Psychology's Three Great BranchesPairing the three great branches of psychology with three grand theorists.Post published byGregg Henriqueson Jun 16, 2013 inTheory of Knowledge Looking across the vast and complicated field of psychology today, it is easy to become confused. Is psychology a natural science like biology? Is it a social science like anthropology? Is it primarily a profession like medicine? Is it about behavior or the conscious mind? Is its subject matter about animals in general, mammals, or just humans? The 50+ divisions of the American Psychological Assocation doesnt result in much clarity, nor does thedefintion offered by the APA(link is external): Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Thedisciplineembraces all aspects of the human experience from the functions of thebrainto the actions of nations, fromchild developmentto care for the aged. In every conceivable setting from scientific research centers to mentalhealthcare services, "theunderstandingof behavior" is the enterprise of psychologists. This definition is an awkward blending of key historical disputes in the field.Based on the unified framework I have developed, we can bring clarity to this mess. One of the first things we should do is recognize that the institution of psychology consists of three great branches that are related but also clearly separable branches of inquiry. The three branches are: 1) the basic science of psychology, whose proper subject matter is mental behavior which translates into the behavior of the animal as a whole and includes thinking and feeling as well as acting; 2) human psychology, whose proper subject matter is human behavior at the individual level and includes a particular focus on the human mind and human self-consciousness; and 3) professional psychology, which involves the application of psychological knowledge for human betterment. If the APA started with these three great branches, much confusion could be avoided and we could actually make progress starting to clear uppsychologys tower of babel.

To foster understanding of the three great branches, they can be usefully be associated to three of psychologys greatest contributors: B. F. Skinner is the icon associated with basic psychology; SigmundFreudwith human psychology; and Carl Rogers with professional psychology.1. B.F. Skinner and the Basic Science of Psychology

The basic science of psychology has as its subject matter, mental behavior. Mental behavior refers to the unique ways in which animals behave relative to other entities and includes both covert processes (i.e., conscious and unconsciouscognition) and overt actions. It corresponds to Mind on theTree of Knowledge System(link is external). Skinner is associated with the formal science of psychology because he argued that psychology: 1) has as its proper subject matter the behavior of the animal-as-a-whole, which we are now referring to as mental behavior; 2) is differentiated from biology with the same logic that biology was differentiated from chemistry becauseanimal behaviorevolved as a function of the selection of consequences in a manner that had direct parallel to the evolution of life; and 3) is a purely natural science discipline.2.Sigmund Freud and Human Psychology

Human psychology is a unique and separate sub-discipline from basic psychology. The reason is simple. Because of symbolic language, culture and human self-consciousness, humans operate on a different dimension of complexity than other animals (dimension 4 on the ToK System(link is external)). The APA is really an association devoted to Human Psychology, as its definition suggests. Although William James would have also made a good choice, Sigmund Freud is the icon I associate with the discipline of human psychology. This is because Freud had an enormous impact on the discipline (far greater than anyone else) and he, more clearly than anyone else: 1) identified key aspects of the dynamic relationship between self-conscious processes andsubconsciousmotives and emotions; and 2) saw the connections between the justifications that individuals offer to maintain psychic equilibrium and the cultural narratives, myths, and taboos that coordinate populations of people.3.Carl Rogers and Professional Psychology

The fundamental task of professional psychology is not to describe animal or human behavior but instead is to improve the human condition. This is what makes it a more value-laden and prescriptive than the other branches. Carl Rogers is the icon I associate with profession of psychology, as he was the most influential humanistic psychologist and because he: 1) identified the centrality of the therapeutic relationship and associated factors like empathy and acceptance in fostering human change duringpsychotherapy; and 2) recognized that the vision of the human condition afforded by the science of psychology had important implications for how people were viewed and treated. He argued passionately that the vision of humanity offered by bothpsychoanalysisand behaviorism was too deterministic, limited, and pessimistic, and that psychology could and should offer a more hopeful, uplifting message regarding human potential. I also emphasize Rogers because of the way he valued people, and that one of his foundational insights was that the quality of the therapeutic relationship is central to the psychotherapeutic processes. As I tell my students, good therapy begins with Rogers. It is important to recognize that these three icons were the primary leaders in the three great paradigms in American psychologybehaviorism, psychoanalysis, and humanistic psychologythus suggesting a link between the three great branches of the discipline and the three most historically significant schools of thought. The reasonableness of associating each of the three great branches with these icons is supported by a fascinating book by Amy Demorest (2005) titledPsychologys Grand Theorists: How Personal Experiences Shaped Professional Ideas.

In it she offers powerful profiles of Skinner, Freud, and Rogers, articulating how their unique life patterns were associated with the ideas they promoted. I found Demorests justification for choosing these figures especially heartening and supportive of theheuristicformulation offered here. She wrote, As prime representatives of what historically have been the three dominant [forces] in psychology, Freud, Skinner, and Rogers were all obvious choices (2005, p. xi). So next time you are trying to wrap your head around the question of What is Psychology?, think of it as a discipline with three great branches, whose foundational insights were identified by one of psychologys grand theorists.

THURSDAY, 10 NOVEMBER 2011Theory, and Why It's Time Psychology Got One

Psychology has a problem. We have no core theory to guide our research; no analogue to the theories of evolution or relativity. Whenparticle physicists recently found that some neutrinos had apparently travelled faster than light, it never actually occurred to them that this is what had happened. On the basis of the extraordinarily well supported theory of relativity, everyone went 'huh, that's weird - I wonder what we did wrong?', and proceeded to use that theory to generate hypotheses they could then test. It would take a lot of fast neutrinos to disprove relativity.

Psychology, though, when faced withan empirical result that violates the laws of physics, can't find any principled reason to reject the result and instead spends a lot of time squabbling about whether Bem's result might possibly be truebecause 'quantum'. Worse, when peopledoreplicate the experiment and fail to support the original result,they can't get their 'null result' published. It's a bit embarrassing, really.

One of the problems of having no core theory is that you can't simply rule things out as options. Psychologists almost all consider this a strength: we can pick and choose from a variety of mechanisms which enables us to cope with our messy and erratic subject matter. Can't imagine how perception can explain a result? Just hypothesise a mental representation to fill the gap. After all, no single theory is going to account for the opportunistic and idiosyncratic behaviour of people, so why limit ourselves? We tried that with behaviourism, and it got us nowhere. Let's stay flexible.

The problem with this approach is that psychology has gotten lazy; when you can't come up with a simple solution to your complex problem, you suggest a complex solution that fills all those pesky gaps, and never notice the gaps were a bit weird to begin with (Costall, 1984). Representations can solve everything if they contain the solution, and thus they explain nothing at all. An example of this comes from the prehension literature: when reaching, people accelerate their hands to a peak speed that occurs ~70% of the way through the reach. To explain this stable timing, researchers like Jeannerod postulated motor programmes that simply instructed the system to reach this way; they just took the structure of the reach and placed it in a representation. This explains nothing: the structure in the reach is caused by the structure in the representation, but what caused the structure in the representation? This question got more complicated as it became clear that the details of the temporal structure of prehension emerge in real time as a function of the task; suddenly you needed a different programme for every different situation! The answer actually requires a careful analysis of the affordances of the task (e.g. Mon-Williams & Bingham, 2011). This, however, is hard.

This laziness and lack of discipline leads people to try and combine arguments and mechanisms that simply aren't compatible with one another. Do you like embodiment, but can't see how cognition can occur without representation? Let's have embodied representations! AsLouise Barrett's bookmakes clear, however, this type of approach does nothing but make you miss theactualembodied solution. Her account of the wonderfully sophisticated behaviour of the Portia spider talks about how people first explained their ability to navigate via detours in terms of 'insight'; they sit and scan their environment and then suddenly move off in the right direction as if they had planned their route. The form of the scanning behaviour itself, however, is critical, and careful experiments that break the information they are looking for have shown that Portia scans and moves according to simple rules that lead to the right solution (like the'linear optical trajectory' solution to the outfielder problem). Tony Chemero also lays out the fact thatembodiment and representations come from irreconcilable schools of thoughtquite clearly; so not only is it bad science, it's incoherent to begin with. We simply can't keep picking and choosing the easiest explanations; it's time to invest the time and effort required to uncover what's actually going on. It's time to spend some time working within the confines of a real theory.

Theory in ScienceAs I try to teach my students, the role of theory in science is to provide structure to your data. A good theory rules explanations inandout, and if it rules out the wrong explanation that will become clear over time as you pursue your theory guided research. Good science means a) restricting your explanatory mechanisms to include things your theory allows, and b) keeping an eye on how well that's working out for you, while c) allowing yourself to rest on your well supported theory to resist breaking the rules as long as you can. When creationists say 'we can't see how the chambered eye could possibly have evolved, it's far too complex', biologists are entitled to say 'well, we have evidence that lots and lots of other things have evolved, let's see if we can figure out how the eye did it, and in the meantime, we're going to operate on the assumption that it did evolve until we have strong evidence to the contrary'. No-one except creationists complain about this; it's perfectly healthy science.

In psychology, when Bem publishes a paper that rests on the assumption of information travelling backwards in time,I get told offfor simply ruling out his explanation for his data on the basis that a) it's physically impossible and b) 'quantum' isn't a get out of jail free card for (a). According to my anonymous debater, it's bad science to rule things out that don't fit my theories of how things work, because I might be wrong. Yes, I might be wrong: but good hypothesis driven science will eventually reveal this if it is, indeed, the case, and that's what the scientific method is for. I am actually allowed to rest on the well supported theory of relativity that describes why Bem's explanation is is impossible and simply reject the explanation out of hand. This doesn't make me close minded, this makes me a scientist.Ifneutrino research actually manages to break relativity,thenI will reconsider; in the meantime, Bem is simply cheating and I'm calling him out for it.

Ecological PsychologyI think the closest psychology has to a decent actual theory of behaviour is Gibson's ecological psychology;this is Chemero's bet too. It proposes very specific hypotheses to explain behaviour; these hypotheses contain suggested mechanisms (specifically, information and affordances) to support behaviour, and suggests ways to empirically test these hypotheses. These tests have been very successful (e.g. my work in coordinated rhythmic movement, and the success of thethreekeypredictionsof theperception-action model, not to mention affordance research coming out of everywhere).

Because of these successes, I am able to use this theory to generate predictions about other behaviours likecatching a fly ball). There are two ways to achieve a goal related to the future state of things: prediction, and prospective control. The former entails taking the current conditions and using these to predict future conditions, then acting on the basis of that prediction. The latter entails coupling your behaviour to specific aspects of current conditions, and letting the future solution emerge as you engage in perceptually controlled behaviour. The ecological approach rules out the former as an option, and goes looking for evidence of the latter. My work based on this theory will either work or it won't; but at least I'll be able to tell the difference, if my empirical work is theoretically constrained.

The Cost of No TheoryPsychologistshateruling things out - they just love leaving the door open to 'both solutions are probably used', because they have no particular reason to rule anything out. But this has a huge cost:psychology becomes a mere collection of empirical results, with nothing tying them together. Results from the different disciplines can't inform each other, because they aren't testing the same things. This is currently most clear to me in thegulf between embodied cognition and cognitive neuroscience. Neuroscience finds computation and representation only because it's looking for computation and representation: no-one is asking non-computational, non-representational questions or interpreting data in that light, so there's nothing in the neuroscience literature that informs my science.

This fragmentation means psychology is doing nothing but running in empirical circles: there's nothing resembling progress. All you get are individuals with their own collection of hunches running their own experiments on their own little experimental phenomena. Psychology needs to pick a side, suck it up and get on with somenormal sciencefor a change. Taking embodiment seriously is the first step. Taking perception seriously is the second. Using dynamical systems to describe these things is not a bad idea either. Our empirical successes are mounting, whenever anyone bothers to go looking - Gibson and embodied cognition seem a healthy place to start, because representational approaches simply don't rule anything out and thus can't help.

And the beauty of a period of serious normal science is that if we invest some serious time pushing the theory, looking for cracks, and resisting the temptation to jump ship at the first sign of trouble, we will end up in a better place no matter how it pans out. If the theory breaks, it will have been broken honestly, and for good reasons. If the theory holds up, we will have achieved a lot of progress and begun to act like a real science for a change. This is why the scientific method is awesome:because it works, bitches.

ReferencesCostall, A. P. (1984). Are theories of perception necessary? A review of Gibson's 'The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception'.Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 41(1), 109-115.Download

Mon-Williams, M. & Bingham, G.P. (2011). Discovering affordances that determine the spatial structure of reach-to-grasp movements.Experimental Brain Research, 211(1),145-160.Download

Why a Unified Theory of Psychology Is ImpossibleHunting for a unified theory of psychology is tilting at windmillsPost published byGregg Henriqueson Feb 16, 2012 inTheory of KnowledgeIn 1963, Arthur Staats published his first treatise on what would be a lifelong mission to develop a unified theory of psychology. His approach was to first argue that the various factions of behaviorism (i.e., Watson, Skinner, Hull, Tolman) shared a core set of assumptions that could be united by recognizing the relationship between emotions and reinforcers. Specifically, Staats argued that all the behavioral positions either implicitly or explicitly connected reinforcement andpunishmentto pleasure and pain. Moreover, each perspective implicitly or explicitly acknowledged that pleasure and pain were evolutionary mechanisms designed to foster approach and avoidance behaviors. With this lens, Staats claimed we could fundamentally understand how experience builds basic behavioral repertoires, and these repertoires form the building blocks of all complexanimal behavior. Staats further argued that by including the construct of emotion, behavioral theories could connect to more traditional (human & mentalistic) psychological approaches that attempted to explain intrapsychic processes. As such, Staats thought his framework could mend another great divide in the field, the one between behavioral approaches and traditional psychology.This is why Staats ultimately came to call his approach psychological behaviorism(link is external).Despite an impressive and broad network of connections, and a research methodology that yielded fascinating results across a wide variety of phenomena, as Staats himself acknowledged, his approach to unification failed. The behaviorists continued to compete about conceptual issues, and complained that Staats did not fundamentally resolve their disputes. And traditional (intrapsychic-mentalistic) psychologists basically dismissed psychological behaviorism as a fundamentally behavioral perspective that could not effectively incorporate eithercognitionor consciousness. Thus, he ended up pleasing virtually no one (at least relative to the scope of his vision), and, consequently, the only people who are likely to be familiar with Arthur Staats are historians of psychological theory.

Arthur StaatsAlthough Staats made a noble effort, from a natural science perspective (and Staats saw psychology as a natural science), his approach was doomed from the start. This is because a unified theory of psychology is essentially impossible. Scientists,especially real scientists like physicists, are a skeptical bunch. If one is going to make an incredible claim like discovering a unified theory that upends currentunderstandingand can serve as the foundation for further growth, one had better generate some incredible and precise predictions, and demonstrate the accuracy of those predictions with experiment. Consider, for example, Einstein's work on general relativity, and the predictions it made regarding the perihelion motion of Mercury (explained by how the sun bends light because its gravity bends the spacetime field around it). These were incredibly precise predictions that could not be explained by standard (Newtonian) models of gravity. This is the way that real sciences (i.e., physics) advance. By generating theories that derive precise predictions which are then measured, and further followed up by experiments designed to rule out alternative explanations. It is this process that beats back the intense skepticism of scientists. Without it, one can never hope to coral the field at a large scale level.If this is the frame for what real science is about, we can see immediately that psychology cannot be unified. Psychology does not really even have the first building blocks of a coherent science, which is a workable conceptual-semantic system that the practitioners of that science can agree on. Staats' argument was really at a conceptual-semantic level, not at a precise, experimental predictive level. Of course, "a working broad conceptual framework" does not sound nearly as sexy as a unified theory.There are additional reasons why no one should be venturing forth with a unified theory of psychology. Again, the only possible way a unified theory could be achieved would be via its connection to the hard sciences. Social scientists, humanists, and postmodernists are all generally grounded in a relativistic frame that would make them scoff at the idea of a unified theory. Concerned about the power implications associated with orthodoxy, hierarchy, and foundationalism, these thinkers will raise serious epistemological andmoralconcerns about achieving a centralized conceptual coherence of psychology, embracing its pluralism as a testament to the human freedom to believe in what defines us. Thus, one will never win a political argument for conceptual unification. So one's only hope to unification lies in the precise, mathematical prediction of animal/human behavior, grounded in the biological and physical sciences.And yet we know that such foundational scientific grounding is impossible because the bedrock of such a construction, grounded as it must be in physics, is itself not unified. There is NO unified theory of physics. Physicists thought that Newton had shown the light on all the physical world, and prior to the turn of the 20th century, there was a sense that the material world had been effectively mapped. But cracks appeared and by 1920, Newton's ideas had been frayed at the edges of the very small by quantum mechanics and the very large by general relativity. The great Einstein spent the rest of hiscareer, literally until his death in 1955, searching for a unified field theory that would connect general relativity and quantum mechanics. He failed in that quest, and it remains unsolved. Physics is not unified. And indeed, with mysteries surrounding the Higgs Boson, multiverses, wormholes, and now perhaps even violations of one of the universe's foundational constants, the speed of light, any claims that it will be unified seem far off.In short, conceptual unification will never be achieved as there are too many political forces that pull it apart. Foundational unification could only come via precise experimental prediction grounded in physics. Yet, since physics itself is fragmented, such a dream seems misguided. Perhaps that is why since Staats there really has only been one individual who has devoted his career to tilting at such windmills.(Note that this is the first in a series of three posts on the unified theory. In the second and third posts, I defend the unified theory from the criticisms leveled here. As I tell my students and clients, it is important to be able to step outside your frame of reference and empathize with your critics.)

A Unified Psychology?Posted byChrisonNovember 2, 2006(6)TweetShare on emailMore What is psychology? If you were asked to define it, could you? In the 12 years that Ive been studying psychology, Ive been asked no more than 5 times what psychology is, and each time, I struggled and ultimately failed to come up with a definition. To be honest, though, that doesnt bother me in the least. If theres one thing psychology has taught me, its that definitions arent worth a whole hell of a lot anyway. And given how few times the issue has come up, despite the fact that Ive been surrounded by psychologists for the entirety of my adult life, I never really thought it bothered anyone else all that much either. Until I readthis postat PsyBlog, that is. There I found links to a series of posts on unity in psychology. Those posts discuss what appears to be an ongoing debate about how to unify psychology, theoretically, methodologically, terminologically, etc., and central to that discussion is how to define psychology.Now, I sympathize with some of the concerns that are raised in those posts and the articles they cite. Here are a few quotes to give you an idea of what motivates people to unify psychology:Psychology has so many unrelated elements of knowledge with so much mutual discreditation, inconsistency, redundancy, and controversy that abstracting general meaning is a great problem. There is a crisis, moreover, because the disunification feeds on itself and, left unchanged, will continue to grow.1It is simply a sad fact that in soft psychology theories rise and decline, come and go, more as a function of baffled boredom than anything else; and the enterprise shows a disturbing absence of that cumulative character that is so impressive in disciplines like astronomy, molecular biology and genetics.2Psychology, meanwhile, languishes back in the Dark Ages compared to physics. At least physics has agreed on common terminology for its fundamental concepts. You dont find different physicists with different names for gravity. By contrast in psychology, as Staats (1999) points out, we have, for example: self-concept, self-image, self-perception, self-esteem, self-efficacy and the plain old self. Whats the difference? Perhaps little, yet all these words are still used and this is just one of many ill-defined concepts. (Fromthis postat PsyBlog)When I started my first psychology course I couldnt understand the separation between the different subjects, or disciplines, in psychology. Developmental psychologists arent that much different from cognitive psychologists they both study mental events and processes but one almost never refers to the other. Why? (Fromthis postat PsyBlog)Its certainly true that, across the different areas of psychology, there is a great deal of redundancy and contradiction in psychological theories, and god knows the discipline has terminological problems. Its not just that there are a bunch of terms for constructs that are basically the same, but the terms we use tend to be vague and confusing (just try to figure out what a schema is to a social psychologist). The field could definitely be served, then, by more inter-area communication, and an emphasis on terminological rigour. But a unified psychology?First, what would a unified psychology be? To start, you need a definition. The clearest definition I found when reading the papers and posts at PsyBlog was in a paper by John Kihlstrom3. He wrote:The unity of psychology as a science is to be found in its definition as the science of mental life, and its explanation of individual behavior in terms of mental states.But no, thats not true. I doubt the psychologists studying the nervous systems of flatworms (and there are biological psychologists who do that sort of thing, you know) would say that theyre studying mental life, or that they explain anything about flatworms in terms of mental states. It may just be a philosophical prejudice of mine, but I dont think flatwormshavemental states. Sure, you could argue that theyre studying mental life indirectly, by learning about neural processes which can be extended to species that do have mental states, and whose behaviors can be explained in terms of mental states, but that just feels like cheating. This definition, like all definitions, suffers from the problem that if you look hard enough (and in this case, I didnt have to look very hard), you can find exceptions. So the project is off to a rocky start.The next step in unifying psychology is to come up with some sort of unifying theory. A representative example of such an attempt comes from Gregg Henriques4. Henriques takes an epistemological approach to unification. He writes:What is needed is a metatheoretical framework that crisply defines the subject matter of psychology, demonstrates how psychology exists in relationship to the other sciences, and allows one to systematically integrate the key insights from the major perspectives in a manner that results in cumulative knowledge. (p. 152)For Henriques, that metatheoretical approach can be found at the midpoint between Skinnerian behaviorism, with its focus on observable behavior and rejection of all things mental, and Freudian psychoanalysis, with its focus on exactly what behaviorism rejects, the mental. This suggestion is mindbogglingly banal. Forgetting for a moment that Freudian psychoanalysis has a lot of baggage that we dont want, this middle-ground is essentially what the cognitive revolution gave us (as Kihlstrom notes). Cognitive science is essentially behavioristic, particularly in its methodology, but it admits, and even focuses on, the mental. Since the cognitive revolution begain 50 years ago, and since that time psychology has developed several new areas, while terminological confusion has remained consistent, if it hasnt increased, something tells me that this approach to unification aint gonna work.As far as I can tell, then, this discussion is getting us nowhere. And its not likely to in the foreseeable future, either. The problem with it is pretty clear. As you can see from the above quotes, the ultimate motivation for unifying psychology is one that has both helped and hindered modern psychology since its inception in the 19th century: phsyics envy. These people want psychology to be like the natural sciences, and physics in particular. But the thing is, psychology isnt physics. For one, physics has got a couple millenia on psychology (and even if you only consider modern physics, its still got a good 500 years on psychology). Hell, old man physics cant agree on a single paradigm, so it would be a miracle if toddler psychology could. Furthermore, Im not convinced that the reason there are different, competing paradigms, isnt a good one. We understand so little about thought and behavior that there is a lot of room for disputes about how to go about thinking about them. In cognitive science, the connectionist, embodied cognition, dynamic systems theory, computationalism, exist, and compete (though theres overlap and cooperation, too) because they each provide insights that the others lack. Thats to be expected in a young discipline, and I think its a good thing. It speeds the process of understanding and explanation along, because it allows people to take multiple perspectives on the problems with which were struggling.That leads to the second reason why a unified psychology based, either analogically or literally, on the model of physics, is doomed to fail. Psychology is just more complex than phsyics. The brain is wider than the sky, and all that. The reason there are so many areas of psychology, and so many specialized sub-areas, is that there are all sorts of behaviors and mental processes (theoretically, an infinite number). Even if we do come up with a unified metatheoretical framework for studying them someday, were still going to have a bunch of different areas and sub-areas, because well still have to study all of those different types of behaviors and mental processes. I probably dont need to tell you this, but a bunch of areas and subareas within physics, too. I wonder how much communication there is between geophysicists and those people who hang out at particle accelorators. My guess is, about as much as there is between cognitive psychologists and and the people studying the development of antisocial behavior in adolescents.None of this is to say that psychology couldnt benefit from more communication between areas, as I said before. In grad school, I took a course on memory that was designed for clinical psychologists, and was amazed at how little the head-shrinkers-in-training knew about even the basics of memory, despite the fact that memory plays a central role in many psychological disorders. And we cognitive psychologists could probably benefit from spending more time with individual differences psychologists, because we tend to get wrapped up in the middle of distributions, and forget that their tails even exist. We dont need a unified metatheoretical framework to talk to people whose labs are on different floors in the psychology building, though. We just need to be more social, and maybe to read some of those journals that we have on the bookshelves in our offices, but have never actually opened. Im also inclined to believe that terminological confusion could be alleviated by more communication. What cant be helped by communication will probably just sort itself out anyway, especially as psychologists adopt more sophisticated modeling techniques (as opposed to, say, modeling their data with ANOVA or regression, which are only as strong as your interpretations of them), and as the discipline becomes more mathematically rigorous.If its not clear at this point, I think unifying psychology is a bad idea. We cant even say what it is wed be unifying, and were simply not in a place where a single, global perspective is possible. This is what Evolutionary Psychologists wanted to do, and look how well that turned out. In order to make the certainty of evolutionary theory fit with the uncertainty of psychology, Evolutionary Psychologists had to water down the former to the point where evolutionary biologists can hardly recognize it. Ultimately, I think the disunity of psychology is a good thing. It allows us to keep our options open, and it means that we have a bunch of people looking at the problems of psychology in a bunch of different ways, while allowing us to avoid being too silly (Evolutionary Psychology) or trite (whatever the hell it is that Henrique is saying).

1Staats, A. W. (1991). Unified positivism and unification psychology: Fad or new field?American Psychologist, 46, 899-912. Quoted in Henriques, G. (2003) The tree of knowledge system and the theoretical unification of psychology.Review of General Psychology, 7(2), 150-182.2Ibid.3Kihlstrom , J.F. (2004) Unity within psychology, and unity between science and practice.Journal of Clinical Psychology, 60(12), 1243-1247.4Henriques, G. (2003) The tree of knowledge system and the theoretical unification of psychology.Review of General Psychology, 7(2), 150-182.

Can there be a Grand Unified Theory of Personality?

Bradley Templeton Scobie

No single theory of personality can adequately explain the full function of human behaviour.Psychodynamic approaches often come under a lot of criticism as they fail to be explicit about the underlying bases of the theory. Cognitive theories are not very comfortable with explaining emotions and behavioural theories have difficulty explaining the mechanisms of improvements.It has become quite clear in the field ofPsychology, and to some Psychologists like Windy Dryden (Individual Therapy) explicitly clear that there is a missing linkand that somewhere amongst the mass of theories on personality, the answer is staring them in the face.These Psychologists often practice a form of Psychology called Eclectism, which takes a little out of each theory and unites it during therapy with a client.You cant use this sort of therapy as a theory however because all the Eclectic Psychologist is doing is ignoring the fundamental ideological underpinnings of the particular theories he is using and taking the parts relevant to their client in therapyThis essay will explore one of the possible combinations of theories on personality and explain how it can be applied in practical therapy.Eysenkes theory of biological bases in behaviour is the base of this essays approach. It provides the rules within which the other two personality theories (Kellys Personal Construct Theory and Maslows Hierarchy of Human needs) can function.Using Eysenkes theory on extravert and introvert behaviour it is possible to determine from birth, very general traits about which a person is willing to work within (aggression, anxiety tolerance and sociability etc) which is where this essay believes Kelly slightly misunderstands this concept and defines it as his Range Corrollary. Really the person is experiencing a fundamental shift from Extravert behaviour or thinking to Introvert or vice versa which causes slight unease and can account for things like shyness etc.One of the major criticisms of Kellys Personal Construct Theory is that he finds it hard to explain why constructs are laid down in the first place and why one would rigourously defend the threat to a core construct. What kick starts the Construct system into defending itself when motivation is clearly and explicitly lacking in his theory?Eyesenkes theory provides an amicable solution. If we could assume that this information was genetically coded in to the cells at birth then this no longer becomes an issue and we can explain hows and why the constructs are laid down to a loose genetic template i.e introvertism and extravertism.This fusion also removes the criticism of Eyesenke that his theory is a theory of temperament rather than personality. If Eyesenkes theory really is just a theory of Temperament then that is all good and well in thisUnified theoryas it is merely a foundation or code upon which the rest of the personality can develop. If you can see things on an evolutionary scale, then it is clear that the change has to come from somewhere and that that change has the weight of evidence in genetics.In extravetism and Introvertism it is clear that there are distinct disadvantages and advantages so it is not so much of a leap of faith to consider that perhaps evolution is trying out to very distinct methods of social interaction and the confusion resulting from this manifests itself as in Psychologists trying to determine personality through one perspective alone when Psychologists dont consider our personalities to be in any sort of evolutionary transition. The fact that Psychologists are unable to conclusively predict human behaviour or thought using a single approach only serves to strengthen this consideration.Kellys Personal Construct Theory would simply say that the personal realities of the Psychologists involved are unable to extend the range of their constructs to accept this and understand the concept of personality in evolutionary transition.Without this consideration it is this essays position that it is impossible to come to any conclusive rule about human personality or behaviour as you are not accounting for the dynamic nature of two very different personal archetypes.Kellys Personal Construct Theory goes a long way to explaining the human mind but it needs the genetic archetype of Eyesenkes biological basis and a motivation to interact with the society that the mind shares.For Kelly this motivation comes from a natural inquisitive nature, but it is not explicitly explained why the mind should be like this. It is only assumed. Eyesenke again can provide the answer if you are willing to concede that this sort of information can be genetically coded.There is a problem however. The type of mind described in this essay is only functional. It would not be a very rich or interesting apparatus and life would be essentially a personal experience, which of course we know it not to be. Human experience is shared daily and at many levels of interaction. Where does this need come from?It could be argued that it is merely a social constraint and that this need to share and feel part of something is imposed upon us by the societies we live in. It is the position of this essay that although there is an element of truth in this predisposition that this argument is somewhat paradoxical. Where does the need to feel loved or part of something come from in the absence of a society? Would we still feel the need?This drive is the thrust of this essaysGrandUnified Theory of Personality and the last piece of the Jigsaw. In order to make us the Social animals we are you need a humanistic approach as an addition to your Theory. In this way, the mind begins to take the sort of shape that a society would demand from it as being normal.To illustrate this we will use Maslows Hierarchy of Human Needs as the Humanistic top up.The majority of Maslows needs are all ones that most Societies say we should retain a measure of to be deemed healthy, and these include needs like love so that we may feel fully integrated into society and do not become alienated, or a need for self esteem to feel valuable to society and not inferior. Above all this however is the need for Self Actualisation which provides the mind with its essence, a focus or goal of being. Without this focus most people will feel innate and deeply depressed as if life was not worth living.How to Cite this PageMLA Citation:"Can there be a grand unified theory of Psychology? Discuss.."123HelpMe.com. 10 Mar 2015 .

MONDAY, MAY 24, 2010On Unified Field Theory in Psychology

Albert Einstein spend the latter years of life in pursuit of a general field theory; that is, something to explain how gravitational field sand electromagnetic fields intersect. How they can be encompassed in a single englobing theory. We are also looking for such a theory so that we no longer chase down every new symptom or disease as independent of all others. This is particularly true when it comes to the psychologic and psychosomatic diseases. What should seem obvious, that neurology, psychology and biology all intersect in the human body, seems to have been forgotten in the piecemeal approach in these three disciplines. In order to understand them, therefore, we need to approach the whole system as it interacts. I believe that what we have now is an inchoate Primal Field Theory that links various aspects of the human condition together. For example, in the field of biology there are tumor suppressor genes that control runaway developing cancer cells. These interact with human experience (psychology), even in the womb, that affects these suppressor genes and may allow for the development of cancer. In addition that may then lead to later manifestation of brain cancer (neurology). If we look only at presenting pictures of the tumor our field of inquiry is quite narrow. Or if we look only at the presenting symptom of obsession we are again at a loss. Or if we examine only the blood system it is too confining to provide answers. A Primal Field Theory indicates how they all intersect and interact to produce disease. I believe we will never arrive at causes until we embrace field theory. Otherwise, we are the position of knowing more and more about less and less; studying the minutae of a symptom, hoping to discover ultimate causes. It wont happen.

What I find even more important is how to treat these diseases. A psychologic approach eliminates a rounded understanding, as does any single approach such as the neurological approach. This permits such conclusions as someone acts out violently because he is deficient in serotonin. Or migraine is due to insufficient vasoconstriction. So we add coffee to the mix, and the patient gets better. Is the problem solved? The manifestation or symptom may be but not the basic problems.

How then can we be proficient enough to understand phenomena in all three disciplines? There are possibly a few in the world who are competent enough but perhaps, that is not necessary. Perhaps, field theory can set the direction of research and then specialists can help out. I am not proficient in biology, for example, but my experience, current research and our investigation of natural killer cells leads me to theorize that these cells which are on the lookout for newly developing cancer cells, are heavily affected by experience. We find that they work in see-saw fashion with levels of cortisol. When we reduce cortisol levels in patients, natural killer cells are enhanced.

We can add this or reduce that but we cannot understand the whole problem without a field theory. Otherwise, we will only find what we are narrowly looking for, and no more. Another example, we learn that telomere cells respond directly to cortisol levels; the lower the resting cortisol level the longer the telomere cells. Since this length may explain how long we may live, it is crucial to investigate it within a field theory. Otherwise we learn a great deal about telomeres (and the research is important) but not about how the psychologic/experiential affects it all. All aspects of experience are in play in our bodies at all times. We can abstract them for study but it is still an abstraction.