Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-25T21:18:47.431Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Schools of Psychology: A Complementary Pattern

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Saul Rosenzweig
Saul Rosenzweig*
Affiliation:
Worcester State Hospital, Worcester, Mass.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

“If, then, we are really to find out what is true and what is false, we must direct our attention to the role of any particular item in the whole of which it is a part.”

—Wertheimer: On Truth.

In these days of Gestalttheorie it seems not untimely to inquire whether psychology itself does not stand in need of being recognized as a configuration of complementary parts. The suggestion, it is true, tends at the first to be repudiated by the implacability of the schools with their claims and counterclaims resounding on every side. On further analysis, however, such controversy seems to acquire the very different significance of having permitted certain partial aspects of the whole field to become well-articulated, even if in somewhat exaggerated form. In other words, if there is any underlying unity in psychology, then the very overstatements of the school zealots while unwittingly defeating their own purpose may have been doing the science a real service by throwing its basic pattern into bold relief. In broadest terms this seems to describe what has been happening in psychology in the recent past and to define the present stage of its development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 1937 , pp. 96 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1937

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Presented before the Psychology Seminar, Worcester State Hospital, November 15, 1934 and before the Psychology Club, Skidmore College, February 25, 1936.

References

(1) Bridgman, P. W. The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan, 1928. Pp. xiv + 228.Google Scholar
(2) Bridgman, P. W. The Nature of Physical Theory. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1935. Pp. 138.Google Scholar
(3) Bridgman, P. W. A physicist's second reaction to Mengenlehre, Scripta Mathematica, 1934, 2, 101-117; 224–234.Google Scholar
(4) Bühler, K. Die Krise der Psychologie. Jena: Fischer, 1927. Pp. xv + 223.Google Scholar
(5) French, T. M. Interrelations between psychoanalysis and the experimental work of Pavlov, Amer. J. Psychiat., 1933, 12, 1165–1203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(6) Heidbreder, E. Seven Psychologies. New York: Century, 1933. Pp. viii + 450.Google Scholar
(7) Klein, D. B. Eclecticism versus system-making in psychology, Psychol. Rev., 1930, 37, 488–496.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(8) Köhler, W. Die physischen Gestalten in Ruhe und im stationären Zustand. Verlag der Philosophischen Akademie: Erlangen, 1924. Pp. xx + 263.Google Scholar
(9) Russell, B. Philosophy. New York: Norton, 1927. Pp. v + 307.Google Scholar
(10) Stevens, S. The operational basis of psychology, Amer. J. Psychol., 1935, 47, 323–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(11) Stevens, S. The operational definition of psychological concepts, Psychol. Rev., 1935, 42, 517–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
(12) Wertheimer, M. On truth, Soc. Res., 1934, 1, 135–146.Google Scholar