This article examines a little‐known chapter both in the history of socialist labor relations and the history of psychology: Social Psychological Training (SPT) for industrial leaders in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Based on previously untapped archival sources, it uncovers the transnational genesis of SPT and its intricate relationships with Western “therapeutic culture” of the 1970s. Governmental perspectives are addressed, as well as the level of individual appropriation of SPT and possible unintended side effects of techniques that were drawn from the social psychological and therapeutical fields. This case study helps to explore the functions of psychological expertise in authoritarian political contexts, as well as the polyvalence of group methods of change, the effects of which could turn out repressive as well as liberating on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The history of SPT solicits a polycentric view on therapeutic culture, capturing its diverse manifestations and interconnections between different societies and political economies.
Drawing on the concept of chambered knowledge, this article focuses on the problem of non-circulation of knowledge across social groups in pre-industrial Europe. By following one of the few peasant practitioners whose knowledge transcended the barriers of peasant society, this article not only sheds light on the worldview of an especially loud and proud individual, but also seeks to analyze the conditions that prevented or allowed knowledge to jump from his native knowledge chamber to those of the local elites and the wider literary public. As the mystery of Michael Irlbeck can be partly revealed by examining the economic and socio-political pre-conditions of his agency, this article makes a more general claim for the relevance of social structures and categories in the history of knowledge.
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