Subjects: Other Disciplines >> Synthetic discipline submitted time 2023-10-09 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： The flourish development of scientific psychology in America was often understood as the necessary subsequence of the evolution of intellectual history in psychology, in which psychology separated itself from philosophy and gradually found its own scientific methods during the past centuries. However, as one of categories of culture, the history of psychology could not be understood without the considering of societies and people who live in it. According to Fromm's social psychological studies, social change may form the social character of a given society, and the social character will initiate new thoughts or ideas which constitutes new culture and ideology. This new kind of culture and ideology will be easy to be accepted by the society, and solidify its social character in turn. So it will be interesting if we explore the process in which psychology in America committed to scientism from the perspective of social change and social character after World War Ⅱ.There ware a lot of changes after World War Ⅱ in America society in terms of politics, economics, industrial structure, population, education, and belief. On the material level, America reached the so-called advanced industrial society and consumer society. On the mental level, the worship of knowledge gradually replaced the worship of god in America society. These changes formed the social character of America after World War Ⅱ through pragmatism and individualism that were parts of American culture. The key trait of this kind of social character are one-dimensionalization, pursuing of instrumental rationality, and individual priority. What this kind of social character looking forward in terms of psychology as a part of culture and ideology is the disenchantment of innerworld, or we can say the secularization of mind, which will offer some kind of certainty for the working of American society.World War Ⅱ promoted the development of psychology on general, and also left abundant of problems for America society, such as psychic trauma of veteran, the need for mental health, how to avoid the reviving of totalitarianism, how the collective affect the behavior of individual, and how to train more scientists, professors, and engineers for America and finally win the competition with Soviet Union. All these needs from society led to the boom of clinical psychology, social psychology, developmental and educational psychology, and psychometrics in America. Not only the numbers of APA members and journals, but also the number of PHD in American psychology surged during three decades after World War Ⅱ. The schools of psychology in America also changed during that time. New behavioralism declined after Hull and Skinner's time due to its neglect of psyche. Psychoanalysis used to affect American psychology and evolved to ego psychology which could be seen as the product of Americanization. However, psychoanalysis was finally marginalized by scientific psychology in America because of the rise of evidence based medicine. The Third Force Psychology once made a noise in America, but it finally faded due to its attempt to connect psychology and philosophy again, and its complicated methods. It was cognitive psychology that became most popular and the main paradigm of American psychology. In a nutshell, the history of American psychology expressed its social character after World War Ⅱ, which called for the secularization of mind. The scientific psychology in America also plays its ideological role in maintaining the efficient work of American society in turn.
Subjects: Psychology >> History of Psychology submitted time 2023-06-02
Abstract： The flourish development of scientific psychology in America was often understood as the necessary subsequence of the evolution of intellectual history in psychology, in which psychology separated itself from philosophy and gradually found its own scientific methods during the past centuries. However, as one of categories of culture, the history of psychology could not be understood without the considering of societies and people who live in it. According to Fromm’s social psychological studies, social change may form the social character of a given society, and the social character will initiate new thoughts or ideas which constitutes new culture and ideology. This new kind of culture and ideology will be easy to be accepted by the society, and solidify its social character in turn. So it will be interesting if we explore the process in which psychology in America committed to scientism from the perspective of social change and social character after World War Ⅱ. There ware a lot of changes after World War Ⅱ in America society in terms of politics, economics, industrial structure, population, education, and belief. On the material level, America reached the so-called advanced industrial society and consumer society. On the mental level, the worship of knowledge gradually replaced the worship of god in America society. These changes formed the social character of America after World War Ⅱ through pragmatism and individualism that were parts of American culture. The key trait of this kind of social character are onedimensionalization, pursuing of instrumental rationality, and individual priority. What this kind of social character looking forward in terms of psychology as a part of culture and ideology is the disenchantment of innerworld, or we can say the secularization of mind, which will offer some kind of certainty for the working of American society. World War Ⅱ promoted the development of psychology on general, and also left abundant of problems for America society, such as psychic trauma of veteran, the need for mental health, how to avoid the reviving of totalitarianism, how the collective affect the behavior of individual, and how to train more scientists, professors, and engineers for America and finally win the competition with Soviet Union. All these needs from society led to the boom of clinical psychology, social psychology, developmental and educational psychology, and psychometrics in America. Not only the numbers of APA members and journals, but also the number of PHD in American psychology surged during three decades after World War Ⅱ. The schools of psychology in America also changed during that time. New behavioralism declined after Hull and Skinner’s time due to its neglect of psyche. Psychoanalysis used to affect American psychology and evolved to ego psychology which could be seen as the product of Americanization. However, psychoanalysis was finally marginalized by scientific psychology in America because of the rise of evidence based medicine. The Third Force Psychology once made a noise in America, but it finally faded due to its attempt to connect psychology and philosophy again, and its complicated methods. It was cognitive psychology that became most popular and the main paradigm of American psychology. In a nutshell, the history of American psychology expressed its social character after World War Ⅱ, which called for the secularization of mind. The scientific psychology in America also plays its ideological role in maintaining the efficient work of American society in turn.
Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2023-03-27 Cooperative journals: 《心理学报》
Abstract： In the mainstream narrative of the discipline, a “controlled experiment” and a “quantitative research” are considered to be the basic characteristics of psychology. For a long time, the methodology of positivism has provided the subject of psychology with a spiritual connotation. Specifically, the “operational definition” based on positivism and the “falsifiability criterion” based on falsificationism, have become the “golden rules” of psychology’s scientificity. For decades, the field of philosophy of science has acquired a renewed understanding of positivism and falsificationism. However, while mainstream psychology ignores these advancements, it still regards these two outdated philosophies as its metaphysical foundation. More importantly, while indulging in outdated methodological assumptions, mainstream psychology is unable to provide a systematic demonstration for the ontological preset of disciplines. This lack of ontology and the over-reliance on outdated methodological presuppositions focus on popular mainstream psychology textbooks, such as How to Think Straight about Psychology by Keith E. Stanovich, who is a Canadian psychologist.Based on the representative position of Keith E. Stanovich’s work in mainstream psychology, and in the foundation of refining and summarizing specific features of heavy reliance on the methodology of mainstream experimental psychology, by using the process of logical analysis and philosophical speculation, this paper suggests that mainstream psychology has always defined itself through a methodology shared with other natural sciences, which is the root cause of the psychological disintegration crisis.!!!This study contends that the methodological basis of psychology itself has several problems. First of all, not all scientific concepts can be defined operationally. Thus, an operational definition by itself does not provide a solid philosophical foundation for empirical science. Furthermore, universal existence propositions and statistical law cannot be verified and falsified by experience. Therefore, the falsifiability criterion is not sufficient to guarantee the scientificity of psychology. In the end, common natural science methods are not sufficient to reflect the unique value of psychology. For this reason, the methodology of mature natural science is not enough to lay the foundation for psychology, which is an independent discipline. This research proposes that the logical starting point of psychology as an independent discipline lies in its unique values, which provide an ontological commitment not only to the subject, but also to the underlying psychology, making its own special requests for the selection method of the subject. Only discipline motivation, and ontological commitment can provide a philosophical basis for psychology as an independent subject. In psychology, it is possible to solve a split subject crisis only on the premise of breaking away from the method center and rethinking the logical basis of psychology—which is an independent subject—thereby leading the discipline from a “pre-paradigm science” to a “normal science.”
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