The Past, Present and Future of Psychology

Issues in the History of Psychology

Presentism vs. Historicism
Focus: Persons or Contexts
Psychologists or Historians
The Place of Critical Studies (e.g., Feminist, Marxist, Social Constructionism, Cultural psychology)

Increasing representation of women in psychology.
More women than men are becoming psychologists.
The majority of senior faculty in psychology departments are male, but the gap is closing over time.
A growing number of minorities are entering psychology.
Efforts by the APA to create a culture of inclusiveness.

The Role of Subjectivity
- Humans are both subject and object in psychological studies.
Agency
- The question of whether human actions are completely determined or if free will exists.

Many different perspectives exist within psychology:
- Cognitive
- Behavioral
- Developmental
- Biological
- Cultural
- Social
- Humanistic
- Psychodynamic
- Computational
- Narrative
- Hermeneutic
The majority of psychologists work within a scientific paradigm.
Successful combinations of perspectives, such as cognitive-behavioral and computational approaches, exist.

Thomas Kuhn's Notion of Paradigm
- The fundamental assumptions, beliefs, and working practices of a scientific community.
Paradigm Shifts
- Periods of normal science separated by revolutionary periods.
Replacement vs. different interpretive frameworks.

Lack of an overarching framework to unify the knowledge generated in different sub-disciplines.
The possibility of sub-disciplines dispersing into other fields.
The question of whether this fragmentation is a concern or the natural evolution of the discipline.
Fragmentation as a result of specialization without grand theorizing or a way to evaluate the whole.

Psychology is largely unified by natural science assumptions.
This necessarily excludes some perspectives:
- Psychodynamic
- Humanistic
- Gestalt
- Narrative
- Hermeneutics
Natural science assumptions constrain the kinds of understandings (knowledge) we can generate about human psychological functioning and its relation to behavior.

Determinism: Sometimes true, but not always.
- Breaks down in quantum physics.
- True indeterminacy exists.
Objectivity: Sometimes true, but not always.
- Breaks down in quantum physics.
- Particles behave differently depending on whether or not we are "looking."

If determinism and objectivism are always true:
- All psychological functioning and behavior is determined by antecedent events and removed from our subjectivity.
If they are sometimes true, a pluralistic approach is required.
- Some aspects of psychology can be assumed to be deterministic and objective.
- Some aspects of psychology must be assumed to be subject to our will and subjectivity.

Knowledge as a "doing together" versus "what's in the head?"
To the extent that knowledge requires concepts that are language-based, all science requires the interpretation of concepts and language in terms of shared, public, grammatical, and linguistic "language games" and "rules of use."
If psychology must make contact with everyday, ordinary psychological concepts, psychology is caught up in the language games of ordinary language.
All language use is constructed by human beings through social interactions and socially sanctioned rules of use and meaning.
Does the fact that humans are self-interpreting make psychological science more interpretive than natural science?

Modern:
- Persons as passively "given," detached, rational, and unitary.
- Knowledge as dualistic, certain, universal, and with firm foundations.
- Authority rests in science, objectivity, and expertise.
Post-Modern:
- Persons as actively constructed, connected, and fragmented.
- Knowledge as contextual, uncertain, situated, and without firm foundations.
- Authority rests in dominance, ideology, and differential entitlement.

Modern:
- Theory is a matter of narrowing in on the best account, and theory is capable of supporting professional practice.
- Criticized for being absolutist, totalizing, and disenfranchising.
Post-Modern:
- Theory opens up a range of possibilities; links between theory and practice are problematic.
- Criticized for being relativistic, fractured, and encouraging suspicion and distrust.

Reductionism: Reduce reality to fundamental components.
Emergentism: New realities can emerge from existing realities and must then be explained on their own terms.
Martin and Sugarman's Levels of Reality:
- An emergent ontology.

Agency: "The freedom of individual human beings to make choices and to act on these choices in a way that makes a difference in their lives."
Natural vs. interactive (human) kinds.
Human capabilities: Imagination, memory, reflective consciousness (self-reflection).
Emergent, non-reducible, reflective agency.
Compatibilist position (determined and self-determining).
Constrained agency.

"This intelligible self-determination is what defines agency as the always-present, even if not always-exercised, capacity for understanding and deliberative reasoning that we humans use to select, frame, choose, and execute intentional behavior in the world. It is what makes human agents both determined and determining."

Will psychology separate into several new disciplines (e.g., cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral engineering, cultural psychology)?
Will the history of psychology turn out to be composed of different stories within either a unified or a fragmented psychology?