ABSTRACT
Psychology entered 20th century as a promising young science, with new experimental laboratories being established and Freud's Interpretation of Dreams instigating a new psychological culture. At the start of the 21st century, however, the science of psychology appears in a puzzling state, somehow empty of radically new insights into the human situation. In psychology, pragmatism led to behaviorism. In both cases, the prevailing focus on consequences—how to predict and control them—led to defocusing from the autonomous, self-reflexive individual in favor of an adequately behaving rat or citizen. Psychology follows the traditions of wider society and is open to mini-conversions to a different belief system—from mentalism to behaviorism, from behaviorism to cognitivism, and who knows where else. The important difference from psychology's use of language is the distanced abstraction of terminology that allows the freedom of extension of the meaning by importing a common language analogy, leading to further innovation of the abstract conceptual system.
