion Levy Jr. The group arose out of a strong desire to understand the country whose power in the East had grown tremendously and had allied itself with Germany, but, as Levy frankly admitted, "Reischauer was the only one who knew anything about Japan.

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl HarborParsons wrote in a letter to Arthur Upham Pope — that the importance of studies of Japan certainly had intensified. Safranek and Theodore Abel to participate, [ 43 ] but it never materialized for lack of funding. In earlyParsons unsuccessfully approached Hartshorne, who had joined the Psychology Division of the Office of the Coordinator of Information COI in Washington to interest his agency in the research project.

In FebruaryParsons became the deputy director of the Harvard School of Overseas Administration, which educated administrators to "run" the occupied territories in Germany and the Pacific Ocean. The talcott parson biography samples of finding relevant literature on both Europe and Asia was mindboggling and occupied a fair amount of Parsons' time.

Another Chinese scholar Parsons worked closely with in this period was Hsiao-Tung Fei or Fei Xiaotong —who had studied at the London School of Economics and was an expert on the social structure of the Chinese village. Schutz had been close to Edmund Husserl and was deeply embedded in the latter's phenomenological philosophy. Schutz was fascinated with Parsons' theory, which he regarded as the state-of-the-art social theory, and wrote an evaluation of Parsons' theory that he kindly asked Parsons to comment.

That led to a short but intensive correspondence, which generally revealed that the gap between Schutz's sociologized phenomenology and Parsons' concept of voluntaristic action was far too great. For Parsons, the defining edge of human life was action as a catalyst for historical change, and it was essential for sociology, as a science, to pay strong attention to the subjective element of action, but it should never become completely absorbed in it since the purpose of a science was to explain causal relationships, by covering laws or by other types of explanatory devices.

Schutz's basic argument was that sociology cannot ground itself and that epistemology was not a luxury but a necessity for the social scientist. Parsons agreed but stressed the pragmatic need to demarcate science and philosophy and insisted moreover that the grounding of a conceptual scheme for empirical theory construction cannot aim at absolute solutions but needs to take a sensible stock-taking of the epistemological balance at each point in time.

However, the two men shared many basic assumptions about the nature of social theory, which has kept the debate simmering ever since. Parsons also wrote "A Retrospective Perspective" to the correspondence, which characterized his position as a "Kantian point of view" and found that Schutz's strong dependence on Husserl's "phenomenological reduction" would make it very difficult to reach the kind of "conceptual scheme" that Parsons found essential for theory-building in social sciences.

Between andParsons and Eric Voegelin — exchanged intellectual views through correspondence. The bouncing point for their conversation was Parsons' manuscript on anti-Semitism and other materials that he had sent to Voegelin. Discussion touched on the nature of capitalismthe rise of the West, and the origin of Nazism. The key to the discussion was the implication of Weber's interpretation of Protestant ethics and the impact of Calvinism on modern history.

Although the two scholars agreed on many fundamental characteristics about Calvinism, their understanding of its historical impact was quite different. Generally, Voegelin regarded Calvinism as essentially a dangerous totalitarian ideology; Parsons argued that its current features were temporary and that the functional implications of its long-term, emerging value-l system had revolutionary and not only "negative" impact on the general rise of the institutions of modernity.

Parsons found that Schutz, rather than attempting to build social science theory, tended to get consumed in philosophical detours. Parsons wrote to Voegelin: "Possibly one of my troubles in my discussion with Schuetz lies in the fact that by cultural heritage I am a Calvinist. I do not want to be a philosopher — I shy away from the philosophical problems underlying my scientific work.

By the same token I don't think he wants to be a scientist as I understand the term until he has settled all the underlying philosophical difficulties. If the physicists of the 17th century had been Schuetzes there might well have been no Newtonian system. InStuart C. Dodd published a major work, Dimensions of Society[ 54 ] which attempted to build a general theory of society on the foundation of a mathematical and quantitative systematization of social sciences.

Dodd advanced a particular approach, known as an "S-theory". Parsons discussed Dodd's theoretical outline in a review article the same year. In AprilParsons participated in a conference, "On Germany after the War", of psychoanalytical oriented psychiatrists and a few social scientists to analyze the causes of Nazism and to discuss the principles for the coming occupation.

During the conference, Parsons opposed what he found to be Lawrence S. Kubie 's reductionism. Kubie was a psychoanalyst, who strongly argued that the German national character was completely "destructive" and that it would be necessary for a special agency of the United Nations to control the German educational system directly. Parsons and many others at the conference were strongly opposed to Kubie's idea.

Parsons argued that it would fail and suggested that Kubie was viewing the question of Germans' talcott parson biography samples "too exclusively in psychiatric terms". Parsons was also against the extremely harsh Morgenthau Planpublished in September Parsons participated as a part-time adviser to the Foreign Economic Administration Agency between March and October to discuss postwar reparations and deindustrialization.

Parsons' situation at Harvard University changed significantly in earlywhen he received a good offer from Northwestern University. Harvard reacted to the offer by appointing Parsons as the chairman of the department, promoting him to the rank of full professor and accepting the process of reorganization, which led to the establishment of the new department of Social Relations.

Parsons' letter to Dean Paul Buckon April 3,reveals the high point of this moment. Langer proposed for Parsons to follow the American army in its march into Germany and to function as a political adviser to the administration of the occupied territories. Late inunder the auspices of the Cambridge Community Council, Parsons directed a project together with Elizabeth Schlesinger.

They investigated ethnic and racial tensions in the Boston area between students from Radcliffe College and Wellesley College. This study was a reaction to an upsurge of anti-Semitism in the Boston area, which began in late and continued into The background was a controversy over whether the social sciences should be incorporated into the National Science Foundation.

Parsons' report was in form of a large memorandum, "Social Science: A Basic National Resource", which became publicly available in July and remains a powerful historical statement about how he saw the role of modern social sciences. Parsons became a member of the Executive Committee of the new Russian Research Center at Harvard inwhich had Parsons' close friend and colleague, Clyde Kluckhohnas its director.

Parsons went to Allied-occupied Germany in the summer ofwas a contact person for the RRC, and was interested in the Russian refugees who were stranded in Germany. He happened to interview in Germany a few members of the Vlasov Army, a Russian Liberation Army that had collaborated with the Germans during the war. The Vlasov movement's ideology was a hybrid of elements and has been called "communism without Stalin", but in the Prague Manifestoit had moved toward the framework of a constitutional liberal state.

In Germany in the summer of Parsons wrote several letters to Kluckhohn to report on his investigations. Parsons' fight against communism was a natural extension of his fight against fascism in the s and the s. For Parsons, communism and fascism were two aspects of the same problem; his article "A Tentative Outline of American Values", published posthumously in[ 66 ] called both collectivistic types "empirical finalism", which he believed was a secular "mirror" of religious types of "salvationalism".

In contrast, Parsons highlighted that American values generally were based on the principle of "instrumental activism", which he believed was the outcome of Puritanism as a historical process. It represented what Parsons called "worldly asceticism " and represented the absolute opposite of empirical finalism. One can thus understand Parsons' statement late in life that the greatest threat to humanity is every type of " fundamentalism ".

A typical example would be the Jacobins ' behavior during the French Revolution. Parsons' rejection of communist and fascist totalitarianism was theoretically and intellectually an integral part of his theory of world history, and he tended to regard the European Reformation as the most crucial event in "modern" world history. Like Weber, [ 68 ] he tended to highlight the crucial impact of Calvinist religiosity in the socio-political and socio-economic processes that followed.

The Calvinist faith system, authoritarian in the beginning, eventually released in its accidental long-term institutional effects a fundamental democratic revolution in the world. Parsons defended American exceptionalism and argued that, because of a variety of historical circumstances, the impact of the Reformation had reached a certain intensity in British history.

Puritan, essentially Calvinist, value patterns had become institutionalized in Britain's internal situation. The outcome was that Puritan radicalism was reflected in the religious radicalism of the Puritan sects, in the poetry of John Miltonin the English Civil Warand in the process leading to the Glorious Revolution of It was the radical fling of the Puritan Revolution that provided settlers in early 17th-century Colonial Americaand the Puritans who settled in America represented radical views on individuality, egalitarianismskepticism toward state power, and the zeal of the religious calling.

The settlers established something unique in the world that was under the religious zeal of Calvinist values. Therefore, a new kind of nation was born, the character of which became clear by the time of the American Revolution and in the US constitution[ 72 ] and its dynamics were later studied by Alexis de Tocqueville. Although America has changed in its social composition sinceParsons maintained that it preserves the basic revolutionary Calvinist value pattern.

That has been further revealed in the pluralist and highly individualized America, with its thick, network-oriented civil societywhich is of crucial importance to its success and these factors have provided it with its historical lead in the process of industrialization. Parsons maintained that this has continued to place it in the leading position in the world, but as a historical process and not in "the nature of things".

Parsons viewed the "highly special feature of the modern Western social world" as "dependent on the peculiar circumstances of its history, and not the necessary universal result of social development as a whole". In contrast to some "radicals", Parsons was a defender of modernity. He acknowledged that the future had no inherent guarantees, but as sociologists Robert Holton and Bryan Turner said that Parsons was not nostalgic [ 76 ] and that he did not believe in the past as a lost "golden age" but that he maintained that modernity generally had improved conditions, admittedly often in troublesome and painful ways but usually positively.

When asked at the Brown Seminary in if he was optimistic about the future, he answered, "Oh, I think I'm basically optimistic about the human prospects in the long run. Well, its more than 50 years later now, and I don't think the West has just simply declined. He was wrong in thinking it was the end. At Harvard, Parsons was instrumental in forming the Department of Social Relationsan interdisciplinary venture among sociology, anthropology, and psychology.

The new department was officially created in January with him as the chairman and with prominent figures at the faculty, such as Stouffer, Kluckhohn, Henry Murray and Gordon Allport. An appointment for Hartshorne was considered but he was killed in Germany by an unknown gunman as he was driving on the highway. His position went instead to George C.

The new department was galvanized by Parsons' idea of creating a theoretical and institutional base for a unified social science. Parsons also became strongly interested in systems theory and cybernetics and began to adopt their basic ideas and concepts to the realm of social science, giving special attention to the work of Norbert Wiener — Joseph Berger, who also arrived at Harvard in after finishing his BA from Brooklyn Collegewould become Parsons' research assistant from to and would get involved in his research projects with Robert F.

According to Parsons' own account, it was during his conversations with Elton Mayo — that he realized it was necessary for him to take a serious look at the work of Freud. In the fall ofParsons began to offer a series of non-credit evening courses on Freud. As time passed, Parsons developed a strong interest in psychoanalysis. He volunteered to participate in nontherapeutic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institutewhere he began a didactic analysis with Grete Bibring in September Insight into psychoanalysis is significantly reflected in his later work, especially reflected in The Social System and his general writing on psychological issues and on the theory of socialization.

That influence was also to some extent apparent in his empirical analysis of fascism during the war. During the late s and the early s, he worked very hard on producing some major theoretical statements. He discusses the basic methodological and metatheoretical principles for such a theory. He attempts to present a general social system theory that is built systematically from most basic premises and so he featured the idea of an interaction situation based on need-dispositions and facilitated through the basic concepts of cognitive, cathectic, and evaluative orientation.

The work also became known for introducing his famous pattern variables, which in reality represented choices distributed along a Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft axis. The details of Parsons' thought about the outline of the social system went through a rapid series of changes in the following years, but the basics remained. According to Parsons, its key idea was sparked during his work with Bales on motivational processes in small groups.

Parsons carried the idea into the major work that he co-authored with a student, Neil Smelserwhich was published in as Economy and Society. It reorganized the basic concepts of the pattern variables in a new way and presented the solution within a system-theoretical approach by using the idea of a cybernetic hierarchy as an organizing principle.

The real innovation in the model was the concept of the "latent function" or the pattern maintenance function, which became the crucial key to the whole cybernetic hierarchy. During its theoretical development, Parsons showed a persistent interest in symbolism. The paper can be regarded as the main statement of his own interpretation of Freud, [ 85 ] but also as a statement of how Parsons tried to use Freud's pattern of symbolization to structure the theory of social system and eventually to codify the cybernetic hierarchy of the AGIL system within the parameter of a system of symbolic differentiation.

His discussion of Freud also contains several layers of criticism that reveal that Parsons' use of Freud was selective rather than orthodox. In particular, he claimed that Freud had "introduced an unreal separation between the superego and the ego". Parsons was an early subscriber to systems theory. He had early been fascinated by the writings of Walter B.

Cannon and his concept of homeostasis [ 86 ] as well as the writings of French physiologist Claude Bernard. Parsons called the concept of "system" for an indispensable master concept in the work of building theoretical paradigms for social sciences. Grinker, Sr. Parsons came into contact with several prominent intellectuals of the time and was particularly impressed by the ideas of social insect biologist Alfred Emerson.

Parsons was especially compelled by Emerson's idea that, in the sociocultural world, the functional equivalent of the gene was that of the "symbol". Parsons also participated in two of the meetings of the famous Macy Conferences on systems theory and on issues that are now classified as cognitive sciencewhich took place in New York from to and included scientists like John von Neumann.

Parsons read widely on systems theory at the time, especially works of Norbert Wiener [ 89 ] and William Ross Ashby[ 90 ] who were also among the core participants in the conferences. Around the same time, Parsons also benefited from conversations with political scientist Karl Deutsch on systems theory. In one conference, the Fourth Conference of the problems of consciousness in March at Princeton and sponsored by the Macy Foundation, Parsons would give a presentation on "Conscious and Symbolic Processes" and embark on an intensive group discussion which included exchange with child psychologist Jean Piaget.

Talcott parsons biography samples: Talcott Parsons () was an influential

Among the other participants were Mary A. Parsons would defend the thesis that consciousness is essentially a social action phenomenon, not primarily a "biological" one. During the conference, Parsons criticized Piaget for not sufficiently separating cultural factors from a physiologistic concept of "energy". During the McCarthy eraon April 1,J.

Edgar Hooverthe director of the Federal Bureau of Investigationreceived a personal letter from an informant who reported on communist activities at Harvard. During a later interview, the informant claimed that "Parsons The informant reported that the old department under Sorokin had been conservative and had "loyal Americans of good character" but that the new Department of Social Relations had turned into a decisive left-wing place as a result of "Parsons's manipulations and machinations".

In Februarya colleague, Stouffer, wrote to Parsons in England to inform him that Stouffer had been denied access to classified documents and that part of the stated reason was that Stouffer knew communists, including Parsons, "who was a member of the Communist Party". Parsons immediately wrote an affidavit in defense of Stouffer, and he also defended himself against the charges that were in the affidavit: "This allegation is so preposterous that I cannot understand how any reasonable person could come to the conclusion that I was a member of the Communist Party or ever had been.

Since the late s, Parsons had continued to show great interest in psychology and in psychoanalysis. In the academic year of —, he taught a seminar at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute entitled "Sociology and Psychoanalysis". Inhe published a major work, Family, Socialization and Interaction Process[ 94 ] which explored the way in which psychology and psychoanalysis bounce into the theories of motivation and socializationas well into the question of kinship, which for Parsons established the fundamental axis for that subsystem he later would call "the social community".

It contained articles written by Parsons and articles written in collaboration with Robert F. The work included a theory of personality as well as studies of role differentiation. The strongest intellectual stimulus that Parsons most likely got then was from brain researcher James Oldsone of the founders of talcott parson biography samples and whose book on learning and motivation was strongly influenced from his conversations with Parsons.

Jones, Kaspar D. Naegele, Theodore M. Mills, Bengt G. Rundblad, and others. Albert J. Reiss from Vanderbilt University had submitted his critical commentary. In the mids, Parsons also had extensive discussions with Olds about the motivational structure of psychosomatic problems, and at this time Parsons' concept of psychosomatic problems was strongly influenced by readings and direct conversations with Franz Alexander a psychoanalyst, originally associated with the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, who was a pioneer of psychosomatic medicineGrinker and John Spiegel.

In his correspondence with Bourricaud, Parsons insisted that he did not necessarily treat values as the only, let alone "the primary empirical reference point" of the action system since so many other factors were also involved in the actual historical pattern of an action situation. Parsons spent to at the Center of Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, Californiawhere he met for the first time Kenneth Burke ; Burke's flamboyant, explosive temperament made a great impression on Parsons, and the two men became close friends.

Talcott parsons biography samples: Anspach's presentations and facilitated discussions

Kroeberthe "dean of American anthropologists". Kroeber, who had received his PhD at Columbia and who had worked with the Arapaho Indianswas about 81 when Parsons met him. Parsons had the greatest admiration for Kroeber and called him "my favorite elder statesman".