Abstract
“Psychology” is a family name for many different kinds of knowledge and activity, as well as a collective name for states people have. Because of this breadth and multi-sidedness, it is not a speciality of interest only to psychologists but appropriately discussed as part of the history of the human sciences. This chapter relates the diversity of psychologies to the diversity of historical conditions in which psychological knowledge, practice, and states have become defining features of the modern age. It does this not by attempting to condense “the history of psychology” into a few pages but by examining the intellectual significance the history has both for contemporary psychologists and for a wider comprehension of the social function and structural position of psychologies in the human sciences. An introductory section clarifies why the chapter focuses on diversity rather than on hopes for theoretical unity or on any one particular characterization of what psychology “really is” in social and institutional terms. It begins with the question of the definition of psychology, which inevitably leads to the inquiry into whether psychology is or should be a unified natural science. The second section moves from recognition of psychology’s modern diversity to argue that the roots of psychologies are also diverse. There can be no history of psychology; rather, there are histories. Wide-ranging comments on recent scholarship illustrate the argument. The third section turns to the value of the history of psychology as a source of perspective for psychologists and as a source of critique in forms of human self-understanding in their relations with practice. This requires comment on the notion of critique and on notions of reflection and reflexivity closely associated with it. The conclusion restates the argument, founded in the theory of historical knowledge, that all knowledge is for a purpose. The intellectual purposes of the history of psychology, inquiry into the conditions in which the many varieties of psychological knowledge and practice have come about, are central to the human sciences. This is not an optional extra to science but intrinsic to the achievement of rational knowledge about “the human.”
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Smith, R. (2022). Psychologies: Their Diverse Histories. In: McCallum, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3_77-2
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Psychologies: Their Diverse Histories- Published:
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3_77-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4106-3_77-1