The Psychological Record, 1979,29,297-300

COMMENTS AND QUERIES

WHAT FUTURE FOR PSYCHOLOGY?

Notice is taken of a recent symposium on the Future of Psychology in

which the professional aspect of the discipline is featured. The writer
comments on the future of psychology as an authentic science. Suggestions
are offered concerning the essential requirements for a future authentic
science of psychology.

Seldom do the evaluators of mankind mention the sovereign quality of

persons being adequately oriented in their present ambience and interested
in restrained speculation about the future. For a number of reasons, little
value is accorded to the activities of thinking and reasoning concerning the
before and after of persons and events. And as to groups, historians assume
negative attitudes toward the probable future of the peoples they study.
They are primarily concerned with events as they have been in the past, and
exist now in some restricted time interval. But events scientifically envisaged
are not fixed and self-enclosed either in space or time; rather, they form an
ever-changing continuum. Accordingly, scientists are committed to studies
of origins, processes, evolutions, and declinations and thus constantly peer
into the future, to hypothesize, predict, and calculate probabilities. As
scientists, students of psychological events should therefore display con-
siderable interest in the future of their discipline.
It is gratifying, then, to note a recent literary symposium in the
American Psychologist (Wertheimer et al., 1978) relative to the future of
the psychological enterprise. Concern for the future is by no means usur-
ping the mission of the prophet; it is merely the attempt to foretell how the
components of events will associate themselves in the future on the basis of
previous instances. If we are interested in the improvement of progress of
the discipline, we can make a reasonable estimate concerning events that are
still to come. Foretelling the future in specific situations is not invariably an
elusive problem since there is a continuity between the circumstances of
current date and the development and changes in the happenings of some
time to come.
When we examine closely the contents and trends of the symposium,
we of course find the usual individual differences; among the nine con-
tributors there are variant emphases concerning the future of psychology.
Although the term "psychology" stands for a number of referents both of
an applied and theoretical' type, most of the contributors touch upon

0033-2933/79/02297 + 004$00.10/0 © 1979 The Psychological Record

298 OBSERVER

practical problems. For example, the symposium opens with an often

repeated reference to the phenomenal growth of psychology. So the par-
ticipants question whether or not this growth will be continued, and if so
will there be sufficient trained personnel. Or if not, how to curtail the
number of trainees and how to prepare them for their work in applying
psychology. Almost all the contributors emphasize problems concerning
psychology as a profession. Aside from one contribution that proposes that
in the future psychology should revert to a subjective approach, there is
little concern about the future of psychology as a scientific discipline.
But who can ignore the great need for the improvement of psychology
as a science? The future of psychology certainly calls for the development of
better basic postulates. If psychology is to become a full-fledged science, it
will be necessary to extrude from it every vestige of transcendental in-
fluence. Just as physics got rid of forces, and biology dispensed with
vitalism, so psychology must get rid of consciousness which has been
distilled from traditional soul-ego-self materials.
Here is a selected list of suggestions for the future emendation of the
study of psychology.
Item 1. It is a prime necessity to rework the descriptions and theories
of all specific psychological events.
Example 1. Sensory and perceptual behavior. The history of
psychology clearly shows that such definite discriminative performances are
currently universally interpreted in terms of transcendental constructs.
Consider a definite situation. Current doctrines of sensory and per-
ceptual behavior are modeled after a scheme developed by Newton and his
contemporaries. Newton makes clear that colors, for example, are not to be
found in the light rays that playa part in the discriminative situation. The
same thing can be said about the biological factors which playa part in the
retina, the visual pathway, or in any part of the brain or cortex. Accor-
dingly, Newton localized color in the sensorium or mind.
How replace the transcendental doctrines that have been standard in
psychological circles for centuries? One simple and urgent reply is to cling
strictly to the actual events that we observe, namely, that organisms are
interacting with objects that contain colored pigments. In the case of
reacting to ordinary objects, this is obvious, but the same principle applies
to the colors of light when prisms are made to intercept light rays or streams
of photons.
Example 2. Similar modification must be introduced in the study of
such behaviors generally referred to as feelings and emotions. Feelings
and emotions are the names of two important but different ac-
tivities. In the case of a feeling the outcome of its interbehavior with
stimulus functions points more prominently toward the organism than
toward the objects that are being interacted with. Students of psychology
must reject all notions of any sort of mental or consciousness in-
ternalizations. It is evident that conventional psychology of feelings and
emotions is derived from traditional views of a transcendental sort instead
of being based on the activities of organisms and stimulus objects.
Emotional events involve a break in the adjustment to the sudden, over-
 WHAT FUTURE FOR PSYCHOLOGY? 299

whelming, or surpnsmg object or circumstance facing the interacting

organism. It is not behavior correlated with confused or confounded
psychic processes.
Item 2. Avoidance of abstractions. Historically and currently
psychology has fallen short of scientific status at least partially because its
votaries have made use of abstractions instead of dealing with ongoing
events. Among the striking instances may be counted the view that
psychology is concerned with private data, occurrences which can only be
observed by one person, with internal states of consciousness, or faculties
of mind which are seated in the head. All these verbally encapsulated ab-
stractions consist of trans-experiential entities. The same types of errors
pertain to abstractions based on observed events. Such terms as perceiving,
thinking, remembering, and so on are used to symbolize activities per-
formed by the minds or brains of organisms instead of interbehavior of
organisms with stimulus objects, conditions, and other organisms under the
auspices of special circumstances.
Item 3. Mainly because language is the medium of science, it is an
urgent requirement for the scientific advancement of psychology to be
extremely meticulous with respect to semantic problems. For one thing,
words must never be confused with things or events, whether existent or
imagined. But this is a common practice; the terms sensation, idea, per-
sonality, instinct, motivation, intelligence, mind, and so on are regarded as
names of trans-experiential entities. The accident that the word psychology
is used for the science of psychology is not to be interpreted to signify that
psychology is the study of a psyche or soul-derived thing or process. All
names must be used as references to performances of the interactional type.
Item 4. It is as admirable as it is unavoidable that psychologists should
perform practical services. Unfortunately, persons working in
psychological fields have falsely claimed to change or modify persons or
their behavioral conditions. The remedy here, of course, is that practical
psychology should be based on thorough and accur~te theoretical prin-
ciples. In the past, psychologists have been wittingly or unwittingly over-
stepping the limits of their scientific capacities for personal gain. Obviously
if psychology is to be an authentic science, it must avoid all such practices
not based on an adequate understanding of psychological fields of action.
Item 5. Avoid dogmas. Among the cultural institutions of any society
the intellectual types stand firmly though more or less conspicuously.
Established beliefs and opinions that have become accepted as societal
impedimenta vie with laws, customs, and rituals as components of cultural
organizations and systems. When intellectual institutions become
crystallized as dogmas, they may exert maleficent influences upon scientific
pursuits. At once one recalls the struggles of scientists to shift from theistic
to naturalistic genesis, the clinging of scientists to matter, life, and con-
sciousness instead of inorganic, organic, and psychological things and
events, or the general viability of dualistic principles.
For the benefit of the scientific future of psychology, it appears
necessary to dispense with many dogmas that hamper the increase of
knowledge about psychological events. The following are some examples.
300 OBSERVER

1. That experience consists of psychic processes.

2. That the heart, midriff, or the brain is the seat or basis of con-
sciousness or behavior.
3. That genetic factors consist of powers or forces that determine
behavior instead of a series of copresent actual conditions.
4. That conditioning is a universal cause of the behavior of organisms.
5. That experimentation is simply manipulation.
OBSERVER

REFERENCE

WERTHEIMER, M., et al. 1978. Psychology and the future. American Psychologist, 33,631-
647.