Einheit oder Vielfalt als theoretische Grundlage der Psychologie?

Tschacher, Wolfgang (2019). Einheit oder Vielfalt als theoretische Grundlage der Psychologie? In: Klasen, Michael; Seidel, Markus (eds.) Einheit und Vielfalt in den Wissenschaften (pp. 183-197). de Gruyter 10.1515/9783110614831-007

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Monism or plurality as a theoretical foundation of psychology? Traditionally, the sciences have been divided into the natural sciences on the one hand and the humanities on the other. Natural sciences consider objective, i. e. thirdperson entities, whereas the humanities concern subjective intentional processes that depend on first-person interpretation. This leads to a dualistic dichotomy of nomothetic versus idiographic approaches. Now what about psychology, the science of (first-person) experience and (third-person) behavior? The development of this discipline has put forward dualistic and monistic, mental and physiological theories in rapid succession, which is perpetuated in today’s (dualistic and pluralistic) cognitive-behavioral psychology on the one hand and the (monistic) neuroscience reductions on the other. Some reductionists, particularly in clinical psychology, even favor the monistic approach of social constructivism. Thus, the discussion in the discipline of psychology has remained at a clearly pluralistic, possibly pre-paradigmatic, stage. We argue that no reductive solution is in sight - so that psychology should openly acknowledge its dual aspects of mind and body. This dual-aspect approach should be supported by a structural science foundation. The structural-mathematical science of complexity and synergetics can offer concepts and laws that are valid in both the physical and mental domains - analogous pattern formation schemes govern both physical-behavioral and mental-intentional processes.

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