Future of Psychology

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Will psychology eventually return to philosophy from which it came?

Will psychology gain strength as an independent science along with biology, chemistry and physics?

Will pschology be absorbed into branches of other sciences and lose its independence?

-- Colleen (cvf7222183@aol.com), December 09, 2001

Answers

Of course, all you're going to get in answer to a question like this are opinions. For what it's worth, my opinion is that psychology will continue to splinter into different areas that have increasingly less to do with each other. Many of those areas will forge alliances with other disciplines to which they are kindred (e.g., neuropsychology with neuroscience) but I doubt that most will be completely "absorbed" by them. Even now, psychology departments are often held together more by adminstrative histories than by common interests among their members. It is very difficult to break down long-standing institutional units like university departments, even long after it is clear, from a purely intellectual perspective, that the members no longer have a common calling. One can already see psychology breaking up in the formation of departments that are dedicated almost solely to psychotherapy, or alternatively to experimental psychology. It is anyone's guess how long it will be before broadly-based psychology departments are the exception rather than the rule.

-- Christopher Green (christo@yorku.ca), December 09, 2001.

I think that psychology is going the way of many "disciplines" i.e. becoming more eclectic and inter-disciplinary. I think this *is* a strength. It would be terrible to see psychology become more like the other "sciences" you list. The great error of psychology, as a discipline, has been to try and emulate such sciences through its methods and paradigms. Regarding your third question, I do not think that interdisciplinarity will see psychology being absorbed. Rather, I see it as opening up to embrace ideas from a variety of social sciences and humanities, including philosophy, cultural studies, sexuality and gender studies etc. In doing this, psychology is (hopefully) showing its potential to move with the times.

-- katrina roen (katravels@yahoo.com), December 10, 2001.

Psychology is a science that "nasty little subject" that is meant to explain the complexities of the brain. The foundation of Psychology goes back to the ancient Greek times. In those times, much of the education had some philisophical elements and none more so than Psychology. The subject matter of Philosophy addresses the problems of how we should conduct ourselves in a manner that is most contusive to the prosperity of the human race. Philosophy also addresses these problems with answers that are immutable through the passage of time, or it just shows that are no perminant answers, just more questions. Inevitably, psychology consists of the subject matter of other sciences. Psychology explains the mind in not only philosophical terms, but in behavioral, medical, chemical, and physical terms. It shouldn't be much of a concern how Psychology is devided or how it integrates its self into other subjects. The question of whether psychology will branch out, or become a more independent science is merely something based on perception. I think the question that is really being asked is if there will be an agenda that will explain the general subject regardless of its various elements.

-- Sean Giebitz (dungeonking@yahoo.com), October 04, 2004.

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