A GENERAL PROBLEM OF PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES: THE RISK OF REDUCTIONISM

Today, reflection on the status of contemporary psychology is particularly lively. Journals such as New Ideas in Psychology have been created primarily to emphasize emerging theories and critical evaluations of the subject (Baer, 1987; Bakan, 1987; Krantz, 1987). Within this discourse, general systematic contributions seem to be of particular interest. For instance, Gardner (1992), reviewing synthetically the history of the behavioral sciences, recalls that in 1780 Immanuel Kant identified three obstacles, at the time considered insurmountable, that prevented psychology from becoming a science. First, the mind is intrinsically modified when it studies itself. Second, the mind does not have a spatial dimension within which it can be studied. Third, there is no mathematical basis on which a science of the mind might be built. Hence Kant concluded:

Over the course of the following two centuries, an impressive series of intellectual efforts, creative investigations, and systematic research discredited to a great extent the expectations of the German philosopher. Theories and schools, such as functionalism, structuralism, behaviorism, Gestalt psychology, and psychoanalysis, have gradually conquered the academic world and public recognition. Psychology, along this arduous and partially unfinished journey toward becoming a unified science, was always interconnected with other disciplines.