I am a "wordaholic." In fact, I have recently been diagnosed with
"compulsive nomic disorder." If something can be said in one sentence,
I'll make an essay out of it. Please forgive me, but it's really not my
fault (I blame my parents...why not?). I'm on the road to recovery. But
I take it one day at a time. In this post, you'll see that I've fallen
off the wagon again. Let me append what I wrote last night so that I can
go and call my sponser. I'll probably be in rehab for some time. See you
when I get out.
---------------------------------------------------------
A couple weeks ago, there was some discussion about psychology's biggest
challenge. In my own contribution to the thread, I mentioned that the
biggest challenge for the future of psychology was its enormous
diversity. By "diversity," I meant to refer to two things: (1) the broad
range of topics studied by psychologists, (2) opinions about what is
scientific and what is not (i.e., basic epistemological assumptions). It
seems to me that this diversity has been a major cause of the seemingly
intractable controversies that have created rifts between different
groups of psychologists. That is, the extraordinary diversity in
psychology is causing the discipline to fragment into several (perhaps
many) pieces. The split that led to the creation of APS is one example
of this. The emerging "spirituality movement" (and other nonnaturalistic
conceptions of humans) is another example. Perhaps most important, the
diversity in epistemological assumptions has led to large differences of
opinion about what is considered to be pseudoscience and what questions
are believed to be outside the bounds of science.
A book I have been reading recently has inspired me to revisit this
topic. Kurt Danziger (1997), in a book discussing selected aspects of
the history of psychology, also argued that the diversity of psychology
has been a major problem for the discipline. He traced this problem back
to the early days of modern American psychology. He argued that,
throughout the twentieth century, American psychologists have (almost
arbitrarily) attached independent areas of research and practice onto
the discipline for various pragmatic reasons. These annexed areas often
were not related, or were only marginally related, to the discipline at
the time of their annexation. Let me quote from his book:
"The story of twentieth-century academic Psychology is the story of an
ultimately unsuccessful struggle against an ever more obvious
fragmentation. Intelligence and its testing provided an early example of
the discipline's tendency to annex new areas without being able to
assimilate them. Psychologists had gained an academic foothold by doing
experiments on such topics as sensation, perception and memory. For some
time, that remained the respectable core of the discipline, but how test
intelligence related to this core was far from clear. It was much easier
to annex such a field institutionally than to assimilate it
intellectually.
"That situation was to be repeated many times over in the course of the
twentieth century. Child study...was another early example. Originating
in joint efforts by physicians and educationists, it became transformed
into child psychology, rapidly in the US, more slowly in Europe. But its
links to core areas of the discipline remained tenuous at best. The same
could be said of educational psychology.... In the period between the
two world wars the discipline sprouted as many arms as Shiva, the Hindu
deity. A psychological social psychology challenged its sociological
rival, 'personality' and 'motivation' emerged as semi-autonomous fields
of research and teaching, industrial psychology flourished, clinical
psychology became a reality.
"What link was there between these fields, except that they all claimed
to be 'psychological'? But did that mean anything beyond a vague sense
of a common focus that was based on popular images rather than on solid
scientific grounds?" (p. 85)
Danziger suggested that placing these separate endeavors under the
umbrella of psychology had advantages: the applied areas became linked
to the basic areas, which gave the former a scientific respectability
and the latter a practical legitimacy. But Danziger implied that this
empire building (my words) has caused a massive internal tension that
constantly threatens to blow the whole enterprise into a thousand
pieces.
My point in the original thread was similar to (but somewhat broader
than) the one made by Danziger. Not only are the topics that
psychologists try to understand extraordinarily diverse, but the
epistemological assumptions they make vary and, sometimes, are in
conflict. A few contributors to the original thread mentioned that we
need to keep the pseudoscience out of psychology. But I think the
problem is more fundamental than this: because of the enormous
diversity, the discipline as a whole cannot agree on what constitutes
science and what constitutes pseudoscience. Nor can we agree on which
topics should come under the purview of psychology and which should be
excluded.
In other words, the diversity of psychology (in terms of its topics and
its epistemology) is the biggest challenge to the future of our
discipline: I predict that it will fragment further into opposing camps,
each of which will try to appropriate the name and prestige of
psychology. Several currents within our culture that come into conflict
with traditional scientific concerns and assumptions (such as
postmodernism and religious activism) are helping, I believe, to speed
this fragmentation along.
Just thinking out loud. What thoughts do you have about this?
Jeff
Reference
Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology found its language.
London: Sage.
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (480) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (480) 423-6298
Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85256-2626
"The truth is rare and never simple."
Oscar Wilde
"Science must begin with myths and with the criticism of myths"
Karl Popper
"If you want to learn new things, you should try reading old books."
Richard Cytowic
