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The question is surprisingly relevant. Moreover, for more than a hundred years. From the very moment of its inception, psychological science cannot decide which section of scientific knowledge it belongs to. And with the development of psychological counseling and psychotherapy, opinions began to arise that psychology is not a science at all, but rather an art.
This complexity is due to the fact that psychology as an independent discipline was formed at the intersection of philosophy and physiology. Its founding father is Wilhelm Wundt, and the year of foundation is considered to be 1879, when Wundt founded the laboratory of experimental psychology at the University of Leipzig. Wundt also recognized the “duality of psychology” and developed both its physiological, and therefore objective and experimental branch, and socio-cultural, and therefore a priori subjective and not amenable to study by experimental methods (the so-called “Psychology of Peoples”).
This also leads to another problem of psychology-the definition of its object and subject. Consciousness, subjective (phenomenal) experience, behavior, the unconscious, information processing processes, the psyche, and much more have already been selected as the “subject of psychology”. In a relatively recent discussion (2008), an attempt was made to reclaim the “soul” as a subject of psychological science.
The problem of “crisis in psychology” has existed since the separation of psychology from philosophy. The most complete analysis was first made by L. S. Vygotsky in his work “The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis” in 1927. Much of what dear Lev Semyonovich writes is still relevant today. However, a lot has changed: the list of psychological schools and directions has been expanded with new names, with the development of technologies, new problems have appeared, including the development of artificial intelligence. However, one thing remains unchanged – the state of crisis.
A Russian psychologist, V. F. Petrenko, believes that “… there is no single psychological science, but rather a conglomerate of sciences with different objects and methods of research, called by one name – “psychology”. And a number of areas of psychology, for example, social psychology, are much closer to the language and methods of related scientific disciplines, for example, to sociology, check to psychophysics or medical psychology. It is quite possible that in the future a whole bunch of subject sciences will stand out from “psychology”, just as physics, chemistry, biology and psychology itself once stood out from philosophy.”
The St. Petersburg professor V. M. Allakhverdov, having analyzed the history of psychology from the point of view of the philosophy of science, comes to the conclusion that “before psychology was born properly, it immediately fell into the stage of crisis, in which it remains permanently and happily ever after.”
Without solving internal methodological, logical and general scientific problems, psychology, as it seems to me, is really doomed to choose, to become an interdisciplinary appendage to other, more developed sciences. And from this point of view, it is difficult to call psychology a science.
However, this does not make it a “pseudo-science”, but rather a “proto-science”, as it is still in its infancy. Most likely, people who consider psychology to be a fake science are not very familiar with it, and under psychology they represent a collection of business coaches, coaches, and other apologists for personal growth and development. Such characters, unfortunately, often do have a psychological education, which raises the question of the quality of personnel training and the adoption of the law on psychological activity, for which the Russian Psychological Society has been fighting for several years.
The fact that people have different opinions, and not a single one, “recommended by the party and the government” – this is just not surprising, it is completely normal and natural.
Therefore, it might be worth reformulating the question to ” what do you think about this issue?” (about the scientific nature of psychology).
When I was already in my third year, we were finally paired with one teacher, an elderly Jew, the wisest person who came to psychology after the age of forty, having devoted the first part of his life to engineering and technical disciplines, having many inventions in this area. That is, he felt with his own hands both the technical field of knowledge and the humanities.
The first question he asked us was ” is psychology a science?”
His answer was: not science. Science, in its precise definition, deals with laws (an apple will always fall to the ground), and psychology deals not with laws, but with regularities.
Psychology, medicine and pedagogy are areas of knowledge at the intersection between science and art.
There are areas in psychology (I won't point fingers) trying to make it a science. If, they say, I perform a certain ritual, for example, I say a certain text to the image of my father, then guaranteed transformations will occur in my psyche. And then there is the training of specialists who know how to dictate this text to people with high quality. And supposedly if everything is done according to the protocol, then 100 percent result.
Nothing of the sort, gentlemen. That's not how it works. Not laws, but patterns.
This view is usually associated with ” natural science chauvinism.” It seems to a person that there are “real sciences” – physics, chemistry, sometimes biology and “not real”, they are also “humanities”. Non-real ones are those where it is impossible to strictly mathematically describe the entities under study, where more than one competing theory is possible. Since one has not taken the trouble to delve into the discipline, one does not understand why some theories are accepted and others are not, and sees this not as the result of a free competition of ideas, but as the result of a conspiracy.
That is, this position is structurally no different from the position of people who, without understanding physics, say that “these scientists came up with some nonsense about the fact that everything exploded and fool us.”
Consequences of the materialist worldview
People tend to consider the object and subject of their research as the center of the universe.
Matter is best observed, so for many people it is matter that is the object of their research.
Anything that goes beyond materialism goes beyond the understanding of these “some” and is declared a lie, so as not to violate the integrity of the worldview.
I do not consider psychology a pseudo-science, but the vagueness and some not quite complete definiteness of psychotherapy is sometimes alarming. Perhaps I didn't have much experience with this area, so. The uncertainty of psychological methods can contribute to the development of various kinds of serious misconceptions in a person's views, assessment of their own and other people's actions. And, as a result, aggravation of the situation. Right now I'm writing, and on Channel 1 another mess: Maria Maksakova is trying to blame everyone, especially her mother, looking for her mistakes in raising herself, although she is a mother herself and more than once. And you often read and hear how psychotherapists try to explain the distortions in the patient's psyche with children's “deep” resentments, which somehow overlapped incorrectly and distorted the psyche of the little man for life. And my opinion is that this position of psychologists causes distrust in this branch of therapy. It is necessary to convince the patient more often during the session to hear and understand not only themselves. Sometimes you listen to a person, he is completely immersed in problems, and the only reason for this is his complete irresponsibility and selfishness. He doesn't like anyone, only calculation and profit. It is difficult to understand human feelings and characters, so it is individual for everyone.
I have a friend who is a psychologist. She published several books that enjoyed some success. (based on the experience of the war in the Donetsk republics). I once asked her – how do you feel about your profession? The answer was exhaustive-Are you an idiot?
I felt the same way when I read Freud's books. I felt like an idiot. A sucker who was shod. Psychology (individual) is a lie. What is true here is the psychology of communities (crowds). And a person-he is always different, even the most stupid burgher-he is an individual. That is, yes, you can study the psychology of a person-one, given. This requires a lot of time, patience and intelligence. But you can only come up with GENERAL rules for the herd.
Because it is a relatively “young” science in the world, and even more so in Russia. Because in the USSR they used to believe that there could be no psychological problems, it was all due to laziness and idleness.