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2 - Psychology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Roger E. Backhouse  and
Philippe Fontaine
By
Mitchell G. Ash
Roger E. Backhouse
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Philippe Fontaine
Affiliation:
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
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Summary

Introduction

Psychology occupies a peculiar place among the sciences, suspended between methodological orientations derived from the physical and biological sciences, and a subject matter extending into the social and human sciences. A field with such a vast domain might well be called protean, or at the least a transdiscipline. The struggle to create a science encompassing both subjectivity – conscious or unconscious mental processes and motives – as well as observable behavior, and the interrelated effort to develop professional practices utilizing that science's results, provide interesting examples for the extension and also the limits of such scientific ideals as objectivity, measurability, repeatability, and cumulative knowledge acquisition. In addition, psychologists' struggles to live by such methodological ideals while competing with others to fulfill multiple public demands for their services illuminates both the formative impact of science on modern life, and the effects of technocratic hopes on science.

There has been a broad shift in the historiography of psychology over the past twenty years from the achievements of important figures and the history of psychological systems and theories, to the social and cultural relationships of psychological thought and practice. [For comprehensive overviews, see Smith (1998) and Danziger (1990, 1997).] In the process, the interrelationships of psychological research and societal practices with one another, and with prevailing cultural values and institutions in different times and places, have become clearer. Elsewhere I have tried to bring out certain common threads in this varied narrative.

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The History of the Social Sciences since 1945 , pp. 16 - 37
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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