Advances in Psychology Volume 26 Psychological Reality

PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY

ADVANCES IN PSYCHOLOGY 26 Etlito rs

G. E. STELMACH

P. A . VROON

N 0 RTH - H 0 LL A N D A M S T E R D A M . N E W Y O R K .OXFORD

PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY Kenneth P. HILLNER Departwicn t o f Psychology South Dakota Stcife University Brookings, S. D., U . S .A .

NORTH-HOLLAND AMSTERDAM . NEW YORK .OXFORD

"'ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHERS B.V.. 19x5 All rights reserved. No part of this puh1ic;ition may he reprocluccd. stored in retrieval system. or transmitted. in ;my form o r hy any nicanx, electronic, mechanical, photocopying. recording or otherwise. without the prior permission ofthe copyright owner. ii

ISBN:O44487741 x

1'1 ihlislr ers: ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHERS U.V. P.O. Box 1991 I000 HZ Amstcrdam The Netherl;inds

S o l e ~ l ~ s i r ~ l ~ i i i ihr i ~ ~U. . sS. JA ~ .~ii1rtl r C'rirrritlri: ELSEVIER SCIENCE PUBLISHING COMPANY. INC. S2V;inderhilt Avenue N e w York. N.Y. 10017

U.S.A.

Llbrary of Congress Cataloging In Publlcatlon Data

H i l l n u , Kenneth P. Psychological reality.

(Advances in psychology ; 26) Bibliography: p Includes indexes. 1. Psychology-Philosophy. 2. Psychology, Applied-Wlosophy. 3. Reality--Psychological aspects. I. Title. 11. Series: Advances in psychology (Amsterdam, Netherlands) * 26. EF38.H53z 19iz 150'.1 85-4513 ISBN 0-4 4-077 1-X

.

PRINTED IN T H E NETHERLANDS

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to t h e memory o f my late father, Everett Charles Hillner.

I also wish t o pay

homage t o Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and countless other victims o f t h e Gulag Archipelago.

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vi i

CONTENTS

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments

xv

1:

Introduction

2:

Doing Psychology

21

3:

Possible Psychological Universes

41

4:

Major Classical Schools

57

5:

Major Contemporary Systems

99

6:

Two Philosophical Issues

155

7:

Contemporary Conceptions o f Mind

179

8:

Psychological Explanation

207

9:

Behavior Versus Experience

245

10 :

Applied, Professional Psychology

269

11:

Moderating Influences

301

12:

Relational Aspects

319

13:

Final Perspective

347

References

365

Name Index

389

Subject Index

397

1

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ix

PREFACE

The discipline

of

psychology exists both as an end

in itself and as a means to other ends.

A s an end

in itself, psychology is an independent, institutionalized, academic discipline (intellectual endeavor] concerned with the nature o f psychological reality.

A s a means to other ends, psychology is a

professional discipline (delivery system) seeking to apply established psychological doctrine to problems believed amenable to solution by active psychological intervention. Psychology, as an intellectual endeavor, derived from t h e synthesis o f epistemological philosophy, experimental physiology, and sensory psychophysics.

This synthesis was accomplished in Germany

around 1880 under the aegis of Wilhelm Wundt, who established the first recognized system

o f

experi-

mental psychology, known as structuralism. Psychology, as an applied entity, derives from our perennial interest in human nature and the general cultural belief that interventionist actions are beneficial.

The establishment o f psychology as

a profession outside the confines o f academia is implicit in Freudian psychology (roughly 1885); but the specific subvarieties o f professional psychology now known as clinical, industrial, vocational, and

PREFACE

X

t h e like are o f more recent origin. Ideally, academic psychology s e r v e s a s t h e conceptual basis of applied psychology.

How the aca-

demic psychologist construes t h e nature o f psychological reality determines t h e appropriateness of specific psychological interventionist .techniques. T h e task o f resolving the nature o f psychological reality, i.e., constructing a specific psychological reality, i s both a rational and arbitrary endeavor, such that it must be viewed a s a philosophical exercise.

One of t h e primary features o f

academic psychology i s that no consensus exists a s t o what constitutes t h e proper psychological universe.

Various models o f psychological reality ex-

ist and implicitly compete with each other for t h e right t o be called

the

psychology: f o r instance,

descriptive behaviorism, cognitive psychology, humanism, dialectical psychology, and depth psychology o f which psychoanalysis is one version. Since t h e germinal phase o f t h e evolution o f academic psychology is over and the era o f t h e classical schools o f psychology now is a part o f history, many psychologists a r e becoming quite defensive about their discipline's

failure t o resolve

t h e nature o f the psychological universe.

The lack

o f a consensus i s viewed negatively, especially by

those who like t o compare psychology with such more formalized and established sciences a s physics and chemistry, in which competing versions o f a n ultimate physical reality n o longer exist.

Such psy-

chologists a s Oeese (19721, Koch ( 1 9 7 5 1 , Kendler (19811, and Staats (19831 even like t o argue t h a t psychology currently is in a state o f crisis o r

PREFACE

conf 1 ict

xi

.

There also i s a current tendency (Robinson,

1979) t o assume that psychology should be a n atheoretical endeavor and practiced at a strictly parametric level, such that every issue that psychology faces, whether conceptual or pragmatic, c a n be r e solved by accumulation o f further experimental data. But t h i s is not a realistic reaction t o psychology's lack o f paradigmatic coherence, because academic psychology is nothing if not an applied philosophy. No psychological truth exists independently of a

given model of psychological reality. In my opinion, academic psychology's perennial metaphysical pluralism should be accepted at face value with an evaluatively neutral stance, s o that t h e task o f constructing a model of psychological reality can be objectively assessed.

Such an as-

sessment would demonstrate four moderating characteristics of psychology's conceptual predicament:

1. The pluralism o f psychology i s a function of various historical and philosophical factors that b y and large are immutable.

2. Much o f psychology's pluralism i s super-

ficial or semantically based. 3. The same basic s e t o f problems must be faced by every proposed model of psychological reality. The various conceptions of t h e psychological universe have more in common than is usually realized, and t h i s has a general leavening effect o n t h e content o f psychology.

4. Any possible evaluation o f t h e many different models o f psychological reality must be conducted on a nonpsychological basis.

The decision t o

xii

PREFACE

accept or reject a given brand of psychology is a value judgment, determined by factors external t o t h e discipline o f psychology itself. :;