The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology

Methods, Approaches, and New Directions for Social Sciences

Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, Kathleen L. Slaney, Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, Kathleen L. Slaney

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781118748336
• eBook ISBN: 9781118748312
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology presents a comprehensive exploration of the wide range of methodological approaches utilized in the contemporary field of theoretical and philosophical psychology.

• The Wiley Handbook of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology presents a comprehensive exploration of the wide range of methodological approaches utilized in the contemporary field of theoretical and philosophical psychology.
• Gathers together for the first time all the approaches and methods that define scholarly practice in theoretical and philosophical psychology
• Chapters explore various philosophical and conceptual approaches, historical approaches, narrative approaches to the nature of human conduct, mixed-method studies of psychology and psychological inquiry, and various theoretical bases of contemporary psychotherapeutic practices
• Features contributions from ten Past Presidents of the Society of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, along with several Past Presidents of other relevant societies

 

1
Editors’ Introduction

Jack Martin, Jeff Sugarman, and Kathleen L. Slaney

In recent years, theoretical psychology has begun to emerge as a distinctive subdiscipline within organized psychology. Yet, its methods, and the purposes that animate them, are poorly understood by many psychologists and students of psychology. After all, aren’t all psychologists necessarily theoreticians who need to formulate understandings of those psychological states, processes, and operations that interest them? Although it is true that all psychological inquiry and intervention are to some extent theory-driven, there is much more to the conduct of theoretical psychology than the necessity of taking a theoretical attitude toward particular psychological phenomena. Theoretical psychology, properly understood, is concerned with the ways in which psychological phenomena and practices are conceptualized, how persons (as the wielders of psychological capabilities) are understood, how understandings of psychological phenomena are constructed, how the activities of psychologists interact with focal phenomena, and similar philosophical and conceptual questions. Theoretical psychologists also employ a variety of historical, philosophical, social psychological, and narrative methods in their attempts to reveal the nature of psychological entities, processes, and practices, and to subject these phenomena to the kind of critical scrutiny that is the hallmark of serious scholarly and scientific study. In this edited volume, the methods that theoretical psychologists use to accomplish these important and necessary tasks are described and illustrated by acknowledged experts in the area of theoretical and philosophical psychology. By explaining clearly and succinctly, and providing examples of, the various methods that define the scholarly practices of theoretical psychologists, this unique volume promises to reveal and clarify the “inner workings” of theoretical psychology for psychologists, students of psychology, and others interested in psychological inquiry and its applications. By opening up the “tool box” of theoretical psychologists, the editors and contributors invite readers to examine critically what theoretical psychologists do, and provide an introduction to ways of approaching the study of psychological phenomena and psychology itself that are not widely understood by most psychologists and students of psychology.

Particularly over the past two decades, there has been a proliferation of ways of conducting theoretical investigations in psychology. What tends to typify these contemporary methods is a focus on the concrete particulars of specific programs of research and investigations in both scientific and professional psychology. Gone are the days in which theoretical studies in psychology consisted only or mostly of general philosophical speculation and broad interpretations concerning how it might be possible to understand other minds, whether or not free will exists, or where psychology ought be placed alongside other natural and social sciences. Such deliberations have been, and to some extent remain, the province of that branch of traditional analytic philosophy concerned with psychological matters in general and speculative terms. In partial contrast, many contemporary approaches to the conduct of theoretical studies in psychology are grounded in what psychologists actually do in the laboratory, field, and clinic. Such methods are specifically focused on psychologists’ conduct and understanding of the scientific and professional practices that constitute their research and applied investigations. Not only does this volume include chapters that describe particular conceptual and philosophical methods of theoretical psychology (including philosophical anthropology, hermeneutics, ethical inquiry, and phenomenology) in specific detail, but it also includes fine-grained descriptions and illustrations of a number of history-based approaches within theoretical psychology (e.g., historical ontology, conceptual and critical history, historiometry), social psychological and narrative methods (e.g., life stories, narrative and cultural hermeneutics, positioning theory, dialogical self theory, life positioning analysis), and explores the use of mixed methods (focused on the theoretical study of psychological and psychotherapeutic practices and assumptions, and utilized in psychoanalytic and feminist studies in theoretical psychology). Together, these methods and applications define contemporary work in theoretical psychology, but they also provide a concretely accessible entry into the nature of and ways of conducting an increasingly diverse array of theoretical studies in psychology more generally. Consequently, an understanding of these methods constitutes an understanding of the practices of theoretical psychologists and illuminates the field of theoretical studies in psychology in terms of its concrete particulars, providing a previously unavailable resource to those who would understand in specific detail this increasingly important and influential area of psychological scholarship.

What this book will do, which no previous book has even attempted, is to provide readers with a comprehensive set of specific, concretely exemplified discussions of why and how theoretical psychologists do the kinds of work they do, and how psychologists interested in conducting theoretical studies might pursue such inquiries. After many years of teaching advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in theoretical psychology, we the editors are united in our view that this is the book that students in such courses, together with colleagues in other areas of psychology, need to give them the understandings and tools that will allow them to read critically the work of theoretical psychologists and to conduct theoretical investigations of their own. In fact, each of us has received numerous inquiries from our students and colleagues over the past decade about how they might better understand and possibly adopt some of the approaches and methods of theoretical psychology in their areas of interest. In particular, those students and colleagues who recognize and value the necessity and importance of rigorous, critical inquiry for improving psychological science and practice want to equip themselves with a broader repertoire of ways to conceptualize and conduct critically constructive examinations of the particular programs of theory, research, and application in those areas of psychology to which they are devoted.

Consequently, we believe that this book will appeal to many psychologists who find it difficult to relate to highly abstracted and generalized philosophical and historical analyses of psychology and its subdisciplines. The contributors all demonstrate a thorough-going understanding of the scientific and professional activities of psychologists, in ways that ensure their critical probes, questions, and ways of doing theoretical psychology are likely to resonate with psychologists who are and wish to be similarly attentive to the details of their assumptions and practices. Again, the core idea is to offer an accessible entry into theoretical methods that is grounded in a detailed understanding of the particulars of psychologists’ traditions of scientific inquiry and professional intervention, but that raises important questions, suggests possibilities for clarification, and advances alternatives that emerge from detailed conceptual, historical, and theoretical study.

Theoretical Psychology: A Brief History

A brief and selective history of theoretical psychology is instructive in that it makes clear that something dramatic has occurred in theoretical and philosophical psychology during the last three decades of the 20th century and has gathered additional momentum during the first part of the 21st century. Nonetheless, this recent surge in popularity, including some of the changes of tactics it represents, should not obscure the long history of philosophical psychology. Questions concerning the nature of human beings, their distinguishing capabilities, and the origins of these defining features have proved fascinating and enduring from antiquity to the present. Debates about psychological matters which have long pedigrees with few signs of deterioration include how the body relates to the mind, the nature and functions of consciousness, the possibility of free will (even within a determined world), the nature and limits of human thought and action, and the duties, rights, and responsibilities of persons. At the dawn of disciplinary psychology in Germany during the late 1800s, psychology was tightly interwoven with both psychophysics and philosophy. Individuals like Wilhelm Wundt and William Stern, despite doing much to develop theoretical perspectives and methodologies that enabled the emergence of psychology as an independent area of inquiry and academic study, remained strongly wedded to philosophy. Their written works, despite the relative neglect of anything other than their methodological and technical achievements in early North American histories of psychology, consisted mostly of philosophical reflections and arguments concerning the nature of psychological phenomena, persons, and their conditions and contexts. Indeed, in the works of these early German psychologists, their colleagues, and immediate predecessors, almost all the important questions concerning psychology as a scholarly discipline and human science are well documented and considered. Is a science of psychology possible, despite the reservations of Kant? What are the basic structures and functions of mind? What methods are best suited to investigations of psychological phenomena? How much can be learned empirically and in what contexts with what tools? What is the relationship between persons and their societies? What constitutes human experience and what are its properties and characteristics? Is it possible to mathematize psychological phenomena, and if so how might this be done? What warrants psychology as an independent discipline and how should it be situated in relation to other traditions of scholarship?

When organized psychology developed in the United States, many of its leading practitioners, including William James and John Dewey, also privileged philosophical work and insisted on a comprehensive and critical analysis of the language and research practices and ambitions of more strictly empirical psychologists of their day. James theorized about the nature of human experience and (like his student Mary Whiton Calkins) developed highly influential ideas about the nature of selfhood which continue to repay attention. Dewey took his brand of pragmatism and functionalism to Chicago and then to Columbia, developing instructive analyses of human experience, relationships between selves and societies, and an account of human conduct that eschewed, but was later overcome by, stimulus-response psychology. Other prominent, early American psychologists, such as Granville Stanley Hall, James McKeen Cattell, James Mark Baldwin, Leta Hollingworth, and Lightner Witmer, promoted applications of psychology in law, education, and business, and developed theoretical frameworks that attempted to link scientific and applied psychology, in some cases including suggestions for ethical practice. In short, during its infancy, disciplinary psychology had little need for a separate subdiscipline of theoretical psychology because many of the leading psychologists of the time were first and foremost philosophers who ensured that their psychological theorizing and research were conducted in tandem with their philosophical analyses and interpretations.

Of course, as is well known, while much German, English, and French psychology continued a close partnership with philosophy, American psychology fell under the sway of a narrow interpretation of logical positivism that led to a lengthy period of behaviorist hegemony during the early and middle years of the 20th century. However, even here, major philosophical debates continued to attend psychological inquiry and practice, especially during the days of neobehaviorism during which time individuals like Clark Hull and Edward Tolman formulated ambitious research agendas in terms of hypothetical-deductive models of inquiry that emphasized the importance and study of intervening variables. By the 1940s and 1950s, the glorious failure of Hull’s program (especially notable given the unusually precise and rigorous nature of his theoretical and empirical edifice) and the comparative success of Tolman’s early cognitive hypothesizing about “expectancies” and “cognitive maps” spawned a spate of theoretical inquiry concerning the nature of intervening variables and hypothetical constructs (e.g., MacCorquodale and Meehl 1948), theoretical inquiries that partially prompted the establishment of latent variable theorizing and construct validation theory, still hotbeds of theoretical inquiry closely linked to the research and analytic strategies employed by many psychologists. Even radical behaviorists aligned with B. F. Skinner’s program of operant conditioning were pursuing philosophical analyses and frameworks for their inquiries, as demonstrated by the brief popularity of Willard Day’s journal Behaviorism during the 1960s into the 1970s – a publication devoted to seeking and explicating parallels between psychological behaviorism and the philosophies of Wittgenstein as represented in both his early and later writings.

When the crisis in social psychology hit American psychology in the early 1970s, American psychologists entered a new kind of theoretical and philosophical terrain. Many of the critical concerns that marked the crisis drew inspiration not only from Wittgensteinian, but also from hermeneutic, poststructuralist, and home-grown pragmatist perspectives on the holistic activity of persons in sociocultural contexts and the implications of studying and interpreting such activity within and beyond the rather narrow laboratory confines of experimental ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• About the contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Editors’ Introduction
• Part I: Philosophical/Conceptual Approaches
• Part II: Historical Approaches
• Part III: Narrative and Social Psychological Approaches
• Part IV: Theoretical Studies of Scientific, Professional, and Life Practices
• Index
• End User License Agreement