A New Unified Theory of Psychology
Summary Following the demise of the so-called grand theories offered by luminaries like Sigmund Freud, B. F. Skinner, and Carl Rogers, the field of psychology largely gave up its early aspirations to paint a broad picture of the human condition, and
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Gregg Henriques
A New Unified Theory of Psychology
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Gregg Henriques Department of Psychology James Madison University Harrisonburg VA, USA [email protected]
ISBN 978-1-4614-0057-8 e-ISBN 978-1-4614-0058-5 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-0058-5 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011931083 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
To Andee
Preface Seeing the Forest Through the Trees
We persevere in looking at small questions instead of large ones and our view of the forest is forever obscured by the trees. Yet specialized knowledge derives its meaning from the context of larger perspectives and questions. When it loses touch with that larger context, it loses its coherence. William Bevan (1991, p. 475)
Ask a biologist, “What is biology?” and you are likely to get a relatively unambiguous response. Biology is the science of life. In contrast ask a psychologist, “What is psychology?” and if the individual has considered the question in depth, you are likely to get something along the lines of the following: “It is basically the science of the mind, except for the fact that there still are a number of psychologists who think of it as the science of behavior, and argue that ‘the mind’ is not a helpful scientific construct. So you can call it the science of behavior and mental processes, but that glosses over the basic philosophical problems that initially pitted behaviorism against mentalism. It currently deals primarily with human behavior, although historically many psychologists studied animals, perhaps most notoriously the lab rat. And yet, the line between humans and other animals—if there is one at all—is not generally agreed upon. Some scholars believe that psychology is really a loose federation of subdisciplines and that as our scientific knowledge becomes more advanced it will break up into fields like neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and other areas. And now there are quite a few psychologists, especially those studying culture and continental philosophy, who question whether natural or even social science epistemologies are appropriate. They argue that psychology is best thought of as a collection of studies and belongs as much wit
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