British Psychology and the Media: Cyril Burt at the BBC

Abstract

Any balanced assessment of Cyril Burt’s historical significance needs to transcend older genres of the ‘Burt Affair’ and of the ‘great man’, with their emphasis upon Burt’s agency and influence within the theory and practice of psychology in Britain in the early and mid-twentieth century. In line with more contemporary approaches, Burt provides a case study that addresses the wider question of how psychological thought and practice mediated understanding of the self, and the intersection of differing views of human nature with a range of social, economic, political and ethical issues. In particular, there are issues of the nature of psychology, the authority of its exponents, and its relevance to the anxieties and aspirations of the British public during the interwar period. Two themes exemplify this – public confusion of psychology with Freudian psychoanalysis and both with the study of sex, and secondly the role psychologists as public scientific intellectuals. Any omission of Burt from these broader considerations risks distortion of our understanding of both psychology and of Britain during this period.