ABSTRACT
In the Introduction an attempt was made to explain the essentially ‘reflexive’ nature of Psychology. In the author’s view this, still relatively neglected, issue underlies many of the other conceptual problems the discipline faces. One basic implication of Psychology’s reflexivity is that it is essentially embedded in the psychological life of its host societies. This kind of reflexivity is shared in some respects with other human sciences. Economics and Sociology for example are similarly embedded in their societies’ economic and social lives. Nevertheless, it does differentiate Psychology and other ‘human sciences’ from the natural physical sciences, the reflexive features of which do not tie them in so thoroughly and essentially to their contexts of practice. We will return to this point later. The term ‘reflexivity’ is now often misleadingly used in a somewhat looser fashion to refer simply to the fact that a psychologist’s work on a topic involves their ‘reflecting’ on that topic as it applies to themselves (very evidently in psychotherapy or counselling settings), thereby perhaps requiring psychological change on their part. This is only one facet of the topic however, and not the most troublesome. See J.H. Capshew (2007) for a useful review, though his position is less radical than mine I think.
