ABSTRACT
AS A SCIENCE, PSYCHOLOGY SEEKS TO UNDERSTAND, RATHER THAN TO predict or to control, behavior. Such understanding may well arise post hoc and bear little relationship to the prediction of future behavior, even in the case of a particular person whose behavior is under study. Although in clinical application professional psychologists may develop means to help their clients control particular behaviors which those clients have seZ/’-defined as undesirable or inimical to their own welfare, it is not the aim of psychology as a science to control behavior — but merely to understand in precise and scientific terms.
