The psychology , of the Greek psukhê , heart, and logos , Science, is the study Scientifique facts Psychique S, knowledge Empirique or Intuitive of the Sentiment S, Idée S, Comportement S of others and his clean, the whole in the manners Penser, to feel, act which characterize a person, an animal, a group, a character.

Divided into many branches of study, its disciplines approach the field in the theoretical plan as well as Pratique, with therapeutic , social applications, and sometimes Politique S or theological.
La psychology aims at the investigation of the Psychisme like base of a subjective structure and an operation specific (process and mechanism) articulated to perception and representation of the outside world.

Definition

Étymologiquement, the psychology is the study ( Logos ) of the heart or psyché ( Psukhê ). In its Greek direction , this study relates to the vegetative functions (Psychophysiologie), sensitive (perceptions, motivation, motricity) intellective (cognitive psychology), (cf Aristote, Peri Psukhè ). But psychology is not only one study of the functions of the Esprit but also an approach Casuistique of subjectivity, an investigation of a truth within individuality and the personality of a subject. The Esprit is not only one place of combination or of connection, it defines us as being thinking able to think itself vis-a-vis the world, and that in a material report/ratio or thanks to the abstraction already there (one sees a distinction with the animal).

The object of study of psychology is a nonclosed debate since centuries. Indeed, according to the authors, psychology was centered on very different objects, without it being still possible to decide today which is the unit theory which would be largely accepted.

Thus the approaches on this extremely complex question are divided traditionally between those which consider that the object of psychology is the behavior and its genesis, the processes of the thought, the emotions and the character or the personality and the human relations, etc

The various branches of psychology are characterized either by the method used (clinical or experimental), or by the human activity considered (work, memory, perception, training, care, behavior in group, etc), or by great field of investigation (cognitive psychology, psychopathology, social psychology, child psychology and development, psychophysiology, animal psychology).

Certain disciplines of psychology combine with others, either in related fields or like under-fields of a vaster field of studies. They are often subjected to frightening epistemological problems, for example the psychopedagogy, social psychology or psychopathology, etc Indeed, it is difficult to say for example what is or is not pathology in general and thus even more difficult to specify the pathology of the Esprit, of the personality… to put the question, it is to realize of the theoretical shelves which are still not exceeded.

Lastly, for a long time, the relationship between psychology and philosophy was very narrow, even indistinguishable since psychology was formerly part of philosophy, part which was often - in antiquity especially - behavior itself for part of the physique to the old direction (morals, the conscience, the action, etc are traditionally philosophical topics that one meets in psychology). Certain currents in psychology explicitly base their postulates on philosophical theses such as personalism, humanism, the biologism, etc

It is this extreme diversity which makes historical complexity of it, the results locally achieved cross and one needs long studies to disentangle rationality and the interest of it. It is thus very easy to obtain soft theories or to carry out incoherent syntheses, which do not miss throughout the history multimillénaire of psychology.

Beside does “erudite” psychology, there exist for each one the feeling “to know something of it” since we know all what is a character, a feeling, a thought, an emotional relation, etc Alors, which can say moreover the psychologist on these questions? The more so as the majority of the general psychological assertions appear to be able to be contradicted or find a counterexample which ruins them.

It is also possible to oppose, in the field of the social sciences, psychology with the Sociologie, the Anthropologie and the Political sciences, in what she initially studies of the people.

As it is in theory or in practice, the definition of the object of psychology is a unsolved question.

History of psychology

See also: Chronology of the history of psychology

Before presenting the great historical stages of the development of psychological sciences, it is essential to locate the three directions of studies which structure the field of human psychism. Indeed, the human person it is, indissolubly, a body with a developed Cerveau allowing very elaborate conduits, a Personnalité, supported on this living organism, in connection with a company, a subjectivity (conscious and unconscious) built starting from the personality and inserted in a whole of social representations.

Center conduits

Historically, it is this first axis which profited from a scientific treatment, with methods and imported instruments of other fields of science. The Conduite S are studied by neuropsychophysiologic sciences, as natural conduits. They are, from this point of view, analyzable and measurable as well for the human Comportement as for that of the animals. And if one cannot, strictly speaking, to build a animal psychology , there exists an animal neuropsychophysiology.

According to this axis, developed traditionally the studies of the Réflexe S, the Perception, the emotion, the character, etc Since the years 1990, the development of the Neuroscience S or of cognitive sciences, allowed to approach the operation of the brain for each conduit. Thus, we can discover the possibilities of human as an animal provided with a powerful brain.

Center personality

The direction of the Acte S cannot be induced conduits: it calls upon another order of explanations, although any act implements neuropsychophysiologic conduits and passes by the brain. The acts are at the same time produced and producers of the personality during his individualization within a historical process, biographical. The theories of the personality belong to the field of psychological sciences and inform us on:

• the singular structure of the activities, their distribution in the Timetable which mobilizes trainings or actions of production,
• the degree of satisfaction of the personal needs;
• contradictions between the various needs, within the company and of the personal life, and their possibilities of satisfaction which give a form to the personality, support or block its development.

This axis supposes a definition of the personality, but no agreement could still be done on this definition which appears always a little in margin of work of psychology. Although the personality is largely evoked and studied in literature, art, in the biographies, the existing theories give only partial outlines on what returns such or such relevant and decisive biographical event. The various definitions suggested by the theories of the personality are contradictory, certain seeing the personality like a core of permanent and repetitive conduits, others imagining that the personality is an alive system, evolutionary throughout the life, others still make personality a moral, ideal entity.

Center subject

The object of this axis is the analysis of the formation and the development of the Sujet, of subjectivity like structure, which is built within the framework proposed by:

• the language,
• structures of relationship,
• the socialization of sexuality,
• the place in the operation of the company, etc

Belong to these studies:

• unconscious conflicts caused by the passage of heteronomy to the autonomy, by the socialization of the natural Impulse S;
• the self-awareness, of the kind, its place in the family and the company;
• the progressive awakening of the determinants Unconscious S and social of the conduits, etc

The integration of these sciences of subjectivity supplements psychological sciences.

These three axes are more or less present at the wire of the history of psychology, since the precursors until current research. This evolution, unequally advanced according to the axes often considered as independent from/to each other even exclusive, will be used to us as discussion thread through the extreme variety of work in psychology.

A first stage was separation between the Philosophie and psychology. This separation is still incomplete on certain aspects, in particular for the subject where confusion remains frequent between subject, philosophical and prone category, scientific concept in psychology.

Precursors

Philosophers

Well before precursory work of Plato (- 427, -348) and of Aristote (- 384, -322) in psychology (the term will exist only as from 1575, Johannes Thomas Freigius, Ciceronianus ), the men were interested in perception, the feelings, the emotions, the feelings and the thought. The traces are some in the Iliade and the Odyssée, in the Mythologie S of all the people or in the crowned books, the historical psychology (Ignace Meyerson, 1888-1983) shows it well. The first known texts which evoke a reflection on the emergence of the thought and the conscience are those which the history preserved, but it is probable that they were based on former work which we do not know.

Thus Plato and Aristote appear in full light, whereas we do not have or very few texts of their contemporaries Démocrite (c-460, c-360) or Épicure (- 342, -270). Lucrèce (- 98, -54), known better, belongs to this heritage of the Antiquity which it is necessary to supplement by the two commentators of Aristote, Ibn Rochd (Averroès, 1126-1198) and Thomas d' Aquin (1225-1274), which will take again centuries later its work and will constitute the funds of what will be the Scolastique.

For Pythagore (500 before J.C.), the brain is the seat of the intelligence and the madness.

Plato describes a hierarchisation of psychism: the higher heart (courage, ambition) localized in the heart, the nutritive lower heart in the liver. In the Phédon , it separates the immaterial heart, therefore the Pensée, of the material body and considers that the heart controls the body. This idealistic dualism will leave deep traces until in the various currents of the psychology of the 20th century.

Aristote criticizes Plato; for him, the heart is not the pilot of the body. In Metaphysics , it raises the question:

“How would the Ideas, which are the substance of the things, be separated from the things? ”

Aristote introduced into its Treated heart a tripartition of the heart, with a prospect gradualist: vegetative, sensitive and cognitive, which reproduces the partition of the living beings in plants, animals and man. (The doctors speak traditionally about a “vegetative state”.) It is interested in faculties of the heart (the memory, the Jugement, etc) and considers what in the heart knows and thinks: it names it “ poiètikon ”, the poetic understanding, which must be rather understood in the modern direction of “mental representation” that of poetry). The will aims at obtaining the pleasure and the elimination of the pain, in a design close to the epicureanism.

Thus while wondering about the relationship between body and perception, body and thought, thought and subject, Aristote begin a debate, taken again with the wire of the centuries, to know if “intellect agent” and “material intellect” are single and eternal (divine) or if the heart and intellect are separate. Its answer is that the heart is with the body as the form is with the matter (distinct and inseparable).

Lucrèce section by affirming that the heart as “a vital breath” ( animated Latin ) animates the body and in Of will natura rerum ( nature of the things ), it notes that:

“If we do not pose initially this base matière, we will be able with what to refer to us for nothing to establish by the reasoning, when they are the obscure things. ”

The oppositions between the designs monist S and dualistic S are old and the great difficulty to define the relationship between the body and the thought will occupy the psychologists of the following centuries.

Doctors

The other pouring of ancient science is that of the observations and the experiments of the doctors. As of highest Antiquity, the interrogations on the mental health and the disorders mental are attested: the Papyrus Ebers (c1550 before J.C.) contains a short clinical description of the depression, with magic or religious receipts to drive out it.

The poems of Homère present the Folie like an offense of the gods.

The medical thought is born with Empédocle (484-424 before J.C.) in Sicily with its theory from qualities from the four elements (ground, water, air, fire) in its relationship with four moods necessary to the Bien-être: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.

Hippocrates (c460-c370 before J.C.) carries out a classification of the mental disorders including/understanding the Manie, the Mélancolie, the Paranoïa or deterioration, the epilepsy, in relation to the Tempérament S blood, coleric, phlegmatic or melancholic person. It thus joins together the diseases of the heart and of the body, the diseases are physical, and thus it takes part to demystify the mental disease, which was until there, rather related to démoniaques demonstrations.

Arétée de Cappadoce (80-138) made fine descriptions of mental disorders, in particular it proposes the starter of a unit design of the melancholy and mania.

It is Galien (131-201) which will gather former knowledge (work of Hippocrates and those of Aristote in particular) and will extend them considerably in what will become, for fifteen centuries, the primary source of medical knowledge in the spheres of influence Jewish, Christian and Moslem. Thus, it opens a step of physiological experiments, anatomy, diagnosis and therapeutic, pharmacology and hygiene. Medicine, as of Hippocrates, is preventive (hygiene) as much as curative. The causes of the disease and health are required among natural, rational causes.

Galien distinguishes, like Hippocrates, four temperaments and articulates them with the four elements in combinative which enables him to classify the diseases according to imbalances between the various tendencies, the bases of the affectivity and the appearing behavior of biochemical nature. Thus the excess of blood led to the sanguine constitution, yellow bile to the temperament cholérique, of black bile to temperament melancholic person, etc It is this approach which is found centuries later in the Caractérologie (cf the Seine (1882-1954) in particular).

Alexandre de Tralles (525-605), Greek doctor originating in Lycie, develops the theory of Galien and carries out a starter of the theories cerebral “localisationnists”. The heritage hippocratic of ancient medicine ends in the first steps of a Psychiatrie founded on four great diseases: frenzy and lethargy associated in toxinfectious states, the mania and melancholy, “madnesses without fever”.

The Arab heritage will be transmitted only to the 11th century, with its translation in Latin.

(It would be necessary to supplement this table of Mediterranean science by other sciences, Chinese, Japan ease, Indian, etc)

End of the 19th century and beginning of: first successes

In the current spirit, we note a way of rewriting the history by proposing all that supports scientific lighting. Thus can be born confusion between the Neurologie and psychology.

For the Neurology, it goes without saying that the first successes are for example:

• Hermann von Helmholtz (1821 - 1894): With proven that the Nerf S led electricity indeed.

• Camillo Golgi (1843 - 1926): In 1873, thanks to a solution of Silver nitrate, it becomes possible for the first time to see the Neuron S.
• Santiago Ramón there Cajal (1852 - 1934): Will apply the technique of Golgi to specify the structure of the Nervous system. Is at the origin of the cellular theory, i.e. of not-continuity between the neurons. Divide the Nobel Prize physiology and medicine of 1906 with Golgi.
• Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850 - 1909): At summer the first to apply an experimental method in the study of the memory.
• Charles Scott Sherrington (1857 - 1952): In spite of the relations of communication between the neurons updated by Ramón there Cajal, it is him which uses the term “Synapse” for the first time.
• Otto Loewi (1873 - 1961): In 1921, it shows in experiments the chemical transmission of information between the neurons, by the means of the Neurotransmetteur S, which it will contribute to describe.
• Wilder Penfield (1891 - 1976): Founder of the Institute of neurology of Montreal in 1934, he was a precursor in the identification of the cerebral zones connected to certain activities (e.g.: Homoncule) while trying to discover a remedy for the epilepsy.

With regard to psychology more precisely, it is more difficult to locate one period making it possible to qualify “the first” successes. Let us recall that it is the failure of Freud in connection with the hypnosis which was the great success of the psychoanalysis. If we must find reference marks outstanding, it would be more on the side of the methods employed, and for this reason, modernity primarily characterizes its projections in psychology while being based on the concept of method psychological which is truly the outstanding “success” more proclamation from a développemental point of view.

The beginning of the 20th century: methodological approach in psychology

• Freud and the Inconscient
  the psychoanalysis sounds the departure of a long reflexive step on the human being starting from a renewed lexicon and of a plentiful methodology (often difficult to encircle) still fertile a century later, although this page of Wikipédia does not make until now the share of the things… Nevertheless, it is important to specify that Psychanalyse and Psychologie is two quite distinct disciplines . The first proposes to study in an almost exclusive way operation and the reports/ratios which maintains unconscious the with the psychic life the subject, while the second studies mainly the conscience and the various processes that this one implements to acquire, process and transmit data, these last being able to come either from the environment with which the organization interacts (external information), or of the organization itself (required internal information in memory).
• the Behaviorism (the psychology of the behavior, or behaviorism)
• the relation Stimulus - answer (S->R): conditionings traditional (I. Pavlov) and operative/instrumental (J. Watson; B. Skinner). They are the first models of the training (raising). However, although these two models were shown at the beginning of a great predictive reliability, they will end up falling in disuse because of their incapacity to describe and explain the operation of " the box noire" that the cognitivism, it, endeavoured to open and study. The model consequently will refine and take the following form: S->O->R (S: Stimulus; O: Organization; R: Answers. As well as " S" and " R" , " O" thus becomes here a variable with whole share).
• Jean Piaget (1896-1980) cognitive psychology establishes the Esprit in the center of these concerns. She is opposed thus to the behaviorism which was not interested any more but in the behaviors. Cognitive psychology studies the whole of the cognitive functions: perception, attention, memory, the language and mental activities.
• Donald Hebb (1904 - 1985): One of the first to be opposed to the prospect behaviorist and to start the study of the treatment of the information.
  Il worked out a theory which, though largely speculative, made state of great cerebral characteristics:
• # the effectiveness of connections between the neurons increases according to their pre and post-synaptic activities.
• # Of the networks of neurons tends to be simultaneously activated so as to form groups whose activity persists with their action and can even represent it.
• # the thought is worked out through the sequential activation of groups of neurons.

Mathematics, the data processing and beginnings of the current cognitivist

• Norbert Wiener (1894 - 1964) and the Cybernetic ( Control Theory ): American mathematician, it applied the statistics to the communication and founded cybernetics (control and the communication at the animal and the machine).

• One of the first to compare the brain with a computer.
• Pioneer of modern cognitive sciences, it specified the concepts of “goal” and “feedback”.
• control, at the time of the realization of an activity, passes by the determination of various hierarchical goals. The activity provides information which is constantly compared with the goals, which constitutes feedback and guides the action.
• Example of the attack of a personal goal.
• Alan Mathison Turing (1912 - 1954): English mathematician and logician.
• Machine of Turing: constitute the base of the automata theory. It formalizes the concept of algorithm and is represented by a succession of instructions acting as sequence on information of entry and likely to provide a result.
• can a machine think? Experiment of thought: will conversation between a man and a machine, how an external observer be able to distinguish the man from the machine? See also the Test of Turing.
• John von Neumann (1903 - 1957): American mathematician of Hungarian origin.
• Quantum physics: mathematical unification of the undulatory theory of Erwin Schrödinger and of the mechanics of the particles of Werner Heisenberg.
• Game theory: cofounder (with Morgenstern) and of his application to the mathematical economy.
• Precursory of the Artificial intelligence (IA): had the idea to code the programs (instead of physical connections), model which always has course today.
• to be interested in the data processing by the biological organizations to define applications to artificial machines (precursor of the connexionism and neurosciences).
• Herbert Simon (1916 - 2001). American economist, " Nobel Prize of économie", 1978.
• Will initiate the debate on the limits of rationality: constraints on the capacity of the agents to process the data available.
• Comment of the limited capacities can evolve/move in an immensely complex environment?
• With Allen Newell, one of the pioneers of data processing, they will develop:
• the human resolution of problems through procedures.
• Will work out the concept of cognitive process in a context of IA.

Clinic psychology

See also: Clinic psychology

The clinic psychology, whose fields of application is clean Psychopathologie of the adult and the child, is a theoretical and practical approach psychic operation which can take support on the psychodynamic designs of the mental life (unification of psychoanalytical work), but also on other contribution in psychotherapeutic, technical techniques always resting, as the psychoanalysis, on a true private clinic of subjectivity.

In this step, the last history of the patient, the vicissitudes of the psychological development and their possible reactualization are snuff in account by the expert. The Symptôme is carrying direction and the singularity of the subject is put at the foreground, just like its lived, and its speech which, itself, is regarded as a “entry of charge” when it is the characteristic of an association of representations and affects.

The goal of the clinic psychology is to apprehend the unit and unicté of the subject in a therapeutic step, which is soutendue by logos belonging clearly to the Social sciences.

After Janet and Freud, the clinic psychology gradually diversified with the arrival of new psychotherapies, fascinating support on other ideal models. If the symptom is always regarded as the expression of a psychical conflict and thus of a subjective history, some practical are centered more on the psychic mobilizations having milked with the emotion or the situations groupales. The Unconscious becoming a more secondary object of investigation. One can, within this framework, speech of the family systemic Thérapies, the Gestalt-therapy, the motivationelle Thérapie, the Psychodrame, of humanistic psychotherapy, to give some examples.

The cognitive prospect: to open the “block box”

The cognitive approach or cognitivist in psychology was constituted within the broader framework of the cognitive Sciences about the middle of the Années 1950. This approach was based on an opposition to the tradition behaviorist which considered the human Esprit (and animal) like a “block box” whose answers (i.e., the behavior) were to be analyzable like a function entries (i.e., sensory inputs), without it being necessary to make additional Hypothèse S on the implied mechanisms. The cognitivist project thus was to seek to characterize not only the bond between the stimulus and the observable behavioral answer by the experimenter but also the organization of the internal processes implied in this behavior. The debate between these two approaches was particularly illustrated in criticism by the Linguiste Noam Chomsky of the work Verbal Behavior of Burrhus Skinner devoted to the Langage. Chomsky denounces the error that there would be to want, as Skinner proposes it, to analyze the language or any other complex behavior like the result of a Apprentissage only based on associations of the behavior-reward type. Thus, in the case of the language, the fact that a child can produce grammatically correct sentences while at the same time it them forever heard (and rewarded forever or not to have said them before) can be explained only by making the assumption why the human Cerveau is equipped with a particular cognitive capacity dedicated to the language and partly Inné E: this argument known as Argument of the poverty of the stimulus will play a big role in the justification of the idea of a universal Grammaire whose all the human beings would be equipped with manner Inné E.

Beyond the question of the language, the cognitivist project will be thus to show the scientific dead end which would consist, according to the tradition behaviorist, to want to include/understand the thought without breaking up it into a complex combination of multiple processes of which some can be Inné S but from which others would result from the training and the experiment. The metaphor which prevails then is that of the brain-computer, at one time when progress in Informatique is full with promises for the Artificial intelligence. According to this Paradigm cognitivist, information would make the object of a sequential treatment or parallel while circulating between the various processes which constitute the human Esprit according to the diagrammatic structure:

Entered (perception) $\backslash \; rightarrow$ cognitive Treatment $\backslash \; rightarrow$ Left (behavior)

Thereafter, these mental processes also received the name of module S because they were conceptualized like mechanisms relatively independent from/to each other. The philosopher Jerry Fodor will formalize this design in a work with the title without ambiguity, the Modularité of the spirit . From this point of view, the Esprit (human) is organized at various levels as a complex mechanics comprising of the modules characterized by the fact that they process certain data in an automatic way. That would explain certain psychological phenomena as the optical illusions which persist even when one knows that it is about an illusion, by the fact that the visual Système functions in a modular way. One can also quote other conceptual approaches based, for example, on the models of networks of neurons where information is distributed within a network made up of a great number of unit. Mechanisms??? data processing. This current known as " connexionniste" although of less influence on the evolution of cognitive psychology will play a big role in???

These theoretical evolutions go hand in hand with experimental developments which form the bases methodologies of the experimentation in cognitive psychology. Among those, one can quote, the renewal of the approach known as of the mental Chronométrie proposed one century rather by the psychologist Franciscus Donders according to whom the measurement of the reaction time provides an index of the processing time of a given stimulus. This methodology in partnership with the decomposition modularist of cognitive psychology gives place to a very great number of experimental work relating to the Perception, the Décision, the Langage, the Calcul, etc the question-keys of cognitive psychology are then:

• Comment of information is drawn from the environment (feelings)?
• Comment sensory information are treated (perception and recognition)?
• Comment this information are stored, organized (memory) and are modified (training)?
• Comment do we use them (Langage, Raisonnement, Decision making, Resolution of problem, Calcul)?
• Comment are they abstract (conscience)?

From the Years 1970, cognitive psychology will strongly evolve/move under the influence of the Neurosciences and the new methods of study of the Cerveau in activity. With progress of technology, the electroencephalography (EEG) makes it possible to measure potential electric from the surface of the Scalp which reflect the dynamics of the total activity of the Neuron S. the analysis of this dynamics opens an access road to the temporal sequence of the nervous activities that one proposes to identify with the sequence of mental operations highlighted by other methods based in particular mental chronometry. During the Years 1980, new methods of cerebral Imagerie will make their appearance with the Tomographie by emission of positons (FART), then the Imagerie by functional magnetic resonance (IRMf) in the Années 1990. Thanks to these last, one can this time know the various areas implied in a given experimental task. Association between mental operation is thus done this time not on temporal dimension but on the space level: the objective being to identify the neurobiologic bases of the modules postulated by cognitive psychology. The use of the methods of the neurosciences within the experimental framework of cognitive psychology will what is called give rise to today the cognitive Neurosciences.

Critical of the approach cognitivist in psychology

Some consider that this prospect is that of “the man machine” who conveys an image of the human being favourable with the ideology of the performance and management. This remark underlines the fact that such an approach is not worried “ecological” impact of its theories, and in this direction, we move away from a psychology which measures its projections according to its congruence with the humanity of its “object” of study: us.

Contrary, good progresses by this discipline since the middle of the 20th century can also be considered from the point of view of a better knowledge of the man, the analytical step and informational modeling being only to guide there the scientist towards precise questions opened with the experimentation: the image of the brain-computer is only one metaphor. In support of this thesis, one can thus evoke the fact that the theory basically evolved to an integration of multiple approaches within the tradition cognitivist, connexionnist in particular, and made it possible to draw up new footbridges with other scientific disciplines like the fundamental neurosciences, the ethology, the Génétique of the behavior, or the social Psychologie and the Social sciences.

Problems of psychology

Psychology is crossed by several problems which split up it according to the options taken by those which study it. The rational and synthetic combination of the results is not the object of a general consensus, even if of course much of results accumulated and so locally, it is possible to affirm that certain assumptions are right or false.

Scientificity of psychology

See also: epistemology

Today still, this question remains posed. Here two designs clash, the first affirming that psychology became a Science well, and the second calling in question this, by affirming that there is in psychology only one prescience. One can be pressed on a text of Kurt Lewin, which opposes the ways of thinking galiléen (scientific) and aristotelician (prescientific), in order to develop this matter.

Psychology is a science

See also: scientific Method, genetic Method, Experimental method

The creation of the laboratories of quantitative psychology, makes say to holding of this methodology, that the science psychology is now a reality. Indeed, this point of view is based on the methods of research used in those:

1. Formulation of an assumption
2. Experimentation or observation
3. Correction, confirmation or invalidation of the assumption
4. Questioning on the conclusions (Return at stage 1)

Thus psychology can be based on reproducible and criticizable results Statistiques. There are also authors who think that the lack of scientific matter teaching (mathematical and technical scientist for example) poses problem at the same time in term of image of the die, and in term of quality of the formation and research in the field.

Psychology is not a science

See also: Critical of the psychoanalysis

In this debate one finds criticisms recurring and targeted in particular on the psychoanalytical theory. Indeed, Pierre Janet, Henri F. Ellenberger, Karl Popper largely wrote on this subject for various reasons. But it seems relevant to widen the debate of the scientificity to the whole of psychology.

If one regards the Man as a Système complexes for example, then one can apply to him the method of Edgar Morin which rejects the reductionistic thought .

Other authors affirm indeed that the methods used are not enough to make psychology a Science, because much of its Concept S are not scientists, but prescientific, in the sense that they are too often of anthropomorphic form S (lived of the individual is used as criterion with the To know). The defenders of this thesis, explain that psychology will be able to become science only when it distinguishes lived, of scientific description. That has nothing to do with the method (quantitative vs Qualitatif), but on the construction of solid concepts .

Moreover, psychology made, for these same people, of the Classification S instinctive and not based on objective criteria, or all at least clarified on criteria which will make it possible to give homogeneous groups (example of classification emotion/Cognition or Intelligence). “The psychological concepts, at least in certain determining connections, are completely aristotelicians in their real contents, although, in other connections, their formulation was somewhat civilized, if one can say”. Indeed, certain concepts of psychology can be seen like a moral judgment (example: normal vs pathological).

Certain scopes of application of psychology seems to put forward this idea: “The study of psychological ageing is a true test by which general psychology and differential watch well its limits. As soon as one deviates from these two cases of figure quoted here, one enters a type of operation where methodological refinement will hopelessly try to mask and to compensate for the insufficiency of the concepts. However the basic problem would be rather that of the statute of the variables used. Method of regrouping of given empirical on the basis of correlation, the factorial analysis can lead only to the creation of contingent empirical categories”.

There exists also another position (psychoanalytical most of the time) in this debate, which defend the idea that psychology can not be a science in a strict sense term without to be a nonrational discipline. The rationality of the psychological speech could be independent of the methods of experimental checking, either because of the ethical interdicts being opposed to certain types of experiments on the subject or for a reason for irreducibility of the complexity of psyché to a simple play of factors. One thus joined, on this last point the preceding thought, but one deviates some when it is known as that the “scientificity” of a rational speech is not the condition sine qua non the serious one of a discipline. However examples show that, sometimes, appearances of the scientificity can cover and hide completely irrational reasons - which play as their part in any work with scientific aiming, since “science” is never as the whole of the speeches known as scientific held by men and women, which could not be completely with the shelter of the “Passion S”, to use of a term which aged certainly much if one refers to the current psychological conceptual corpus.

Idealism and materialism

The oldest problems and most general are that which philosophy projects since the origins on the studies of psychology: the idealistic designs and materialists are opposed since Plato and Épicure and are sensitive to all the times with nuances, variable compromises according to the authors (cf Histoire of psychology). These problems cross the sciences known as cognitive: will research which uses modern tools to analyze the brain materially and to include/understand its operation find the direction of what the person saw?

General scientific method and specific psychological method

The problem is that psychology does not have its specific method of study: each great stage in the history of psychology is marked by the use of scientific methods which obtained successes in other fields and which are applied to what appears to be the object of study of psychology, adequate with the method… circular reasoning which has limited and inevitable effects. For example, the Experimental method will be applied during and centuries, with very criticizable results: Wilhelm Wundt appears to limit psychology so that measurement its instruments (reaction time, exitability,…), the behaviorist Gustav Fechner or studies (behaviorists) will refuse to study the conscience or the thought by considering that it is a “block box” which one can nothing say, nothing to measure. Thus, the linguistic method, the method hermeneutics, etc in turn will bring information but especially of criticisms with regard to the other methods and their results…

Brain and human society

These problems are the consequence of the position of psychology at the border of fields of research which is under development full and which sciences contemporary of the 21e century is far from to have exhausted.

On the one hand, as an object of study the Cerveau is in the middle of sets of themes binding the functional aspects (how the brain produces the thought?) but also genetic and développementaux. The cognitive Neurosciences have, since the middle of the 20th century, undertaken to study the mechanisms with work at the same time in the cellular Physiologie of the Neuron S and in the general organization of the various structures of the brain. In spite of the astonishing progress since then made, the debates remain always sharp as for knowing which is the relevant level of analysis (the individual neuron or the Réseau of neurons), to which neurophysiological mechanisms corresponds the mental operations called upon by the psychology (sequential treatment of information or complex dynamics of interactions) etc Moreover, the approach primarily cognitivist which guided the first work sees itself called into question with the emergence of problems inspired of the Psychologie of the development, of the social Psychologie, even of the psychoanalytical tradition .

In addition, psychology the human one as being social cannot be abstracted from a more general prospect on the human society, at the same time produced individual psychology of the beings which compose it and context in which are born, grow and interact the whole of the human beings. During their recent history, the Social sciences thus evolved/moved to take into account in their analyzes of the social facts the psychology of the men. For example, in economy, the work of Daniel Kahneman is precisely concerned the importance that there is to consider specificities of human psychology to enrich the traditional models by economic agents. One can also quote the case of certain fields of the Social sciences as the Critique arts person which saw appearing currents exploiting the concepts of contemporary psychology to analyze the construction and the contents of the works of art (for example, the Fiction S). In addition, when it becomes a technique applied, psychological science raises debates ethical S on the use which it is possible to make of its results and discovered: the most characteristic example is undoubtedly the case of work on the images Subliminal are whose objective was to modify the behaviors (economic, policies,…) by diffusing very short messages so that they are not perceived consciously.

Between these two levels, infra-individual and supra-individual, psychology is thus found in a position hinges where progress of this science enriches and grow rich by the evolutions of these multiple fields of research.

Individual and collective

These problems oppose the individual one to the collective. Many theories clashed on this dimension of the psychological examinations, without a consensual conclusion currently emerging on the relationship between the person and the company. Some think that it is the person who allows the company to exist and to change (individualistic design), for others it is the opposite. I.e. it is necessary to include/understand a social phenomenon to leave the company for to go towards the individual. It is about the Holisme. Of course, much think that both are necessary, but how can one describe it?

Innate and acquired

These problems are not the simplest nor last, the relationship between what is given Génétique lies and what is acquired environment or socially occupied the universities for a long time and perhaps will occupy them still a long time, so much the problem is difficult to pose scientifically. Posed in a naive way, the question does not have more direction than to wonder whether the surface of a Rectangle depends more on its width or its height. As there does not exist more man without innate that without asset , it would be impossible to give a univocal answer which is not subjective or quite simply false.

However the scientists regularly tried to apply the methods available to their time to tackle this question in a more rigorous way. The principal way of approach is Statististique: it rests on the concept of Héritabilité resulting from the Génétique. The heritability measures in a given population, the share of variability of a milked which is explained by the genetic Hérédité: according to this definition, l'" acquis" is thus what is not genetically hereditary. The concept of heritability is often badly included/understood general public and conduit with errors as for interpretation of the results. The method of the calculation of the heritability does not make it possible indeed to draw the conclusions on an individual level: a characteristic héritable to 50% does not mean especially only at each individual, " the share of genetics is of 50%" (this last expression does not have scientific significance).

In addition, however rigorous, the calculation of the heritability depends on measurement of the feature in question and the studies on the innate one and the asset were often criticized for their methodology in this respect. In particular, if the Intelligence quotient (IQ) is a well defined measurement (of which one can calculate the heritability in a given population, at a given moment -- for the IQ, one obtains a rate from approximately 75% in the modern Western companies), the question of knowing if it constitutes a measure relevant and reliable of the Intelligence is much more problematic.

Development and permanence

What in the adult remains of the child, what in the child determines the adult who it will be? The echo is made some hear in the assertions of the type “All is played before six years! ” or “There is necessary to remain child to be creative! ” whose scientificity is eminently doubtful.

Thus several experiments of early education of very young children had results whose name passed in the history: Blaise Pascal, Mozart, Goethe, John Stuart Mill… and of the late trainings which also left a historical trace: Helen Keller, Gustave Flaubert (dyslexic, learns how to read around ten years), François Cheng (Chinese, French academician, learns French with more than twenty years)…

Human and animal

How to think the obvious difference between an human society and a group in primates, while integrating the continuity of the evolution of the animal towards the man? Is the psychology of the animal sufficient to include/understand the human one? To include/understand is the human thought without binding it to the nonverbal thought of the animal, correct? Is there evolutionary rupture or not?

Conscious and unconscious

The discovery that the human ones do not control all their acts ( I do not do it although I want, and I make the evil which I do not want , written Paul de Tarse), which words, moments of their intellectual or emotional life are not conscious is not easily compatible with the image of a man of reason, Master of itself and world. The clear conscience remains an objective but is not given naturally. In addition, equivalence between total conscience and total control are not obvious.

Each field of study of psychology poses such oppositions that the authors slice or adapt to try to build a scientific step, like the relationship between reason and madness or that between normal and pathological, already evoked.

The history of psychology, not more than any other, is not a linear construction where progress accumulates in the same direction, starting from the same object. If it is rather simple to establish a Chronologie of the history of psychology, the course of its history is filled of fractures, of contradictions as soon as one seeks to extend the results apart from the narrow zone where they were elaborate. It is difficult to study psychology without knowing its history: the risk, by being unaware of it, would be to repeat errors already identified like such in the past.

Classification of the disciplines and approaches psychological

The classification suggested of the various psychological disciplines is empirical, it uses the traditional categories of the scientific method; object of study, method of analysis, field of study. Like any empirical classification, it is not completely satisfactory and the disciplines belong to several categories, but the stress is laid on an aspect because of the name chosen by the founders.

It is one of the essential tasks of psychology and its epistemology which to manage scientifically to define its object of study, its method and its field of study. Work in progress but which one cannot regard as completed or even stabilized.

Classification of the disciplines and approaches psychological according to:

See too

Internal bonds

• List of psychologists
• Schools of Ethical psychology
• of psychology

Bibliographical references

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