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Schools of Psychology: A Complementary Pattern

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Saul Rosenzweig
Saul Rosenzweig*
Affiliation:
Worcester State Hospital, Worcester, Mass.
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Extract

“If, then, we are really to find out what is true and what is false, we must direct our attention to the role of any particular item in the whole of which it is a part.”

—Wertheimer: On Truth.

In these days of Gestalttheorie it seems not untimely to inquire whether psychology itself does not stand in need of being recognized as a configuration of complementary parts. The suggestion, it is true, tends at the first to be repudiated by the implacability of the schools with their claims and counterclaims resounding on every side. On further analysis, however, such controversy seems to acquire the very different significance of having permitted certain partial aspects of the whole field to become well-articulated, even if in somewhat exaggerated form. In other words, if there is any underlying unity in psychology, then the very overstatements of the school zealots while unwittingly defeating their own purpose may have been doing the science a real service by throwing its basic pattern into bold relief. In broadest terms this seems to describe what has been happening in psychology in the recent past and to define the present stage of its development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , January 1937 , pp. 96 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1937

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Footnotes

1

Presented before the Psychology Seminar, Worcester State Hospital, November 15, 1934 and before the Psychology Club, Skidmore College, February 25, 1936.

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