UNTIL WHEN DO WE STILL NEED PSYCHOLOGY?

• Authors: Pléh Csaba

Title variants

HU

Meddig lesz még szükség a pszichológiára?

• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

Psychology is one of the victorious sciences and professions of 20th Century. Still, form its onset on doubts are accompanying its possibility, its assumed intellectual sterility, and practical sterility. These doubts reemerge today. However, one is able to ironically refute them not in the name of the oppressed and endangered, but in the light of clearer professional identity. In the second half of the 19th Century, the naissant psychology was challenged on the one hand by Comte claiming that its supposed contents could be divided between sociology and neurobiology, while on the other hand by Dilthey, Frege, and Husserl who considered it to be intellectually plain and lacking phantasy. These challenges were dealt with in mid-twentieth century by the three aspect theory of Karl Bühler (experience, behavior, and objectivations) and by the role of cultural mediation in the theory of Lev Vygotsky, and later on by Jean Piaget with his cross disciplinary position of psychology. Amongst these interpretive debates, the show went on undisturbed. During the early stages of the last century the best theoreticians took part in forming the practical profession of modern psychology. Binet, Ebbinghaus, Stern, S. Freud, Lewin, Lurija, Bowlby, while being outstanding theoretical researchers, played a crucial role in the formation of the basic frames of the profession as well, in a similar way as Ferenczi, Szondi, Harkai or Mérei in Hungary. The threats and challenges towards psychology never stopped while professional psychology was being formed. Just think of the dubious victories of Pavlovianism in the East-European countries, or the insatiable hunger of pedagogy this ethernel dedicated formator of humanity. All of this is merely the past to be remembered by historians of psychology. On the present day intellectual landscape, psychology is again challenged and questioned form two directions. In science, the new interdisciplinary field seem to digest psychology. Cognitive science, neuro-philosophy, and neuroscience all tend to question the independent future of psychology. Once we would know everything, there will not be anything but neural patterns of excitations, though in fact the real gurus of neuroscience like Gazzaniga and Ramachandran question the victorious nature of the reductionism of their own field. Experimental psychologists should not panic when witnessing the questioning of their existence partly initiated by them. The neural interpretation of man can indeed provide a causal model of behavior, but only the psychological interpretation of behavior can account for what do we have a causal model of, e.g. in the fMRI magnet, is the person reading, flirting, or fighting. And this is further complicated by the subjective experiences of the subject accompanying these behaviors. The other threat of today comes from the half-prepared representatives of rival professions, from trainers, coaches, and gurus of all sorts. Present day psychology should clearly see that it is not involved in a freedom fight any more, but it protects a clear professional image. With regard to intellectual reductionisms, it protects the idea that psychological science is supported in its identity by an existing profession, while there are no professions of cognitive scientist, or neuroscientist. Against the half-trained professional rivals it should claim that in the profession of psychology, in line with the ancestors mentioned, theoretical foundations have their place. Psychologists are not technicians or paramedics of behavior, but its engineers and doctors.

Keywords

EN

psychology among the professions; reductionism; interdisciplinarity; cognitive revolution

Discipline

• PSYCHOLOGY: PSYCHOLOGY

• Publisher: Hungarian Association for Psychology
• Journal: Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle (Hungarian Psychological Review)
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 67
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 237-266
• Document type: REVIEW

Contributors

author

Pléh Csaba