Given this broad range of careers & interests, what holds psychology together? Is it through the studies of the 5 enduring isssues?

-- Joanne Chan (jo_4283@excite.com), June 09, 2004

Answers

Hi Joanne, I think that there are a number of factors that help define the discipline of psychology and give its members a sense of unity. However, first I would like to bring up the concept of "family resemblance" that is sometimes used in cognitive psychology. If you go to a family reunion and group all the biological relatives together, there may not be any one obvious physical characteristic that they all have in common. However, there may be a cluster of characterists that are more common in this family than in the population at large and therefore these characteristics can help identify members of the family within the community. For example, maybe the characteristics of red hair, large noses, and tallness are particularly frequent in a particular family. Let us now go back to psychology and apply the concept of family resemblance. Today many of the things that psychology studies are also studied by other disciplines and visversa. For example there is quite a bit of overlap in interest and research between psychology and the following disciplines: biology, medicine, physics, sociology, anthropology, education, political science, and economics. This interdisciplinary overlap has born much fruit, due in part to spreading ideas and techniques among the different disciplines. Never-the-less, we could name some characteristics that are particularly common in the psychology "family." Psychologists typically are trained in scientific methology and analysis, are interested in the behavior and mental activity of individual humans and animals, and are interested in a similar set of questions and problems (e.g., "the five enduring issues, but there are many more issues). Certainly mental illness and difficulty learning have been two of the problems many psychologists have been interested in. There are also professional and administrative factors that help keep psychologists together in psychology departments and psychological associations. I hope this helps. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@georgiasouthern.edu), June 09, 2004.

*The* five enduring issues? Which ones are those?

I think that psychology is held together (to the degree that it is) with some common historical convergences along with a good dollop of institutional inertia (i.e., it is hard, though not impossible, to pull university departments and scholarly societies apart once they've got themselves entrenched). For all that, the American Psychological Association is gradually being torn apart. There are some schools where clinical and research psychology take place in different departments, and, despite the once-enormous influence of the "Boulder Model," there are now advanced degrees (and whole schools) for practitioners who do no research (the Psy.D.).

Look for major changes over the next half-century.

In reply to Paul's answer, the notion of "family resemblance" came not from cognitive psychology, but from Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy. I think it first appeared in _Philosophical Investigations_, though I am not positive.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), June 09, 2004.

Hello Joanne Chan

The following two links discuss 'unity issues' in psychology:

http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/Unification.htm

http://www.comnet.ca/~pballan/Unityvsplural.htm

Cheers,

Paul F. Ballantyne

-- Paul F. Ballantyne (pballan@comnet.ca), June 10, 2004.

Hi Christopher, Thanks for helping out on the origin of the concept of "family resembance." I had read about it in a cognitive psychology text, but did not know its earlier use by Wittgenstein. Paul

-- Paul Kleinginna (pkleinginna@georgiasouthern.edu), June 16, 2004.