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Persistent Conceptual Issues in Psychology

A Selective Update

Princeton University jmn{at}princeton.edu

Advances within four persistent, interrelated issues in psychology over the past quarter-century are discussed. Issue 1, ‘The ideas of person, individual and self’, primarily considers the consequences of ‘depersonalization’, or the various attempts to reduce human functioning to biological and/or computational processes. Issue 2, ‘The attribution of purpose, goal direction or intention’, deals with the impact of Wiener’s cybernetics upon the Jamesian concept of mentation. This issue is also concerned with the consequences of hermeneutics’ reaction to ‘scientism’. Issue 3, ‘The tendency to reify, to reduce or to render holistic psychological phenomena’, is discussed. Robinson’s designation of four different types of reductionism is described. The overarching point is made that ‘mentation possesses its own reality’. Issue 4, ‘The concept of causality’, is examined. In dealing with causal relations, psychologists must avoid the tendency to confuse the necessary with the sufficient.

Key Words: causality • concepts of personhood • purposivity • reification

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 14, No. 2, 239-260 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354304042019


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