Methodological Thinking in Psychology

A volume in Advances in Cultural PsychologySeries Editor: Jaan Valsiner, Clark UniversityIn recent years an increasing dissatisfaction with methods and thinking in psychology as ascience can be observed. The discipline is operating under the tension between the traditionalquantitative and the new qualitative methodologies. New approaches emerge in different fieldsof psychology and education-each of them trying to go beyond limitations of the mainstream.These new approaches, however, tend to be historically blind - seemingly novel ideas haveactually been common in some period in the history of psychology. Knowledge of historical trends in that context becomes crucialbecause analysis of historical changes in psychology is informative regarding the potential of new/old and forgotten approaches inthe study of psyche. Some approaches in psychology disappeared due to inherent limitations of them; the others disappeared due topurely non-scientific reasons. And some new approaches were rejected long ago for well-justified scientific reasons.This book brings together contributions from leading scholars in different fields of psychology - cognitive psychology,developmental psychology, cultural psychology, methodology of psychology. Each of the contributors discusses methodological issuesthat were more thoroughly understood more than half a century ago than they are now. Overall, the contributions support the idea thatin important ways 60 years old psychology was far ahead of the most recent trends inmainstream psychology.