心理学危机的实质与解决方案

人们曾在不同层面上讨论心理学的危机,而这种对危机认识的偏离本身又进一步加强了学科本身的分裂。在总结前人对危机认识的基础上,通过分析表明,心理学危机是心理学学科发展中自我同一性危机的表现,其实质在于心理学学科同一性的缺乏,而根源来自于心理学建立之初的理论基础。因此,心理学危机的解决有待于其学科同一性的确立,心理学学科的发展则有待于其学科同一性的展开。     

Culture,context and society – The underexplored potential of critical realism as a philosophical framework for theory and practice

This article explains how the meta‐theoretical framework of critical realism addresses methodological issues of concern to social psychologists and social scientists. The article outlines key tenets of critical realism – its notion of the stratified nature of reality and generative mechanisms as powers in natural and social objects that cause things; its notion of knowledge of reality as stratified rather than only empirical; its acceptance of epistemological but not judgmental relativism; and its monist ontology. The article then introduces realist social theory to provide a framework for understanding the society–person connection. It explains how issues relating to culture, context, and society raised in the indigenous psychology English literature might be addressed from a critical realist perspective. Some implications arising from adopting a critical realist perspective in research practice are outlined and social psychologists and social scientists are encouraged to explore the potential of critical realism as a meta‐theoretical framework and new paradigm.     

Notes for a Critical Personality Psychology: Making Room under the Critical Psychology Umbrella

Inspired by the liberation psychologist Martin‐Baró who provocatively defined personality as that of which individuals can be robbed in conditions of social injustice and research psychologists in training whose appreciation of the possibilities of personality psychology has been limited by the dominance of trait approaches, this paper claims that we need and can practice a critical personality psychology. Conceptual and methodological tools for such an enterprise are identified in two arenas of current research: the study of narratives and new forms of history in personality psychology. Within critical personality psychology, personality is understood to be an expression of (i) a multifaceted organization that includes individual, interpersonal, social, cultural, and political contexts; (ii) individual and social change; and (iii) the moral dimensions of human psychology. Notes on future directions draw on areas of inquiry within and outside personality psychology to insure a place under the critical psychology umbrella.     

Is culture a problem for social psychology?

Culture has been regarded as an anathema to psychology as an empiricist research tradition. Despite the explosive growth of research on culture and psychology over the last decade of the 20th century and its importance in Asian social psychology, the ontological and epistemological tension between psychology as a science and psychology as a cultural/historical discipline introduced in the writings of the thinkers of the Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment still lingers on in the contemporary discourse of psychology. Clifford Geertz once ominously suggested that cultural psychology may have chewed more than it can. In the present paper, the interpretive turn in social science as exemplified by writings of Charles Taylor and Paul Ricoeur is reviewed and how it may impinge on the practice of Asian social psychology as an empirical science in methodological, epistemological, and ontological respects is discussed. It is argued here that the current practice of Asian social psychology is largely, though not entirely, free of the challenges mounted by these theorists, and that Asian social psychology has an advantage of not being encumbered by this traditional tension due to a monist ontology that is prevalent in Asia.     

Paradigms in the study of creativity: Introducing the perspective of cultural psychology

This article identifies three paradigms in creativity theory and research in psychology. The He-paradigm, focused on the solitary genius, has been followed, mainly after the 1950s, by the I-paradigm, equally individualistic in nature but attributing creativity to each and every individual. Extending this view, the We-paradigm incorporates what became known as the social psychology of creativity. The cultural psychology of creativity builds upon this last theoretical approach while being critical of some of its assumptions. This relatively new perspective, using the conceptual and methodological framework of cultural psychology, investigates the sociocultural roots and dynamics of all our creative acts and employs a tetradic framework of self - community - new artifact - existing artifacts in its conceptualization of creativity. The theoretical basis of the cultural psychology approach is analyzed as well as some of its main implications for both the understanding and study of creativity.     

Social psychology and social networks: Individuals and social systems

Social psychology and social network research are both centrally concerned with human sociality. Despite some historically significant interactions between the two, these areas of investigation have not been usefully deployed together in recent research endeavours. The present paper attempts to bring out some points of both theoretical and methodological contentions, to characterize the gap between them, to traverse briefly the trajectories of their historical development, and to provide some concrete instances of these differences. Intellectual resources available to Asian social psychology are reviewed, which may help bridge the gap between the two areas of research. We conclude by calling for a greater integration of social psychology and social network perspectives in future research.     

Speaking for Ourselves: Feminist Methods and Community Psychology

Although feminist and community psychology share a number of epistemological and methodological perspectives that guide their respective theories and research practices, it has been argued that community psychology has not fully integrated a feminist perspective into the discipline. This paper examines how community psychology and feminist research methods might combine to help us better understand women's experiences without essentializing or universalizing those experiences. The authors offer a series of suggested directions for feminist research that may also prove promising for community psychology. Particular attention is paid to feminist social constructionist approaches insofar as they address the complex relationship between epistemology and methodology.     

The Many Faces of SocialIdentity: Implications for Political Psychology

Social identity is a concept that has been invented and reinvented across the social and behavioral science disciplines to provide a critical link between the psychology of the individual and the structure and function of social groups. This paper reviews the various definitions of social identity as it is used in different theoretical frameworks, drawing distinctions among person-based identities, relational (role-based) identities, group-based identities, and collective identities. The implications of these different conceptualizations of social identity for political psychology are discussed, with a call for integrative theory that draws on all four definitions interactively.     

Assessing ‘good’ qualitative research in the work psychology field: A narrative analysis

This paper considers how work psychologists define ‘good’ qualitative research in the work psychology domain. In addressing the assessment of quality in work psychology research, we draw on 22 in‐depth interviews with work psychologists about their current practices and expectations around qualitative research. Using narrative analysis, the various plots and narratives that constitute how interviewees understand good qualitative research are identified. The implications of the use of these narratives for both how quality is understood and the use of qualitative research in this area are addressed. Drawing on Weick's concept of sensemaking as a theoretical framework, it is argued that the narratives identified enable the construction of a hegemonic understanding of what is good methodological practice within the work psychology discipline. The implications of this for the work psychology field and the methodological practices of work psychologists are considered.     

The Phenomenological Film Collective: Introducing a cinematic‐phenomenological research method for social advocacy filmmaking

This paper introduces the vision for the Phenomenological Film Collective ( pfcollective.com ), a research and filmmaking group which utilizes phenomenological research in the service of social advocacy filmmaking. I outline the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of developing a “cinematic‐phenomenological research method” for PFCollective in order to illuminate lived experiences of sociocultural oppression for public viewership via cinematography. The roots of cinematic phenomenology are situated within the theoretical framework of liberation psychology, which calls on psychologists to pursue research that can facilitate consciousness‐raising and social justice across society. The paper provides a methodological overview of existential‐hermeneutic phenomenological research and discusses how its research findings can be disseminated to the widespread public in artistic formats. I demonstrate how filmmaking is an appropriate aesthetic language through which to disseminate phenomenological research about lived experiences of oppression, grounding this proposition in phenomenological philosophy and liberation psychology. I outline the procedural steps for conducting cinematic‐phenomenological research to produce phenomenological films about oppressive sociocultural phenomena. The paper concludes with suggestions for academic disciplines to become more interdisciplinary in our collective pursuit for social advocacy and change.     

Metaphor: a paradigm for practice-based research into 'career'

This article describes the development of a practice-based methodology for researching 'career' in constructive and critical terms. It begins by suggesting that 'career' theories, both new and old, continue to be confounded by the dualism of human agency and social structure. An argument is then presented to suggest that metaphor provides a means of understanding the reflexive relationship between human actions and social systems. Based on a synthesis of constructivist and critical theory perspectives, a detailed exposition of metaphor as a paradigm for practice-based research is then provided. The emerging methodological implications for researching 'career' are then considered and an example is given of constructive and critical research in action. The article concludes by relating the methodology to careers guidance practice.     

An Embodied‐Socio‐Psychological Perspective in Health Psychology?

The author introduces an alternative perspective to the biopsychosocial model in health psychology. In the first part of her article, she presents the major critiques levelled at mainstream research in health psychology. In the second part, she reviews fundamental studies on the place of emotions in corporeality, then studies that are more psycho‐socially oriented and focus on the relationship between health and the social. This literature review shows the necessity of an alternative perspective. The Embodied‐Socio‐Psychological (ESP) perspective which is presented here is based on a historico‐cultural and developmental approach, drawing from Wallon and Vygotsky’s work and supported by current research in neuroscience on mirror neurons as well as by early interaction psychology. The ESP perspective enables accounting for the articulation between embodied emotional development and the development of superior psychological functions within the social and cultural field; during the crisis of serious illness, this articulation is strongly disrupted in its embodied emotional, embodied social as well as socio‐psychological foundations. This perspective proposes going beyond a notion of the ill human being as a juxtaposition of BPS variables, in order to account for the complementary, indissociable and complex articulation of the corporeal, the social and the psychological. It refers to a theoretical approach that is clearly psychological and no longer anchored in a biomedical definition.     

Methodological issues in the psychology of religion: toward another paradigm?

Recent evaluations have identified the psychology of religion as a field in crisis and have called for a new multilevel interdisciplinary paradigm. However, a critical meta-perspective on methods reveals a broad range of methodologies, each appropriate for particular levels of complexity in the psychology of religion. No single methodology is appropriate for every level, nor can higher levels of complexity be explained by data from lower levels. The authors identify the different types of research practiced in the psychology of religion and critically discuss philosophical presuppositions involved in two major methodological traditions, the empiricist-analytical and the hermeneutical, often identified as quantitative and qualitative traditions, respectively.     

Interaction Analysis and Psychology: A Dialogical Perspective

Interaction analysis is not a prerogative of any discipline in social sciences. It has its own history within each disciplinary field and is related to specific research objects. From the standpoint of psychology, this article first draws upon a distinction between factorial and dialogical conceptions of interaction. It then briefly presents the basis of a dialogical approach in psychology and focuses upon four basic assumptions. Each of them is examined on a theoretical and on a methodological level with a leading question: to what extent is it possible to develop analytical tools that are fully coherent with dialogical assumptions? The conclusion stresses the difficulty of developing methodological tools that are fully consistent with dialogical assumptions and argues that there is an unavoidable tension between accounting for the complexity of an interaction and using methodological tools which necessarily “monologise” this complexity.     

Re-reading Discourse and Social Psychology: transforming social psychology

This paper considers one theme in the contemporary legacy of Potter and Wetherell's (1987) Discourse and Social Psychology. It overviews the context that led to that book and considers a series of critical responses from both experimental and critical/qualitative social psychologists. It refutes criticisms and corrects confusions. Focusing on contemporary discursive psychology, it highlights (a) its rigorous use of records of actual behaviour; (b) its systematic focus on normative practices. In methodological terms, it (a) highlights limitations in the use of open-ended interviews; (b) considers the way naturalistic materials provide access to participants' own orientations and displays; (c) builds a distinctive logic of sampling and generalization. In theoretical terms, it (a) highlights the way discourse work can identify foundational psychological matters; (b) offers a novel approach to emotion and embodiment; (c) starts to build a matrix of dimensions which are central to the constructing and recognizing of different kinds of social actions. It now offers a fully formed alternative social psychology which coordinates theory and method and a growing body of empirical work.     

Pavlov in America: a heterodox approach to the study of his influence

This work presents a critical analysis of Pavlov's influence that goes beyond the conventional view: that which reduces his influence in American psychology to the behaviorism of Watson and Hull. In order to understand the nature of the Russian physiologist's influence in American psychology, we propose a distinction between three approaches to it: 1) the symbolic approach, on representing a model of the possibility of constructing an objective psychology; 2) the methodological approach, given the importance of the technique of conditional reflexes; and 3) the theoretical approach, which is derived from his theory of higher nervous activity. This perspective permits us to suggest that most of Pavlov's influence on behaviorism was of a symbolic and methodological nature--though the methodological influence also reached other authors that did not belong to the behaviorist traditions, as was the case of Mateer. As far as the theoretical influence is concerned, our work proposes that it is more visible in authors such as Gantt and Liddell, or even in authors such as Boldirev, Director of the Pavlovian Laboratory at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan. The case of Gantt is especially interesting because, in addition to his important contributions, he played an essential role in the foundation of the Pavlovian Society, and the journal Conditional Reflex. What our work proposes is that to understand the nature of Pavlov's influence in American psychology it is necessary to take into account the very characteristics of that psychology: its pragmatic interests, its methodological rigor, the dominant systems of neo-behavioral theory and the changes that occurred after the Second World War.     

Selection and self: Selection as a social process

Recent developments in theory and research in social psychology make possible an integrated account of selection construed as a social process. This account draws upon social psychological theories of the functions of the self, relationship development, social identity, self-categorization, and emotion. First, an account of the selection process in these theoretical terms is presented, together with some theoretical propositions. Next, research in one area, applicants' reactions to selection processes, which is consistent with this account is reviewed. Finally, implications for practice are drawn. It is argued that there are strategic implications both for organizations and for the psychology profession.     

Narrative as a Root Metaphor for Political Psychology

The idea of narrative has become increasingly appropriated in empirical research in both psychology and politics, yet there is a notable absence of integrative frameworks that specify a conceptual and methodological approach to narrative research in political psychology. An integrative conceptual framework is proposed and anchored in four principles of a narrative approach: (1) the mutual constitution of language and thought, (2) the need for personal coherence through narrative identity development, (3) the need for collective solidarity through shared meaning, and (4) the mediational property of narrative in social activity and practice. Theory and empirical research related to these principles are reviewed. We argue that a narrative framework has the potential to enhance the relevance and amplify the voice of political psychology within and beyond the academy and to offer new knowledge on the complex and dynamic relationship between context and mind.     

External and internal reality: The impact of the current socio‐economic crisis on the analytic dyad

This paper addresses the impact of the current economic crisis on the psychic functioning of the patient and the analyst, their relationship and collaboration. This intrusion of ‘external reality’ is multidimensional, and thus with multiple meanings. The critical role of the economic factor brings various dimensions of money into play, such as self‐preservation, power as well as aspects of psychosexual development. In addition, the crisis involves symbolic loss of basic ideals such as honesty and social responsibility. Patient and analyst are affected in similar and different ways in their respective roles as well as according to the specific intrapsychic functioning of each. Moreover, unique characteristics of the crisis often create a crisis in the analysis. In order to avoid deformation of the analytic relationship, the analytic dyad must examine and work through the multiple meanings of the crisis as well as the meaning of the impact of the crisis on the analytic relationship for both patient and analyst. This complex transference‐ countertransference interplay poses specific challenges to the analyst. After discussion of these issues, clinical material is presented that demonstrates how they appear in analytic practice today.