Abstract
As there seems to be a recurrent feeling of crisis in psychology, its present state is analyzed in this article. The author believes that in addition to the traditional manifestations that have dogged psychology since it emerged as an independent science some new features of the crisis have emerged. Three fundamental “ruptures” are identified: the “horizontal” rupture between various schools and trends, the “vertical” rupture between natural science and humanitarian psychology, and the “diagonal” rupture between academic research and applied practice of psychology. These manifestations of the crisis of psychology have recently been compounded by the crisis of its rationalistic foundations. This situation is described in terms of the cognitive systems in psychology which include meta-theories, paradigms, sociodigms and metadigms.
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Notes
I emphasize the ad hoc nature of this “topography” which is here purely illustrative
It is highly symptomatic that Thomas Kuhn described scientific schools as battle units of pre-paradigmatic science (Kuhn 1962)
Perhaps these types of psychological study can be more usefully described as metaparadigms because the concept of “paradigm” clearly does not offer sufficient differentiating capacity to tell apart the main types of psychological research, and the complementary term “metaparadigm” is successfully used in sciences related to psychology, for example, sociology
According to J. Pinel they include: 1) physiological psychology, 2) psychopharmacology, 3) neuropsychology, 4) psychophysiology and 5) comparative psychology (Pinel 1993)
Calculations show that about 40% of psychological studies are experiment-based, 36% are based on polls, 16% on controlled observation, 4% on case studies and 3% on cross-cultural methods (Rosenzweig 1992)
The author of this forecast predicts the possibility of telepathic capacity, which would make inroads on the mass media as a means of communication (Rosenzweig 1992)
He also warns that as a result of this growing trend we run the risk of ending up with “psychology without science” (Polkinhorne 1994)
Such irrationalization can manifest itself in a variety of ways. One sign is that the professions connected with the entertainment industry and generation of emotions (sports, show business, etc) are remunerated far more generously than the professions, for example, of a scientist which are connected with incremental increase of knowledge. The annual incomes of sports or show-biz stars who make no contribution to scientific-technical or social progress are multiples of the size of the Nobel Prize
More can be identified
A brilliant illustration is provided by the study of Kellog and Barron who have discovered that patients often prefer to be diagnosed with a more serious disease than to have no diagnosis because any explanation of their internal states has a tranquilizing effect (Kellog and Baron 1975)
The author is grateful to Jaan Valsiner for prompting this metaphor and suggesting many other valuable ideas used in preparing this article
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Yurevich, A.V. Cognitive Frames in Psychology: Demarcations and Ruptures. Integr. psych. behav. 43, 89–103 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9082-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-008-9082-7