ABSTRACT
When a scientist propounds a theory he has two choices: he can claim that what he says has been dictated to him by the real nature of things, or he can take sole responsibility for what he says and claim only that he has offered one man’s hopeful construction of the realities of nature. In the first instance he makes a claim to objectivity on behalf of his theory, the scientist’s equivalent of the claim to infallibility. In the second instance he offers only a hope that he may have hit upon some partial truth that may serve as a clue to inventing something better and he invites others to follow this clue to see what they can make of it. In this latter instance he does not hold up his theoretical proposal to be judged so much in terms of whether it is the truth at last or not-for he assumes from the outset that ultimate truth is not so readily at hand-but to be judged in terms of whether his proposition seems to lead toward and give way to fresh propositions; propositions which, in turn, may be more true than anything else has been thus far. (Kelly, 1969, pp. 66-7)
Currently many psychologists feel that psychology should concern itself more with ‘whole’ people. It should centre more on ‘real human experience’. This is comical in one sense-it is as if sailors suddenly decided they ought to take an interest in ships-but necessary in another. A variety of vanities have caused psychologists to turn their backs on the complete and purposeful person. A craving to be seen, above all, as scientists has led them to favour the clockwork doll, the chemical interaction or the environmentally imprisoned rat as their models of humanity. Further decades of massive production by psychologists has left us still open to Notcutt’s accusation:
Scientism is to science as the Pharisee is to the man of God. In
the psychology of scientism there is everything to impress the onlooker-enormous libraries, and a systematic search of the journals, expensive instruments of exquisite precision and shining brass, complicated formulas, multi-dimensional geometries and differential equations, long strange words of Greek origin, freshly minted enormous calculating machines and white coated girls to punch them-all the equipment is there to make the psychologist feel that he is being really scientific-everything in fact except ideas and results. Full many a glorious thesis have I seen wending its dignified way to a trivial and predestined inconclusion, armed cap-à-pie with all the trappings of scientism; the decimals correct, the references in order, only the mind lacking. (Notcutt, 1953, p.4)
It seems that once a profession of ‘psychologists’ was established it was deemed necessary to find ways of viewing people which would maintain a decent trade union differential between the professional psychologist and his object of study, the ‘organism’.
