Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1988

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Schuyler W. Huck

Committee Members

Clinton B. Allison, Howard R. Pollio, Ohmer Milton, Lawrence M. DeRidder

Abstract

Nicholas Hobbs (1915-1983) was a psychologist, educator, university administrator, and active participant in the public policy arena. An examination of his work and thought reveals him to have been a potent examplar of the social scientist working in the public interest and connected with the immediate, practical concerns of the larger society. He was an avowed innovator who established new institutional forms for educating troubled children, for strengthening famihes, for training teachers and mental health professionals, and for converting knowledge from the social sciences, the biological and medical sciences, and the humanities into material that could be used in making public policy.

"Invention," "engagement," and "reflection" are the themes of this study. They are terms that Hobbs himself applied to his professional hfe in a speech delivered in August 1982, a few months before his death. These terms have a personal dimension. They cut across the substantive areas of Hobbs's interest and the various kinds of scholarly activity, policy development, and institutional service he undertook. The terms have a second function. Each serves as a label for a period in his professional life and each is treated in a chapter.

Hobbs's period of "invention," 1946-1961, saw the first appearance and development of his ideas about: (1) helping others, particularly troubled children; and (2) his own role as a social scientist working on practical social problems in an academic setting. The second period of his professional life, 1961-1975, is designated as his period of "engagement" because during these years his work as a builder of new kinds of helping institutions gave powerful expression to his conviction that engagement in pressing social issues is a condition that is ineluctably associated with professional activity. Hobbs's period of "reflection," from 1975 to his death in January 1983, is so designated because during these years he turned more and more toward reflection and consolidation, toward an attempt to draw on accumulated knowledge and understanding with which to confront the values to be served by public policy.

Each chapter addressing a period includes a discussion of the historical context of Hobbs's work and thought, a biographical sketch of the years under examination, and an analysis of his written material produced during those years.

This study is grounded in primary documentation collected in the Nicholas Hobbs Papers in Special Collections of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. This primary material is supplemented with information gleaned from interviews with his colleagues at Vanderbilt University and elsewhere and from his published work. In additon, expressions of the climate of thought within which Hobbs worked receive attention; these include retrospective accounts of the social, cultural, and political milieu of the years 1946 to 1983 and the writings of Hobbs's contemporaries.

Hobbs's work and thought are worthy of examination and recapitulation for two reasons. First, his ideas were influential both within his discipline and within the larger society. As a scholar who explored fundamental questions about how social institutions could be redefined to serve society more effectively, he helped to create the context in which such institutions are embedded. Second, his career is representative of a social scientist working within the American liberal, reformist tradition. His ideas are a reflection of his times. His career offers material for an illuminating case study of an individual who was committed to investigating a conglomerate of problems, issues, and methodological questions, all of which remain key today.

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