Tellingly, many popular text books define ‘mind’ exclusively as ‘brain activity’, thus turning psychology’s central object of research into one of neuroscience. In psychology, however, textbooks present definitions of its key phenomena-mind (psyche) and behaviour-that are discordant, ambiguous, overlapping, circular and context-dependent, thus inconclusive (Zagaria et al. Introductory text books are supposed to present the corner stones of a science’s established knowledge base. Lack of Proper Terms and Definitions of Study Phenomena Finally, the article introduces paradigmatic frameworks that can provide solid foundations for conceptual integration and new developments.
These problems are then traced to peculiarities of psychology’s study phenomena and the conceptual and methodological challenges they entail. This article outlines three key problems of psychology (poor definitions of study phenomena, lack of unified theoretical frameworks, and an allegedly lower level of scientificity) that are frequently discussed and at the centre of Zagaria, Andò and Zennaro’s ( 2020) review. But why are we struggling to scientifically explore the means needed to first make any science? Given the successes in other fields, is this not a contradiction in itself? Moreover, psychical phenomena are essential for all sciences (e.g., thinking). The phenomena of our personal experience, directly accessible to everyone in each waking moment of life, remain challenging objects of research. Yet, psychology is still struggling with its most basic foundations. Scientists have managed to explore distant galaxies, quantum particles and the evolution of life over 4 billion years-phenomena inaccessible to the naked eye or long deceased. Psychology holds an exceptional position among the sciences-not least because it explores the very means by which any science is made, for it is humans who perceive, conceive, define, investigate, analyse and interpret the phenomena of the world.
But Galtonian nomothetic methodology has turned much of today’s psychology into a science of populations rather than individuals, showing that blind adherence to natural-science principles has not advanced but impeded the development of psychology as a science. Their systematic integration within just one discipline, made necessary by these phenomena’s joint emergence in the single individual as the basic unit of analysis, makes psychology in fact the hardest science of all. It shows that adequate explorations of such diverse kinds of phenomena and their interrelations with the most elusive of all-immediate experience-inherently require a plurality of epistemologies, paradigms, theories, methodologies and methods that complement those developed for the natural sciences. The article traces these problems to the peculiarities of psychology’s study phenomena, their interrelations with and centrality to everyday knowledge and language (which may explain the proliferation and unclarity of terms and concepts), as well as to their complex relations with other study phenomena. A unified theoretical framework has not been developed and its categorisation as a ‘soft science’ ascribes to psychology a lower level of scientificity. Its key phenomena, mind and behaviour, are poorly defined (and their definition instead often delegated to neuroscience or philosophy) while specific terms and constructs proliferate. Yet even after 140 years as an independent discipline, psychology is still struggling with its most basic foundations. Psychology holds an exceptional position among the sciences.
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