Toward a Poetics of the Other: New Directions in Post-scientific Psychology

Abstract

During the course of the past two decades, calls have been made for establishing what is herein called a “poetics of the Other” (e.g., Freeman, Theory beyond theory. Theory & Psychology, 10, 71–77, 2000; The priority of the other: Thinking and living beyond the self. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). In this perspective, the idea of the Other comes to assume a measure of priority over the self in understanding human experience. Moreover, poetics comes to assume priority over theoretics, at least as the latter is traditionally understood. This project need not lead beyond the purview of theoretical psychology. But it does point in the direction of a quite different sense of what theoretical psychology—and theory itself—might mean. In efforts to keep within the basic framework of contemporary academic psychology, this project has generally been framed as a potential contributor to the re-imagining of psychological science (e.g., Freeman, Toward poetic science. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 45, 389–396, 2011; Narrative psychology as science and as art. In J. Valsiner, G. Marsico, N. Chaudhary, T. Sato, & V. Dazzani (Eds.), Psychology as a science of human being: The Yokohama Manifesto (pp. 349–364). Switzerland: Springer, 2015). This stands to reason; to frame what one does as something other than science, one runs the risk not only of alienating one’s colleagues (whether for one’s putative hostility to science or one’s inability to move beyond binary thinking, here manifested in the form of the science/non-science divide) but also of effectively banishing oneself from the discipline proper. It is this idea of the discipline proper, however, that most warrants interrogation. It may be time now to carve a suitable space for thinking more radically about what psychology is and must be. For present purposes, this space may be deemed “post-scientific”—which is to say, it seeks to explore that region of experience which remains after science has done its work. The good news is, it is a large one indeed and well worth the attention of those seeking to “think Otherwise” (Freeman, Thinking and being otherwise: Aesthetics, ethics, erotics. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 32, 196–208, 2012) about both psychology and the human condition.