ABSTRACT
In a book published at the beginning of the 1980s, Cohen (1981/1983) concluded that Piaget's work was no longer in step with the concerns of contemporary psychology and that henceforth he should be regarded as an historical figure only. Ten years later, it is fitting to consider the question once again: not just whether to accept or reject Piaget's various ideas, but whether he continues to speak to us as a contemporary or only as a figure from the past. I argue in this chapter that he still has a vital message for psychologists, but in order to profit from that message, one must resist two temptations. The first is to accept the idea that the standard textbook version of Piaget's theory is anything like a complete picture. Without claiming to have discovered the “true” Piaget, or even that there is a true Piaget to be discovered, I would argue that aspects of his work are still insufficiently assimilated or accommodated to in developmental psychology. The second temptation is the tendency, once one has gone beyond the standard version of the theory, to dismiss criticisms of it as uninformed. This tendency arises, because the standard criticisms are directed at the standard version that one has just rejected. In fact, the problems with the theory do not disappear when it is better understood. Instead, one discovers that the problems are somewhat different (and considerably more interesting) than they appeared at first.
