Psychologies: Their Diverse Histories

The methods and principles of the natural sciences are not a diet we need to follow: A close look at the terms of the question

“…To say that psychology is diverse is almost a cliché. As Smith (2020) writes, it is more appropriate to speak of “psychologies” than of “psychology” as a unitary discipline. As any historian of psychology will remind you, Wundt did not “found” one kind of psychology, but two: a physiologischen Psychologie and a Völkerpsychologie .…”

“…The latter more or less died with Wundt, but psychology has remained a discipline in which very different approaches are loosely united. Moreover, psychology is not only the name of a discipline, it is also used to refer to “a host of beliefs and practices found in everyday life,” an everyday psychology, and to “a set of states someone has – a person’s psychology” (Smith, 2020, p. 2). Restricting ourselves for the moment to the discipline, it is clear that history has brought together under the label “psychology” very different topics, theories, and practices, and never has any one of them been so dominant as to unify the discipline (Green, 2015; Smith, 2020).…”

“…Whether psychology should follow the methods and principles of the natural sciences is an old question, and in light of the diversity of both the natural sciences and psychology itself (or better: the psychologies themselves) it may seem to be a question that we should finally move beyond. Roger Smith (2020) has argued that there is little profit in returning to argument about whether psychology is or is not a science, meaning in English a natural science . .…”