REVIEWS 135

student identities, even their identities in the classroom, of course, depend on their
lives in other places too. This could be illuminated by looking at their practices across
places and not only across time. Doing so might also give more practical grounding
to some of the stuff of social practice that Wortham can now only introduce in the
guise of models.

Ole Dreier
UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN

The Measure of Psychometrics

DENNY BORSBOOM, Measuring the Mind: Conceptual Issues in
Contemporary Psychometrics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005. 185 pp. ISBN 13 978–0–521–84463–0 (hbk).

Psychometrics is an important sub-discipline. It not only sustains a significant

psycho-technology, it also leads social science on its Pythagorean quest. It is there-
fore strange that, unlike behaviourism or psychoanalysis, it has eluded critical, con-
ceptual scrutiny. Perhaps its foundations seemed secure. This book scuttles that
illusion and deftly exposes its soft underbelly.
Borsboom analyses classical test theory (as per Lord & Novick, 1968), latent vari-
able theories, and representational measurement theory (as per Krantz, Luce, Suppes, &
Tversky, 1971). Then he examines relations between these, and, finally, the concept
of validity. The exposition is not mathematical, and any interested reader could digest
the lot. His arguments are mostly well thought through and his direct style leads the
reader, with precision and sometimes humour, into selected conceptual problems
involving these theories. The book’s value resides not so much in delivering definitive
answers, as in raising questions too long ignored.
The analysis of classical test theory is sure-footed. This theory is the staple of psycho-
metrics courses and tests are still generally marketed using its concepts, such as reliabil-
ity. It tried to marry the theory of errors, as developed by Gauss (1995), among others, to
psychological testing, but these were always a couple matched in hell. The conceptual
contortions that the theory of errors was put through to produce classical test theory as
per Lord and Novick (1968) have rendered it devoid of empirical content. Borsboom
does not trace the journey from Yule and Spearman (Spearman, 1910) to this destination,
which, had he done so, might have moderated his identification of this theory with oper-
ationism. Yule and Spearman thought of it in realist terms, and even as late as the 1960s
there still were attempts to understand it realistically. Nonetheless, Borsboom’s penetrat-
ing analysis should be required reading in test theory courses.
The chapter on latent variable theories is equally penetrating. Now the flavour of
the month amongst the cognoscenti, Borsboom approves of these theories because,
first, they explicitly represent the measured attribute as a latent trait and, second, they
involve probabilistic hypotheses linking it and expected responses to test items. The
first feature makes them ‘realist’ theories of measurement, thinks Borsboom, and the
second gives them a fighting chance of fitting error-laden response data. However, his
enthusiasm is tested when his analysis rejects a ‘within-subject causal account’ of these
theories in favour of a ‘between-subjects’ one. The former would treat the latent trait
136 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 18(1)

as a property of individuals, surely the natural interpretation for anyone who thinks
of, say, Spearman’s g as a property. The latter treats the latent trait as an emergent
property of populations of individuals, possibly subserved by quite different intrinsic
properties even in people measured as having equivalent amounts of the trait. So, if
you and Borsboom have the same level of g, for example, it does not follow that you
are identical in any intrinsic way. You are only members of the same population. This
leads Borsboom to conclude that ‘if one takes the position that measurement can apply
to sources of variation in a population, without applying directly to the individuals
that make up this population, then latent variable theory does not necessarily disqual-
ify as a theory of measurement’ (p. 84). Some might think this too narrow a gate for
the entry of any theory into science, especially one sustaining a technology unfortu-
nately only measured out to individuals and never to populations without the individ-
uals. This chapter is excellent and may even go some way towards blunting enthusiasm
for these models.
I have reservations about Borsboom’s analysis of representational theory. Its only
virtue is in displaying some of the bad reasons why psychometricians ignore it. Stevens
(1951) convinced psychologists that measurement is numerical representation, but
Suppes, Luce, Krantz, and Tversky (Krantz et al., 1971; Luce, Krantz, Suppes, &
Tversky, 1990; Suppes, Krantz, Luce, & Tversky, 1989) presented the most rigorous ver-
sion of this view. While most test theorists ignore it, Borsboom’s claim that ‘not a soul
uses [it] in the practice of psychological measurement’ (p. 86) only reflects the one-eyed
view that psychological testing is the practice of psychological measurement. However,
his principal misunderstanding is thinking that in measurement numbers are intended to
represent raw data. Properly understood, representational theory is that numbers repre-
sent theoretical structures, for example infinitely complex quantitative structures or the
structure of ideal, infinite datasets. According to Borsboom, representational ‘theory has
a hard time dealing with the problem of error’ (p. 106) and therefore we need ‘a statis-
tical formulation of representational measurement theory’ (pp. 106–107). However, this
theory actually displays kinds of structures that might lie behind raw, psychometric
data—if there is anything measurable there at all. Quantitative science has always used
idealizations, such as the laws of Galileo and Newton, because the aim of science is not
always to account for data, warts and all, but is sometimes to describe nature’s hidden
contours. If you want laws to capture hidden structures, then you don’t necessarily want
them to model ‘errors’ in data. You might, instead, want to sift data for signs of struc-
ture. With psychometric data, signs of quantitative structure were never compelling,
which may explain why representational theory is neglected. Like medieval alchemists,
psychometricians would rather conjure fool’s gold from the base metal of error.
Just as Borsboom forced a link between classical test theory and operationism, and
between latent variable theories and realism, so he connects representational theory to
logical positivism. While one can find traces of logical positivism in representationism,
as an approach to measurement it predates logical positivism and has always had real-
ist proponents. Logical positivism infused thinking in psychology with such a vengeance
that many who now use ‘positivism’ as a derogatory label often unwittingly still treas-
ure its cryptic doctrines. The discerning reader will hear positivist echoes in Borsboom’s
claims that approaches to measurement are neither true nor false (p. 5), that scientific
theories should account for data (warts and all; p. 88), and that methodology is always
normative (p. 87).
REVIEWS 137

Borsboom’s chapter on validity makes more sense than just about everything else
written on the subject, but I have reservations about the understanding of measure-
ment informing it. He sees measurement as an intrinsically causal concept in which
variations in the attribute measured cause systematic variations in the outcome of the
procedure (generally, item performances in psychometrics). This does not distinguish
measurement from cognition generally, and it misses the main point of measurement,
which is to get to know about quantitative attributes. For all Borsboom’s valuable
words regarding the need for substantive theorizing, there is no discussion of what
distinguishes quantitative from merely ordered or categorical attributes, or why this
is important in science. This is an opportunity lost, no doubt in part because that old
arch-positivist Stevens (1951) taught us to group them all together under the one
umbrella of numerical representation.
Other readers will find different matters to reflect upon and, perhaps, disagree with
as they read this stimulating book, which is a minefield of provocative ideas, and they
will find it hard, in the end, not to come away agreeing that ‘large parts of the psy-
chological community are involved in self-deception’ (p. 47). It is a valuable contri-
bution to clear thinking in psychology.

References
Gauss, C.F. (1995). Theory of the combination of observations least subject to errors, part one,
part two, supplement (G.W. Stewart, Trans.). Philadelphia, PA: SIAM.
Krantz, D.H., Luce, R.D., Suppes, P., & Tversky, A. (1971). Foundations of measurement
(Vol. 1). New York: Academic Press.
Lord, F.M., & Novick, M.R. (1968). Statistical theories of mental test scores. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley.
Luce, R.D., Krantz, D.H., Suppes, P., & Tversky, A. (1990). Foundations of measurement
(Vol. 3). New York: Academic Press.
Spearman, C. (1910). Correlation calculated from faulty data. British Journal of Psychology,
3, 271–295.
Stevens, S.S. (1951). Mathematics, measurement and psychophysics. In S.S. Stevens (Ed.),
Handbook of experimental psychology (pp. 1–49). New York: Wiley.
Suppes, P., Krantz, D.H., Luce, R.D., & Tversky, A. (1989). Foundations of measurement
(Vol. 2). New York: Academic Press.

Joel Michell
UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

‘Therapizing’ Ourselves to Death? Challenging Therapeutics

and the Discourse of Emotional Determinism
FRANK FUREDI, Therapy Culture: Cultivating Vulnerability in an
Uncertain Age. New York: Routledge, 2004. 245 pp. ISBN
0–415–32159–X (pbk).

Therapy Culture continues a vital tradition of social critique. If the 1980s were the age
of amusement, anti-intellectual distraction, and varieté-style public discourse
(Postman, 1984), the 1990s represent an age that deals with some of the fallout of