Proud and aloof on the banks of the mainstream of human history, American psychology guards its virginity. It will give itself to the laboratory but not to man in real time. It is haunted by the vision of exposing the causal roots of things. But effects are epiphenomena, important only because they are produced by first causes. And so human responses are degraded to the status of operational criteria for the presence of some prior stimulus. This is but one of the many sources of the chaste indifference of American psychology to human history.

We will argue that a complete science of man must focus not only on the causal mechanisms underlying cognition, affect and action, but also on the cultural products of man. Man is to be found as much in his language, his art, in his science, in his economic, political and social institutions, as he is to be found in his cerebrum, in his nervous system, and in his genes. We would urge that the biopsychological mechanisms and the social products be integrated into a science of man and not polarized as competitors for the attention of psychology. Further, the psychologist should be equally at home in the laboratory as in the library, as in the armchair, as in the computer room, as on the streets, or in the field.